Liz Stokes, PhD, JD, RN, is a nurse attorney and ethicist whose scholarship and leadership sit at the intersection of health law, professional ethics, and policy. She is admitted to practice before the District of Columbia Bar and the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. She currently serves on the PhD faculty at the Berkley School of Nursing at Georgetown University, and previously served as Director of the Center for Ethics and Human Rights including the Minority Fellowship Program at the American Nurses Association, where she led national ethics and behavioral initiatives. Her earlier legal and regulatory experience includes service as Consultant in Discipline and Compliance for the D.C. Board of Nursing, Casualty Nurse Attorney at The Hanover Insurance Group, and Board Member of the D.C. Bar Association Lawyer Assistance Committee. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of The American Association of Nurse Attorneys.
Dr. Stokes’s research focuses on end-of-life policy, reproductive health, and the ethical and legal implications of artificial intelligence in clinical practice. She is a widely invited international speaker on professional ethics, having presented at the International Council of Nurses Congress, the International Nursing Ethics Conference, the UNESCO World Conference on Bioethics, Medical Ethics & Health Law, and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and she delivered the 40th David Barap Brin Lecture in Medical Ethics at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Her scholarship appears in the Hastings Center Report, the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Nursing Ethics, the Journal for Nurse Practitioners, and a 2024 Oxford University Press volume on nursing ethics. She is a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.
Her expertise has been featured in national and international media, including Morning Joe on MSNBC, NBC News, an award-winning feature in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and CNN. Dr. Stokes is the recipient of the 2022 Nursing Ethics Leadership Award, the Becker’s Hospital Review Rising Stars in Healthcare Award, and The American Association of Nurse Attorneys Outstanding Education Section Member Award.