Cara Coleman

Cara Coleman is Principal at Bluebird Consulting and Director of the Bluebird Way Foundation, a 501(c)3 committed to using the arts, humanities, storytelling, and narrative medicine to humanize health care and health profession education. The foundation honors and carries on the work of her daughter, Justice Hope, who had disabilities and was medically complex. She is an Instructor of Medical Education at the Virginia Medicine INOVA Campus and Associate Editor for Family Partnerships for the Executive Editorial Board of Pediatrics.

Over the past decade, Cara has worked in a variety of national roles across organizations and projects, including Director of Federal Policy and Advocacy for Family Voices and Partnership Specialist with the Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care. She has also served in advisory roles, including liaison to the AAP Council on Children with Disabilities and a gubernatorial appointment to the Virginia Board of Medical Assistance Services.

In the past, Cara worked as an adult health specialist, a case manager for homeless pregnant women, a counselor in a shelter for battered women, a law clerk for a judge, an immigration subject matter consultant, and an attorney serving low-income immigrants.

Cara is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, holds a master’s in public health from Tulane University, and earned her law degree from Temple University. She earned a certificate in narrative medicine from Columbia University in 2023. She is the 2019 winner of the Moose Krause Distinguished Service Award from the University of Notre Dame Monogram Club.