Wendy Gifford (PhD, RN) is Full Professor at University of Ottawa Faculty of Health Sciences School of Nursing, Loyer-DaSilva Research Chair in Community and Public Health Nursing, and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Health & Nursing (CRHN).

Her program of research focuses on promoting health equity with disadvantaged and marginalized groups, with a particular focus working with First Nations, Inuit, and Metis for culturally safe health care. She recognizes that healthcare is founded on systemic settler racism that continues to disenfranchise and marginalize Indigenous Peoples today, which has increasingly situated her research within critical decolonizing methodologies and approaches.

She has received generous funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and is currently working with Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation; Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada; and Ottawa Inner City Health which provides health care to homeless communities.

Prior to academia, she worked in ICU and ER in British Columbia and in First Nations communities in the Yukon Territory as an outpost community health nurse.