Laura Manns-James is a certified nurse-midwife and women’s health nurse-practitioner, a certified nurse educator, a Fellow of the American College of Nurse Midwives, and a Professor at Frontier Nursing University. She earned her midwifery certificate from Frontier, her master’s degree from Case Western Reserve University, and her PhD in nursing research from Kent State University.  She currently serves as Interim Department Chair for Women's Health at Frontier.

Laura’s clinical experience as a midwife and practice director centered on underserved populations in rural areas.  She helped to develop and implement an integrated Centering Pregnancy + MAT program in rural Appalachia as part of a research grant funded through the University of Kentucky.

Her published dissertation research focused on racial discrimination, racial identity and obesity in Black collegiate women and was funded by the ACNM Foundation Graduate Education Fellowship and the March of Dimes Graduate Nursing Scholarship. She has served on and published with a multidisciplinary, Black-led research team engaged in community participatory action research focused on improving pregnancy outcomes for urban Black mothers and babies.  She has additionally published papers on research methods relevant to health equity including the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and hair cortisol collection in Black women.

She is an Associate Editor for the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Midwifery and Women's Health (6th edition) text, published in January 2021, and a managing editor for the 7th edition, now titled Clinical Practice Guidelines for Midwifery and Primary Care, in press in 2026.  She recently served as the nurse consultant for Access Bridge, a project to improve and expand reproductive healthcare in emergency departments across the U.S.