Officer Biographies

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Jessica Edmondson- President

 

Jessica Edmondson serves as the President/President-Elect for the Alabama Chapter of NAPNAP. She is an Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology at Children's of Alabama. She has been a pediatric nurse for 17 years of which 12 have been as an AC-PNP. She has served as a primary care PNP, Neuro-Oncology PNP and currently as a Nephrology PNP with a focus on pediatric hypertension and congenital anomalies of the kidneys and urinary tract. She is a member of the Children’s of Alabama Advanced Practice Providers Council and the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology Advanced Practice Council. 

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Jessica is a member of Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church where her husband, Blake, serves as the Pastor. Being a pastor’s wife brings her much joy and she can frequently be found filling in wherever a need is within the church. She enjoys being able to minister to others alongside her husband and daughter as they also sing as a family. Jessica has become the Director over the church food pantry and has recently established a partnership with the Central Alabama Food Bank to provide additional food and supplies to their community. Jessica also serves as the PTO president of Boaz Middle School where her daughter, Emily, is in the 6th grade. 

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Leslie Pitts - President-Elect

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Leslie Pitts, MSN, CPNP-AC, CDCES, AP-PEN, is an acute-care pediatric nurse practitioner with 16 years of
experience at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama. Throughout her career, Leslie has worked
as a bedside RN in pediatric intensive care, as a diabetes and insulin pump educator in the endocrine
clinic, and as a nurse practitioner in the endocrine clinic. She served as a consultant with the Alabama
Department of Public Health for state newborn screening for over 12 years, which fueled a passion for
research within pediatric rare diseases, particularly Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. In 2022, Leslie was
awarded the Advanced Practice Excellence Award by Children’s of Alabama.

Leslie is currently pursuing a dual DNP-PhD degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She
continues a close relationship with pediatric Endocrinology at Children’s of Alabama, where she will
implement a transitional care program for adolescents with CAH later this year for her DNP project. Her
dissertation research will continue to focus on adolescent and young adult transitional care within the
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia population.

Leslie is married, has two children, ages 11 and 8, and lives with her family in Pelham, Alabama. When
not reading and writing for school, you can find Leslie driving a minivan full of children to the sport of
the season or volunteering with her church children’s ministry. Leslie serves on the Junior Board of the
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and proudly lives with Type 1 Diabetes for over 20 years. As a
fun fact, Leslie owns an axolotl named Falkor. Axolotls are salamanders with central hypothyroidism,
and as a result, they do not progress beyond their aquatic state. As an endocrine nerd, she could not
pass up owning one of these fascinating creatures!

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Kara Short - Immediate Past President

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Kara Short is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Children's of Alabama.  She works as the Acute Dialysis NP for the Pediatric and Infant Center for Acute Nephrology for the last 6 years.  Her special interests include acute kidney injury and neonatal kidney support therapy.  She is the co founder of the Neonatal and Infant Course for Kidney Support, an international conference that has taught almost 400 providers and nurses from 6 continents how to perform kidney support therapy on babies.  

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Kara and her husband, Evan, have a 2.5 year old name Charlie and 11 month old twin girls named Mathis and Lawton.  The easiest child in the house is their dog, Ham.  

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Allie Blumenthal - Secretary

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Alexandra "Allie" Armstrong is a Board Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. She received her Masters of Science in Nursing from UAB in 2014. She has been working as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Children’s of Alabama in the Pediatric Endocrinology Department since 2014, and started working as a full-time instructor in the Acute Care Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Track at the UAB School of Nursing in Fall of 2022. Allie is interested in and has worked to build specialty clinics for underprivileged patients, high-risk patient populations, and children who have undergone adverse childhood events. 

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She is currently serving as the secretary for the Alabama Chapter of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP) and also served as President of the Alabama Chapter in the 2020-2021 year. Allie is active in the young leaders board for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and in her free time, her husband and she serve as foster parents for the Jefferson County Department of Health. They have a 2-year-old daughter - Levy, and a daughter in heaven - Ellis, and two dogs, Gandalf and Jorah. 

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Morgan Corder - Treasurer

 

Morgan Corder is a certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. As a recent UAB graduate from the Dual Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Program, she is interested in pediatric critical care. She has served as the NAPNAP Alabama Chapter Treasurer since 2021. She is currently working on her DNP with an expected graduation date of August 2024. She was the recipient of the Annual NAPNAP Scholarship in March of 2021. She is a member of the Central Alabama Nurse Practitioner Association and Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society. She currently lives in Fairhope, AL with her two dogs, Ellie and Sullivan.

 

Ashleigh Bowman - Legislative Chair

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Ashleigh F. Bowman serves as the Legislative Chair of the Alabama Chapter of NAPNAP.  She has been a certified pediatric acute care nurse practitioner since 2015 and completed her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of South Alabama in 2018.  She has maintained an active practice in the Pediatric Emergency Department at USA Health Children’s & Women’s Hospital since 2016 and transitioned to full-time faculty at the University of South Alabama in 2019.  She is a trained pediatric sexual assault nurse examiner. 

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She maintains an avid interest in healthcare policy and politics with a focus on issues impacting child health, global health, vaccines, asthma, and child maltreatment.  She was chosen as a 2019 NAPNAP Advocacy Scholar and was recently appointed to serve on the NAPNAP Health Policy Committee.  She has worked with Alabama Rare, Shot@Life, and the Alabama Asthma Coalition on specific advocacy actions and is excited to pursue to the legislative priorities for the AL Chapter of NAPNAP.  She currently lives in Mobile, AL, with her husband, Glyn.

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Sula Gillespie - Continuing Education Chair

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Sula Gillespie received her MSN and BSN degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is board certified by the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board (Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner-Primary Care). As a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham for 20 years in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, she has seen many of the challenges that families face in accessing health care.

Sula has previously served as the Legislative Representative for the Alabama Chapter of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners for 3 years prior to becoming Continuing Education Chair. She participates in conference calls that inform members of issues encountered in other states and ways to improve health care for Alabama’s children. Her wish would be to share relevant information to all NAPNAP members. As part of the steering committee for Nurse Practitioner Alliance of Alabama from 2006-2013 (initially representing NAPNAP) she witnessed many legislative changes that impacted all Practitioners.

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Rebekah Sims - Membership Chair

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Rebekah Sims is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at Bibb Medical Associates in Centreville, Alabama. Rebekah provided care to pediatric dialysis patients at Children’s of Alabama for eleven years. She was a 2017 Jarman Lowder Nursing Scholar. Rebekah has a passion for pediatric nephrology and providing evidence-based practice care for pediatric patients in rural settings .She currently lives in West Blocton, Al, with her husband, Daniel, and two children, Chance and Cheyenne.

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