Nursing grad driven to make an impact

Winner of the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award Kathy Howe was inspired to pursue nursing from an early age

Kathy Howe’s first experience with nursing was when she was just eight years old. She was in the hospital for a heart catheterization surgery related to a congenital condition. 

At the time, this meant a multi-day hospital stay, which one might expect to be daunting for a young child. For others, perhaps. But not for her. 

Unlike the other kids she saw in the hospital, some there for the same procedure as her, she didn’t feel scared or nervous. Rather, she was the kind of kid who embraced new experiences. She even befriended a nurse during her stay and afterwards was asked to talk to other families about her experience with the procedure to help them understand what to expect and calm their nerves.

Decades later, nearing the end of her career, Howe (Bachelor of Nursing ’01, Master of Health Studies ’12) can still remember a nurse named Megan, wearing her yellow hospital scrubs, who let this young child accompany her on her rounds—going around to all the rooms to check on the patients and hand out ice water. 

“I remember just thinking, yeah, this would be really cool,” she said. “I thought, I want to be her. That’s when I knew this was the right path for me.”

When she became a nurse many years later, she knew immediately that pediatric nursing was where she wanted to be. And early on in her career, following the example of that nurse from her youth, she recalls one patient in particular who she was able to develop a close bond with. 

“We just became really good friends, like that girl who was with me when I was a kid,” she said. “There are tons of stories about kids, and the influence you can have on them and their families.” 

Over the course of an impressive and distinguished nursing career, Howe has always done her best—for her patients, for her colleagues, for entire hospitals, for the communities she served, and for the entire nursing profession. 

These efforts have earned her the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award, which recognizes an AU graduate who brings honour and prestige to the university through their outstanding contributions to their field and their community. 

A ‘lazy’ student’s path to nursing 

Howe’s distinguished career is perhaps more impressive for the fact she got started a little later than most, even if the spark was lit early on in life. 

Although she always tended to be drawn to leadership roles, whether formal or informal, she describes herself as having been a “lazy” student who didn’t always do her best work. 

She recalls a high school teacher named Mrs. Runcie, who was one of the first teachers to call her on it—returning an assignment and saying simply, “This isn’t your best work. Give me your best work.” 

That experience stuck with Howe after she graduated high school, and through the 10 years she spent working in Alberta’s oil patch—a job that paid her bills but didn’t fulfill her ambitions to have a role where she could really make an impact on people. 

At 28 years old, two decades after her first experience with that inspiring nurse, she quit her job, upgraded her high school marks, took a two-year nursing program, and became a registered nurse. 

“That was the first time that I, as my mother would say, applied myself,” she said. “And Mrs. Runcie’s principles of doing your best, that’s how I ended up on the honour role, dean’s list, chair of the grad committee, and all the things that go along with that.” 

Within two years of working on a pediatric ward, Howe knew her ambitions were outpacing her education. As much as she enjoyed building relationships and connections directly with her patients, she had always wanted to be a leader in whatever she was doing, and in this case that meant becoming a charge nurse. 

“I felt like I had more opportunity to be influential, not just with one or two patients, but with lots of patients, by being able to empower the staff with what they needed,” she said. 

But to take on a leadership role, Howe knew she would need to upgrade her education. She was working full time and didn’t want to leave her position. When she discovered the post-diploma Bachelor of Nursing program at AU, she knew it was the right fit. 

I felt like I had more opportunity to be influential, not just with one or two patients, but with lots of patients, by being able to empower the staff with what they needed.

Kathy Howe, 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award winner

Nursing grad driven to have an impact 

After Howe got her first AU degree, she was promoted to a nursing manager role, which she said she’s certain she couldn’t have done without advancing her education. But as much as she valued the impact she could make on nurses as a nursing manager, she was also thinking about a director role and being able to support other nursing managers. 

Taking a Master of Health Studies program from AU helped her do just that, and she found herself again promoted, this time into a director role. 

Howe has said money was never the driving force behind her ambitions. Instead, she wanted to measure her success by the kind of impacts she could have on those around her. She saw the impact of her work every day, knowing that she could empower the managers under her to do their best work, which in turn translated into better patient care. 

Some of her most proud successes, though, came in unexpected ways—sometimes invoking the philosophy that it’s easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Two of her proudest accomplishments came when she had an area director position with Alberta Health Services, responsible for overseeing four acute-care hospitals along with five long-term care facilities and home care offices spread throughout a rural area in central Alberta.

Supporting Indigenous communities through her leadership 

This area included Maskwacis, one of the largest Indigenous communities in Alberta, which was an eye-opening experience for her. 

“That was a real learning experience for me. I had no concept of colonization and what that meant,” Howe said. 

She committed to community leaders that things would be different under her watch, and even though she wasn’t sure at the time how she was going to make that happen, she did everything she could to improve health care for those Indigenous communities in a way that really reflected their needs. 

In one instance, she remembers seeing that pregnant mothers in Maskwacis had no access to fetal ultrasounds in their communities, and the local charitable hospital foundation was unable to provide one. 

One of the hospitals Howe oversaw was getting a new one, so her team reached out to the vendor and explained they needed to refurbish the machine, take it to Maskwacis and set it up, and train people how to use it—with no money. And they did. 

“Women who had babies weren’t getting any prenatal care, sometimes just because they couldn’t afford the transportation fee into Wetaskiwin. Now they were getting prenatal care,” she said. “So did we make a difference? Oh yeah, you bet.” 

Howe said one of her other proudest accomplishments was fulfilling a broken promise at the hospital facility in Maskwacis—during construction the community had been promised a cultural room where community members could engage in Traditional Cultural practices such as burning sweetgrass and smudging.   

So, she worked with others to get it done. They found a small room in the hospital to convert, then found some funding for a smoke-eating machine, new paint, and some couches and chairs. They opened the facility with leaders and Elders from the four local Indigenous nations. 

Hearing community speak about how valuable that space was to them taught Howe and helped broaden her understanding of what healing could mean. 

“For 25 years, they had been promised this space. And we had created it, finally. I hadn’t realized the impact it would have,” she said. “It was healing in a different way. Healing of the relationship, and healing of the community.” 

Advocating on behalf of Alberta nurses 

Now towards the end of her career, Howe has stepped away from leadership roles within hospitals in Alberta and has taken a new kind of leadership role as CEO of the Alberta Association of Nurses, which seeks to provide networking and professional development opportunities and advocate on behalf of nurses. 

“This has been such an opportunity. It’s kind of the capstone project of my career and has really brought it all together,” she said. “I’m so fired up about nursing, and promoting it, and bringing it to where it needs to be.” 

She said the best part of this opportunity has been the ability to bring so many people together to discuss the issues facing nurses in Alberta—including bringing nurses together to meet with the provincial health minister. 

And while she says she’s honoured to receive this award from AU, it was never her intention to receive any recognition of accolades for the work she does. 

“My intention was to every day, be the best I can be, to be as influential as I can, and to empower people—patients, families, and other health-care workers—to be their very best,” she said. “It’s the cherry on top of a really great career.”

Meet Athabasca University's 2025 Alumni Award winners

Get to know other inspiring AU alumni from this year's award winners.