Anita Rich, DNP, RN, CHFN, is the Founder and President of Nurses Heart to Heart. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Emory University and her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been a cardiology nurse at Emory University Hospital from 1981 until 2011 and the Heart Failure Coordinator at Emory Johns Creek Hospital since 2011. She is a Certified Heart Failure Nurse. She has been a CPR Instructor for Emory Healthcare for over 35 years.
She has volunteered for The Children’s Heart Project as a Nurse Transporter bringing children from Kosovo, Uganda, Honduras, and Mongolia to the United States for surgical repair of congenital heart defects.
She also volunteered on a medical team screening children in villages in northern Mongolia and performing surgical repairs and cardiac catheterizations in UlaanBataar, Mongolia. As part of this team she taught airway management to the Mongolian nurses.
During the class a nurse gently put her fist on the chest of the manikin and through the translator asked if Anita would "teach the pumping". This was Anita’s inspiration to establish Nurses Heart to Heart. To date, she has made 12 teaching trips to Mongolia and has donated hundreds of CPR and labor and delivery manikins
In 2010, 2014, 2016, and most recently in 2018, she was a part of a medical team in Northern Iraq screening Iraqi children with congenital heart defects and teaching Iraqi nurses.