Nina Friedman, PhD

Dr. Friedman has turned her passion for knowledge and advocacy into a career serving in leadership at 27 UNIHTED. She brings her personal experience organizing civil servants and interest in using fundamental (“basic”) research like her own to improve the world.

In January 2025, Dr. Friedman was four and a half years into her six-year fellowship working toward earning her PhD through the NIH’s Graduate Partnership Program with University of Maryland College Park. She was studying how networks in the brain can change to support our flexible understanding of the world when suddenly HHS implemented a communications freeze. The incoming administration had prohibited Dr. Friedman and others from communicating with their university colleagues and ordering critical equipment for ongoing experiments. She realized that she had to act and push back after receiving a concerning government-wide email asking NIH staff to report on their colleagues who worked on “DEIA” programs. 

First, she advocated independently through the news and social media. After this administration removed portraits of diversity program staff from the NIH Bethesda Campus, Dr. Friedman rehung printouts of the images. She found a sustainable cause by connecting with other NIH staff who wanted to act collectively for a larger impact. She led off-duty visits to Congress and organized a walkout from NIH Director Bhattacharya’s town hall. When NIH canceled “Take Your Child to Work Day” due to diminished staffing, she worked with a group to organize the “(Not NIH) Take Your Family to Work Day.” Dr. Friedman launched “Save Health Research” to support anonymous NIH community members as they shared stories and information and the account continues to be an organizing force behind other “alt government” accounts.

These early 2025 efforts culminated in the Bethesda Declaration, which Dr. Friedman helped to write with her NIH colleagues. Later, she worked with letter organizers across agencies to grow a collective knowledge base, helping civil servant advocates make increasingly greater impacts. Now, she has turned her advocacy into a career, coming on as co-executive director of 27 UNIHTED in September 2026.

Dr. Friedman earned her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2026 and her BA in neuroscience from Colorado College.