2026 Kathy Zarling Recipient: Kara Sweere
Aaron was nominated for the Kathy Zarling Award of Excellence by Kelsey Paarmann and Cassandra Merten.
Here is what Cassandra had to say about Kara:
Hi Everyone, I am Cassandra Merten. I have had the pleasure of knowing Kara for many years. We actually met outside of the cardiac rehab world but as soon as we put together our shared careers, Kara became a mentor for me, helping me work through difficult patient scenarios, navigate certification and challenging me in ways to help grow as a therapist.
I thought about many ways Kelsey and I could explain how much Kara has meant to us and many others and decided to reach out see what people had to say about Kara’s contribution to cardiac rehab. Dr. Fernandez from Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ stated that ‘Kara has been particularly impactful in standardizing best practices, fostering collaboration across sites and ensuring that our cardiac rehab programs maintain both clinical excellence and patient centered focus.’; Donna McMurtry from MCHS Fairmont shared that Kara is ‘super knowledgeable about the world of cardiac rehab and always willing to share that expertise with others. She is a willing ear for talking out challenging situations and always willing to teach us how to be better’. And Beth Safe from MCHS Redwing praised Kara for ‘being a key advocate for our enterprise program, always driving alignment with quality care and best practices by going above and beyond, at all hours, to ensure Mayo Clinic’s program best serves our communities.’
Kara, there are a lot of people who value all of the work you do for the Mayo Enterprise and for cardiac rehab across the country who couldn’t be here today to celebrate you but wanted to let you know just how much you mean to them. So, we put together a little video collaboration to show how much appreciation people have for the work you do.