Kara is originally from the Chicagoland area – Wheaton, Illinois.  And after High School, she attended the University of Illinois (U of I) “The Fighting Illini” in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.  Kara was always a good student, and because of that she had the opportunity to enhance her college experience by studying abroad.  So, in 2009 she moved to Milan, Italy for a year where and attended Bocconi University and she studied business with an emphasis in fashion marketing.  Most recently, during the thick of Covid-19, she decided to continue her formal education at the Thunderbird School of Global Management where she earned her Master’s in Applied Leadership and Management in 2022. 

 

After graduating from the U of I, she was recruited right out of college to work for Allstate Insurance in Chicago.  In 2015, while at Allstate, she had the opportunity to do what is called within the company a Tour Down Yonder (TDY), where a person is assigned to fill in for another employee for about three months in another area.  In Kara’s case, she was offered a chance to come here to Scottsdale.  She had never been to Arizona before, but a friend convinced her that she would really like it here.  In fact, we all had a laugh when, at the end of her three month TDY, she told Allstate she was leaving the company and staying in Arizona -- she loved it here that much.  Kara has been here ever since, and this is now home. 

 

The next step was to find a new job in Arizona, so on whim she applied to HonorHealth and got a job as a Reputation Specialist.  Her role was to identify the different ways in which HonorHealth was regarded in the media and on public review sites, and to respond to information being shared about the company or its doctors.  She enjoyed the work, loved the company and gelled with the management team, so she has been there ever since.  After years years she was promoted to HonorHealth’s Brand Manager and most recently became the Brand Director. What we found so fascinating about Kara is that after each of her promotions she was taking on new and important roles that technically did not exist within the company before she got there. We could tell she thrives with those kinds of challenges.

 

Kara’s outgoing personality and collaborative mindset made her want to reach out and be a bigger part of our community.  Her friend and neighbor Carol Damaso of Class 21, encouraged her to apply for Scottsdale Leadership. She joined Class 33, and graduated with her classmates in 2019.  As you might have expected, she loved Scottsdale Leadership and has remained very active in our organization. A good example is that she has helped present Healthcare Day ever since in conjunction with HonorHealth.

 

Learning about healthcare in Scottsdale has been a mainstay curriculum item for all the Scottsdale Leadership classes through the years.  But Kara brought in some very interesting new information to the class sessions that really give our current students a true picture of the challenges facing the healthcare industry.  She has colleagues who are very well versed in healthcare trends and analytics.  Kara told us that the operating margins they face on a day-to-day basis now are surprisingly small -- and getting smaller.  It is up to people like her to build up the scale of services offered by HonorHealth to insure our community’s changing healthcare needs are taken care of.

 

HonorHealth is also very active in the new Blue Zones Project Scottsdale – an initiative that hopes to make all of us healthier and happier as a population.  Kara will be on the frontlines of that collaboration along with over 4,500 HonorHealth Ambassadors that she works with.  She told us that when she started at HonorHealth eight years ago, the goal was to find 100 Ambassadors.  She is proud of her part in increasing that number of servant employees, and of course the huge increase in public service those Ambassadors can have for the people of Scottsdale. 

 

Kara is very family oriented.  Her mother sadly passed away last year, but her father has moved to our area, and they are very close.  Her brother is also in the healthcare industry as a doctor, and successful medical entrepreneur in California.  Kara told us she loves hanging out with her wide circle of friends, which includes work colleagues, people from her U of I days, and fellow Scottsdale Leadership graduates.  She also loves to travel, and that includes taking her dog Reese with her whenever she can.

 

As our population ages, healthcare will become even more important than it is now. Kara and her team work hard every day to make sure our broader community knows that HonorHealth provides excellent healthcare options at every level.  Kara does her job with a smile and is a true asset to our Scottsdale Leadership family and to the city of Scottsdale.