Spring 2006 Featured Story

Ace of Her Class

Webster's dictionary defines skepticism as "an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object." Dr. Kerry Ace knows this. Not because she's a skeptic, but because throughout her life she's been that "particular object."

The skeptics told Ace she couldn't do it. She wasn't fit enough to walk on to the Maverick track team. Wasn't smart enough to go to medical school. Couldn't balance family and a career in medicine. Yet here she is, former track and cross country athlete, doctor, wife, and mother of two, telling everyone who will listen that you pave your own road in life. Her success belies the expectations of others and comes not despite the critics, but rather because of them. You can't tell Kerry Ace what she can't do.

Just ask the residents of Stewartville, Minn., where Ace grew up. A couple of the 5,500 inhabitants of the southeastern Minnesota town undoubtedly thought college might not be the right option for the sixth out of seven children.

"There wasn't a lot of extra cash going around," Ace says. "I had to do it on my own."

Working two jobs each summer, Ace financed her first two and a half years of higher education and traveled ninetysix miles west to then-Mankato State University—an institution she today calls "life-changing" and a place where she ran the road less traveled.

"There were some friends of mine who ran for Mankato and that included my boyfriend at the time," Ace explains. "I made friends with some of them. I was hanging out with these people anyway, and I became interested in running. I literally just read a book on distance running and started. The more I did it, the more I enjoyed it."

Of course, enjoying running is one thing. Trying to make your Division II university's track team as a walk-on is another—a point several of Ace's friends made evident when she mentioned she just might give it a try.

"It was kind of one of those things where everybody was like, 'you can't just walk on; this is a really good school and a good distance program.'"

The skepticism only motivated her more. In fact, it became a template by which she would live the rest of her life.

"Part of it was people saying I couldn't do it," Ace says. "I had to prove them wrong, show them that I could. And it was a social thing; I had met a lot of these people through other friends and I thought, if they could do it, I can do it."

Of course, Ace did walk on to both the Maverick track and cross country teams. And, of course, she made each team. Her reward? The unenviable task of managing school and sports, all while working in order to make ends meet financially. From that experience, Ace says she got more than she bargained for, learning that she could accomplish what others thought she couldn't and how to live up to the challenges yielded by success.

"I learned a lot at MSU that I brought with me throughout life, and, believe it or not, quite a bit of it came from running track and cross country."

"I ran for Mankato my junior and senior years. I walked on, and I learned a lot about time management, being able to do a bunch of things at once and still doing well, like getting your studying done in the van on your way to the meets and still trying to make the team. I also worked at Hardee's, making biscuits. Time management was huge."

Upon graduation with a B.S. in nursing in 1986, Ace moved to Florida to practice her trade. It didn't take long for her to realize she was up for another challenge.

"There weren't a lot of (nursing) jobs in Minnesota and I really didn't want to work at a nursing home, so I moved to Florida in 1986 and took a job in St. Petersburg at a trauma facility in the trauma/intensive care unit for two years and in the emergency room for four years," Ace says. "I also did some air ambulance work. That's where I really decided that I wanted to go back to school and become a doctor."

Again, there were skeptics. People close to Ace told her this life-altering choice might not be the one for her. That maybe this was a dream that should remain just that. Ace drew inspiration from the challenges she had overcome and used her experiences on campus as an indicator that this too was something she could accomplish.

"I was the only person who walked on at Mankato who made the (cross country) team," Ace says. "It was very similar to when I decided to go back to medical school. A lot of people said, 'you just can't walk on to a college team, especially a distance team, and just make the team.' A lot of people told me similar things about med school. 'It's going to be really hard; you're not going to be able to get in.' It just was a very similar feeling, and I wasn't going to let anyone tell me I couldn't do it. I was going to try, the same way I tried to walk on at Mankato."

The way she walked on and made it was, Ace now says, life-changing. "It helped a lot to have this goal that seemed unattainable and then, later, wasn't. And it made me go after a goal that seemed unattainable when I was a nurse, and that became attainable."

Ace attained the goal in style, graduating with honors and in the top five percent of her class from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She now works as an emergency room pediatrician for Children's Hospitals and Clinics in St. Paul and balances her high-pressure work environment with her family life, which includes spouse Christopher Robert and two children, aged nine and twenty-one months.

So appreciative is Ace of her lifeshaping campus experience that she's donated an annual scholarship to someone following in her footsteps.

"I really wanted to set up a scholarship with the track or cross country team for someone with a similar background– someone who's a walk-on, who is working and really wants to run, isn't the top runner, and maybe isn't on scholarship," Ace says.

"I love that school, and it's nice to be able to give back and get reconnected with the college."

During her reconnection with the school, Assistant Vice President for Integrated Marketing Jeff Iseminger caught wind of Ace's story through a colleague and has featured Ace in the University's current promotional campaign.

"The focus of our communications strategy right now is to emphasize how transformative the college experience here can be," Iseminger said. "That's to say, what you think is possible now can change radically. That was true for Kerry Ace."

Spend a moment in conversation with Ace and you'll hear that there's no challenge not worth accepting–nothing you want for which you should not strive. She's taken her campus experience and made it a source of inspiration, not only for herself, but for anyone she has the opportunity to inspire. "I recently spoke to some troubled kids out in the west metro at a middle school, kids from abusive homes, and I talked to them about health care careers," Ace explains. "I spoke to them about not letting anybody stop them, and not having anyone tell them they couldn't accomplish what they wanted to do. I did have a lot of people in my life who told me, 'it's too hard,' or 'you're not smart enough.' It's very rewarding for me to get out to high schools and middle schools and tell them not to listen to that.

Wayne Carlson is a former editor of The Reporter.