Gracia Kasoki Katahwa has been a registered nurse since 2009 and was recently elected mayor of Montreal’s most populous borough. She is the first black woman and the first nurse to ever hold this position. Beyond the pride she inspires in us all, her story gives us profound insight into political agency within, and for, nursing.
This article aims to tell her story as a teaching case study. A relevant case study “illuminates and disrupts assumptions derived from other forms of understanding” (Thorne 2012: 282). This case study does just that; through the experience of an expert nurse who is also an expert in policy and politics, we can begin to examine what political agency means for nursing, through an individual experiential process that is richly articulated.