Mary Sebert is the Director of Global Nursing for the Mass General Center for Global Health.  She joined the MGH Center for Global Health in 2015, after living and working in Uganda. She has played an integral part in initiating the Global Nursing Fellowship Program, which began in 2016 and has provided global nursing fellowships for 30+ expert nurses in three African countries as well as domestically on two South Dakota Indian Reservations. Currently, Mary oversees the international and domestic nursing program to enhance nursing leadership, nursing scholarship, and to improve clinical care through education and training. In this role, she facilitates, directs, and coordinates partnerships with various academic and health care institutions to support and enrich nursing programs.

Mary has been a nurse for over 35 years. She began her career working clinically, eventually becoming the director of a critical care unit before transitioning to the hospital home care program, where she continued her leadership roles in home care and hospice, serving as director and later as operational coordinator for 11 offices in the western United States. Mary then began a four-year volunteer service with the United States Peace Corps in Romania, where she worked with non-profit non-governmental organizations on capacity building and sustainability which included working collaboratively with national and local leaders to help build quality programs for the elderly and those with mental and physical disabilities. Upon returning to the US, Mary worked as a Nurse Educator in her home state of South Dakota, before being selected as part of the first team of Nurse Educators for Uganda in the MGH Global Health Service Project, a partnership between a non-profit called SEED Global Health, the US Peace Corps, and MGH. In Uganda, Mary collaborated with, and supported the Department of Nursing faculty at Mbarara University of Science and Technology as a visiting lecturer and leadership mentor, an experience that solidified her love of education and work with vulnerable populations. Mary’s affinity for global work lies in her certainty that quality education and continued professional development is the way to strengthen and empower nurses globally, elevating their level of professionalism and respect because, worldwide, nurses make up over 50% of the healthcare workforce.