Holly Kennedy

As an internationally known midwifery researcher and leader, Holly Kennedy is the first person to be appointed as the Varney Professor of Midwifery at Yale. She came to the position in 2009 with broad experience as a clinician, educator, and policymaker, in a variety of settings. Collectively this diverse background has shaped her vision of academic and clinical scholarship in U.S. maternal-child health care.

She is past president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), the professional association representing Certified Nurse-Midwives and Certified Midwives in the U.S., and received, in 2016, the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award, the highest honor bestowed by ACNM, in recognition of her contributions to research, education, and practice. 

Dr. Kennedy received a diploma in nursing from Miami Valley Hospital School of Nursing, Dayton, Ohio; a bachelor’s degree from Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii; a master’s degree as a family nurse practitioner from the Medical College of Georgia; a certificate of midwifery from the Frontier School of Midwifery & Family Nursing, Hyden, Kentucky; and a doctorate in nursing from the University of Rhode Island. She has held academic positions at the University of Rhode Island and most recently at the University of California San Francisco. She holds a visiting faculty appointment at King’s College London, where she was a distinguished Fulbright Fellow in 2008. For over thirty years, she served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps (active and reserve) and is a retired colonel.