Meet Our Team!
Nancy Haker, BSN, RN
Emergency Department Nurse | Nurse Educator | Founder, Alaska Trauma & Emergency Nursing Education
With over two decades of experience in emergency nursing, Nancy Haker brings seasoned clinical expertise, strong leadership, and a deep passion for education to every setting she serves. After several impactful years working as a nurse in critical care, she now is a full-time nursing instructor for the University of Alaska at KPC.
Nancy is also the founder of Alaska Trauma & Emergency Nursing Education — a program focused on delivering high-quality trauma and emergency care training across rural Alaska. “Teaching has always been where my heart is,” she says. “This work lets me share what I love alongside some of the strongest nurses and best people I know.”
Originally from Northern California, Nancy made the move to Alaska in 2019, drawn by the community and quality of life. She’s the proud mother of four grown children and grandmother of thirteen —
Sue Metcalf, MSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, CPEN
Providence Alaska Medical Center
In Memoriam
Sue has over 40 years of experience in Emergency nursing. She has worked in critical access hospitals as well as level 1 trauma centers and all levels in between. She has been teaching trauma for many years and enjoys sharing and hearing stories from students. Sue believes nurses learn best when they can increase their knowledge based on what they know.
Jessie Westin, BSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, CPEN
ED/ICU Clinical Educator
Providence Alaska Medical Center
I have worked in the Providence Emergency Department as a nurse for over 10 years and I’ve been teaching ENPC and TNCC for the last seven years. My passion has always been education going back to my time before nursing as a fly fishing guide and through my prehospital medical career as an EMT (including as a medic on the set of the movie “Big Miracle”) and a Ski Patroller. I am so glad to have had opportunities to meet students from all over the state of Alaska and look forward to teaching more classes outside of my current role.
Fun fact: My Dad wrote a book about my growing up in the Alaska Bush (near Skwentna) where we flew in a small bush plane to Anchorage once a year to get groceries (Planes, Bears, and the Turkey Bomber available on Amazon). Out there, my family owned and operated a wilderness camp for kids and families where we were able to teach fire starting, tree climbing, canoe racing, geocaching, shelter building, etc. A pretty neat childhood.
Also fun fact: I have water skied behind a Cessna 185 on floats and survived! (Looks cool but is VERY fast and you smell like aviation fuel after:)
Rachael Cooper, MPH, MSN, RN
Rachael has over 15 years of experience providing healthcare in multiple settings from mobile clinics in rural Guatemala, Haiti, the Mississippi Delta, and Everest Base Camp to emergency departments in Level 1 trauma centers of Boston, Bronx, Kathmandu Nepal, and Alaska’s remote YK-Delta. Currently, Rachael is a critical care nurse in the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Rachael is passionate about the creativity required to provide high quality healthcare in hard-to-reach areas with a particular concern for migrant health and pediatrics.
Before nursing, Rachael developed and ran international mobile clinics in Guatemala, Haiti, and Mississippi, and conducted school-based parasite research and well child checks in rural Guatemalan villages with the Massachusetts-based organization Partners In Development where she continues to serve on the Board of Directors as a Public Health Consultant. Rachael began her nursing career as a Pediatric Nurse Consultant near the Bronx with the Dominican Women’s Development Center providing antenatal/lactation counseling and well-baby visits with primarily Spanish-speaking mothers and their children up to age three years.
During the Pandemic, Rachael’s attention turned toward critical care as a disaster response nurse for COVID-19, hurricane relief, and Southern Border crossings of unaccompanied minors. In the last three years, Rachael has been fortunate to work in the stabilization and management of critically ill patients - many of them pediatric - in Bethel Alaska’s Emergency Department and now an Intensive Care Unit in Anchorage. During her time as the Alaska ENA Education Chair, Rachael hopes to focus on pediatric readiness in emergency departments across the state of Alaska - a place where family, neonatal, maternal, migration, and critical care platforms all come together to surmount unrivaled feats of perseverance that make healthcare possible.
Colleen Clarke RN
Guardian Flight
Bio incoming