During her NTI 2026 address, then AACN President-elect Tonka Williams revealed the new AACN theme, Every Voice. Every Story. Every Table, by tracing her own path to belonging — one that began long before she ever wore a name badge or heard a 2 a.m. monitor alarm.
Williams opened by sharing a story from fourth grade, when a one-question writing test asked students to name their favorite animal. She wrote about a panda, something she’d only ever met in the pages of a salesman’s encyclopedia and daydreaming in the tall grass of her grandmother’s front yard. When her teacher admonished her, in front of the class, to “pick something familiar like a cat or a dog,” Williams said something in her shrank. “I didn’t just question my choice,” she remembered. “I questioned my thinking.”
Every Voice. Every Story. Every Table. It’s a declaration. That every time you speak up, your voice matters. That every experience you carry, your story matters. And every space you enter, you belong there.
Tonka Williams
Later, in nursing school, a failure nearly stopped her path forward before it started. “I failed Med-Surg Nursing, Part 1. Not barely. Not close. Failed.” She described sitting in her car afterward, watching her class move forward without her. But failure, she said, didn’t get the last word. She rewrote her study plan, asked questions even when her voice trembled, and passed the next year — not by memorizing, but by understanding. “Failure will try to silence your voice. Hear me clearly: Failure is not a verdict. It is preparation.”
Williams also spoke about the isolation of being a new nurse left out of a study group, left out of breakroom conversations, and met with silence when she asked for help, until a colleague named Emma pulled up a chair beside her and changed everything. “Tonka, you belong here,” Emma told her. “Not someday. Today.” That moment, Williams said, taught her the difference between belonging and mattering: “Belonging says, ‘You’re welcome here.’ Mattering says, ‘You are needed here.’”
She traced this lesson back even further, to the small, plain kitchen table of her childhood that was always full of good food, voices, laughter and belonging. “Belonging is not earned,” she said. “It’s offered.” That table became the blueprint for how she now sees every space where nurses gather. Tables where outcomes are shaped, yet some nurses are still made to feel they don’t belong.
Williams spoke about being the first Black president-elect of AACN, “Not as a symbol of arrival. But as proof of what becomes possible when the table gets wider and the voices shaping decisions begin to reflect the patients we serve and the nurses delivering that care.” Williams challenged the room to go further: not just to claim a seat, but to redesign the table itself.
She closed by asking nurses to picture a mosaic — thousands of individual pieces, each one a nurse, a patient, a story, each essential to the whole. “This profession has never been built by one voice. It has always been built by many. The future of nursing will not be decided in silence. It will be shaped by voices like yours. Every Voice. Every Story. Every Table. Make room. Starting today.”
Artist Charis Tsevis, together with his wife and collaborator, Vera Konstanta, created the new theme artwork. The art, a custom digital mosaic woven from more than 5,000 authentic AACN photographs, captured real moments, not staged or AI-generated. Tsevis, who has spent more than 30 years developing custom mosaic techniques, described the project as a tribute to nursing, a profession he holds above all others. Having experienced firsthand the comfort and strength nurses bring to patients during his own hospital stay, Tsevis said he and Vera worked with both joy and reverence for every image entrusted to them, patiently shaping each tile to hold as much of the truth of nursing as the medium would allow.
We are pleased to provide the theme artwork for your use. Here are some suggestions for integrating the theme into your daily work:
- Think about how the artwork relates to your interpretation of the new AACN theme. Discuss its meaning with your co-workers and other colleagues.
- Use it on printed materials such as newsletters, flyers, posters, handouts and announcements.
- Use PowerPoint templates for internal presentations, such as those that promote your chapter/institution’s meetings and events.
- Use approved theme art products from the AACN Store to generate revenue for your chapter.
Please note that the theme art:
- Must always appear in its entirety and not be modified or altered in any way.
- May be used to promote local chapter events and activities.
- May be used in social media in a posting but not as an identifier for a chapter, institution or individual (e.g., profile picture or cover photo on Facebook).
- May not be imprinted on any item (T-shirt, hat, mug, etc.) that will be sold.
To download the artwork, right click on a link, choose "Save Target As ..." and save to your computer.
2027 Theme Graphic - Chapters
2027 Theme Poster - Large
2027 Theme Poster - Small
2027 Theme PowerPoint Template
Please contact the AACN Creative Partners team with questions.