Rachael Watman is a senior program officer at the John A. Hartford Foundation. She is responsible for managing $50 million in grants, with primary oversight of the nursing portfolio, including nine Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence and their coordinating center at the American Academy of Nursing.  In addition, she works with the Social Work Faculty Scholars Program at the Gerontological Society of America, as well as the two Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, San Diego. 

Ms. Watman has worked in the field of aging for 15 years.  Before coming to the Hartford Foundation, she served as director of an adult day program in New York City for older adults with dementia and helped manage a Continuing Day Treatment Center for older adults with chronic mental illness.  There, she was responsible for programmatic, regulatory compliance, staff supervision, and budgetary issues.  In addition, Ms. Watman has served as director of a case management program for over 500 seniors in Queens, New York, providing individualized support to maximize their independence so they could remain safely at home.  She also worked as a member of a geriatric treatment team for an inpatient psychiatric clinic at a large New York hospital and in a residential home in Virginia for adults with autism.

While at Hartford, Ms. Watman has made numerous presentations in venues such as the Gerontological Society of America, the National Institute on Aging Summer Preconference, the annual meetings of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Academy of Nursing, and Columbia University.