By: Yale School of Nursing
It isn't every day you meet a nurse leader who, five years into "retirement," is presenting original AI research in Germany one season and guiding museum visitors past the penguins the next. For Vinnie Leigh, slowing down was never really the plan. A Brooklyn native who still plays the piano, folds intricate origami, and hunts down the best exotic restaurants she can find, she brings a restless, joyful curiosity to everything she touches—the same quality that shaped a remarkable career in psychiatric nursing.
That career found its home at Kaiser Permanente in Fresno, California, where Vinnie spent some 25 years in the Department of Psychiatry doing what she does best: building something new. From the ground up, she designed two intensive outpatient programs (IOPs), one for adults and one for adolescents, that became the model for other newly formed programs across Northern California. She led a multidisciplinary team of psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists, mentored rotating UCSF psychiatry residents, and ran a triage program staffed entirely by nurses.
“That's where my strength is: developing something innovative and new.”
Stepping into that role took faith on both sides. Vinnie remembers interviewing before a roomful of people who weren't yet sure what the program or her position would become. She arrived with proposals in hand and a simple resolve: to try her best and see what she could create. Her chief of psychiatry agreed, and once he watched the program flourish, he gave her room to build. She credits him, along with her husband of 59 years, Hoyle—a fellow psychiatrist and her steadfast cheerleader—because, as she puts it, we all need cheerleaders.
For Vinnie, success was never about a title; it was about impact. She measures it in the patients and families who returned years later, ringing the doorbell of her IOP suite simply to say the program had saved their lives. “Not just one person,” she recalls, “but several people and families.” That gratification has never faded.
The thread tying it all together, she says, is the love of research she first discovered at YSN: asking questions and doing the hard work to find the answers. Lately she has aimed that curiosity at artificial intelligence, studying how leading AI platforms respond to clinical scenarios and sharing her findings internationally, including at Sigma Theta Tau International. Her conviction is firm: nurses must help shape how AI is designed and used.
“If we're not at the table, we're on the menu.”
Her advice to new graduates is just as grounded. Careers rarely follow a straight line, she says, and that's exactly the point. Find work that draws on your talents, surround yourself with people who respect you, and leave room to grow. “Our interests grow and change,” she reflects, and, happily, so does she.
Connect with Vinnie
Are you an alum interested in psychiatric nursing, program innovation, or the future of AI in care? Follow Vinnie's work and reach out to her directly at vincenta.leigh@gmail.com.
Recent Presentation:
Nair B, Nair N, McGee B, Leigh H, Leigh V. Do different AIs think alike when asked about psychosomatic and stress-related issues? Research Presentation, 27th World Congress of the International College of Psychosomatic Medicine (ICPM), Tübingen, Germany, September 19–21, 2024. Published in Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics: Abstracts of Presentations, p. 124.