How Aimee Mack, MSN '23, DNP '25, Became a "Hero of Military Medicine"
Aimee Mack, MSN ’23, DNP ’25, speaks at the Heroes of Military Medicine San Antonio Awards. (Courtesy of Aimee Mack)
Commercials for the U.S. Army go something like this: new recruits enduring training, soldiers gearing up in combat uniforms, helicopters whirring over distant oceans, then the slogan in bold letters: "Be All You Can Be."
You've likely seen them before, but there was something in one of those ads that spoke to Aimee Mack, MSN '23, DNP '25, as she sat watching TV one day 25 years ago in her hometown of Cleveland, OH. She enlisted later that week.
What she thought would be a three-year stint in the Army turned into a true military career. She's been a clinical staff nurse, worked in emergency rooms, was deployed in Afghanistan, and was part of Operation Warp Speed, the program to develop the COVID-19 vaccine. This year, she was awarded the Hero of Military Medicine San Antonio Award by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.
"Being selected for this award was kind of surreal," Mack said during a phone interview in October. "I simply do what is asked of me, but the award highlighted some of the initiatives my team has accomplished over the past several years."
A lot of that work, she said, was facilitated by what she learned during her time at Chatham University. "Not only was I learning, but I was also sharing my new knowledge with my nursing staff. That is why we were able to make those huge accomplishments for Brooke Army Medical Center," where she worked as a department chief for medical-surgical nursing services.
She started at Chatham in 2021, encouraged by the recommendation of a colleague, a Chatham alum, with whom she worked on Operation Warp Speed. Mack was a senior legislative and medical advisor on that program.
"I chose Chatham because I wanted a program that respected both where I've been and where I'm going," she said.
Joining the Army and Becoming a Nurse
After enlisting, Mack's first duty station was at Fort Riley in Kansas. That's where she fell in love with the Army, its discipline, teamwork, camaraderie, and leadership opportunities.
She enlisted as a unit supply specialist, but leaders at Fort Riley thought she had potential to be an officer, Mack said. With their encouragement and the help of the Army Green to Gold Program, Mack eventually received her first degree at the University of Tampa in 2006 and was then commissioned as a quartermaster officer for three years.
Around this time, America's wars in the Middle East were escalating. By the second half of 2006, the International Security Assistance Force, which consisted of the U.S. and its allies, had expanded to cover the whole of Afghanistan, while over 20,000 additional American soldiers surged into Iraq in 2007. As the wars grew, so did the U.S. military's need for nurses.
Mack saw this need and thought it could be an interesting opportunity, especially since her mother was a certified nursing assistant. "My mother was never able to finish nursing school, but it would be exciting for her to see her daughter as a nurse," Mack said.
She went through nursing school at UNC at Pembroke and became an Army Nurse Corps officer in 2011. Her mom's reaction? "She was overjoyed," Mack said. "Both my sister and brother have very successful careers; however, I pride myself in that she always talks about her daughter, the nurse.
"Now, she likes to say, 'My daughter has her doctorate,'" Mack said with a laugh.
She began her nursing career at Brooke Army Medical Center, the Department of War's only Level One trauma center, where she cared for service members, veterans, and their families.
"Working in a Level One trauma center gave me the ability as a young, novice nurse to work with complex, high-acuity patients," she said. "I quickly honed my clinical skills, and thank goodness for that, because shortly thereafter, I was deployed to Afghanistan, where I worked on a forward surgical team."
In Afghanistan, she worked with a small team to care for critically injured patients, focused on damage control resuscitation, surgery, and evacuating those patients to a higher level of care. She was deployed from 2013 to 2014, mostly in Ghazni, a city in the southeast of Afghanistan between Kabul and Kandahar.
"Being away from your family can be stressful, but I lean on the fact that I raised my right hand and swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," she said. "I deployed with an exceptional team. Although many of us did not know each other before deploying, we quickly formed a bond and trained to ensure we were ready for our mission."
Working in Washington
After returning to the U.S., Mack continued her work as a nurse, holding various clinical and leadership positions. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 2017, where she worked as the chief of primary care and nursing services. In 2018, she became a legislative liaison to Congress for medical programs as the legislature developed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
"It was different than anything I've ever done," Mack said. "Nurses typically don't hold that position. But what nurses bring to the table as legislative liaisons is our knowledge of healthcare delivery. We're able to talk about what happens at the bedside, in our facilities.”
Members of Congress and their staff members appreciate that, Mack said, because she was able to walk them through the patient experience from the perspective of an individual soldier or family member.
She continued working in that role as COVID-19 began to spread throughout the U.S. in 2020. When Operation Warp Speed, the program to facilitate and accelerate development of a vaccine against the virus, began that year, Mack was assigned to work as a senior legislative and medical advisor on the project.
"My leadership thought I was the best fit to make that transition, being a nurse and legislative liaison," she said. "The team I worked with was able to execute our mission and make sure that we developed, manufactured, and distributed a safe and effective vaccine."
Mack in her graduation regalia at her Chatham University commencement ceremony in 2025.
Studying at Chatham
Operation Warp Speed effectively ended in the winter of 2021, when the vaccine was made widely available in the U.S. Around that time, Mack began to consider pursuing a master's degree. A Veterans Affairs nurse she'd met working on Warp Speed recommended Chatham when Mack asked her about graduate programs for nurses.
From the time she reached out to Chatham's admissions, Mack felt a connection. "They took time, they didn't act like they were too busy and you were just a number." Admissions staff called her by name, answered her questions, and helped connect her with a faculty member who could provide even more information.
"Most schools don't do that," she said, but Chatham admissions took the extra step to say, “‘We're going to connect you with a professor who can answer your questions.' I just fell in love with Chatham from that point on."
"I love Chatham's mission," she added. "It's focused on leadership and service, and it provided flexibility that was the right fit for me."
Due to her experience working with Congress on policy development, Mack felt comfortable delving into the medical literature. But still the rigor of Chatham's Master of Science in Nursing program was "unlike anything I'd ever experienced," she said.
"I don't think you understand it when you're going through it," she explained. "However, at the end, when you start developing your DNP project, you start to see it unfold. It's like building blocks."
When she started, she only had plans to pursue her MSN, but after falling in love with the program—and with a little encouragement from Chatham's faculty—she decided to get her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree here, too.
"What I was learning in the classroom at Chatham, I was able to apply—not afterwards—but as I was learning it," she said. "Each and every day, I'd apply what I was learning to my clinical practice. My nurses, my nursing staff, and our patients were better off for it. That's why I went to get my DNP."
Now, back in San Antonio, she's working again at Brooke Army Medical Center, where her nursing career began. She received the Hero of Military Medicine award in October and, in December, the research she did for her DNP project will be published in the journal Advancing Medical-Surgical Nursing.
They're great honors, a bit of a recognition for someone who's spent 24 years in the Army and more than a decade dedicated to the work of being a nurse. "People trust us," she said. "It's so important that we take that seriously."
Chatham University offers multiple options for those seeking degrees in nursing, including an RN-BSN program, a Master of Science in Nursing degree, and a Doctor of Nursing Practice program. Learn more at chatham.edu.