Dr. Towers received her BSN from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; her MS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; her FNP postmaster’s certification from Pennsylvania State University; and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She has held faculty and clinical positions in the School of Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Family and Community Medicine as well as the nurse practitioner program at Pennsylvania State University.  She served as director of the nurse practitioner program at Georgetown University and at Widener University. Clinically she has been a family nurse practitioner at Health Care for the Homeless in Frederick, Maryland. In addition she has held clinical nurse practitioner positions in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, Hershey, Pennsylvania; Dickinson College Health Program in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and the Adams County Migrant Clinic in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dr. Towers also serves as the Director of Federal Health Policy and Professional Affairs for the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. She has been active in the area of health policy at the national and state level for over twenty five years, working in behalf of nurse practitioners and their patients to facilitate appropriate regulation, utilization and support for nurse practitioner practice during that time.  She has served as a health policy consultant for multiple government and private programs and agencies including the national advisory committee for the primary care initiatives grants sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations .She has been active in the promotion of the primary care medical home.The author of numerous publications related to nurse practitioner practice, she is also founding editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.  She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the American Academy of Nursing.