National Leadership Award Recipients Reflect on Passion and Perseverance
Recipients of the 2025 Towers Pinnacle and Sharp Cutting Edge Award speak about what the nurse practitioner role means to them.
The American Association of Nurse Practitioners® (AANP) honors two trailblazing nurse practitioners (NPs) every year with an AANP National Leadership Award. Consisting of the Sharp Cutting Edge Award and the Towers Pinnacle Award, the AANP National Leadership Awards recognize two individuals who have contributed significantly to the national or international recognition and advancement of NPs. If you would like to learn more about who qualifies for this recognition and how to nominate a deserving NP, visit AANP’s website. Nominations are now open through March 3.
Karen Sue Hoyt, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, ENP-C, FAEN, FAANP, FAAN, is 2025’s recipient of the Towers Pinnacle Award; Mimi Secor, DNP, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, is the 2025 recipient of the Sharp Cutting Edge Award. Both NPs have had varied and unique careers, working in the realms for practice, advocacy, research and leadership. Secor and Hoyt both spoke to AANP about their lives as multifaceted providers, and what they have experienced as the NP role has changed.
From Landing in an Emergency Room to Leading in One
Karen Hoyt says that she particularly “honored and humbled” to receive the Towers Pinnacle Award, in part because she has known and been inspired by the award’s namesake, Jan Towers, PhD, NP-C, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP, for years. But to understand Hoyt’s commitment to the NP role and to emergency care specifically, we have to rewind to a time when a lifechanging (and potentially life-ending) accident became her surprising catalyst into NP leadership.
“When I was five-and-a-half or six, I got hit in the head with a bat and I almost died,” Hoyt recalls. “I went to the emergency department. I was admitted; I had a skull fracture. I had the big black eye. But you know what was really interesting? I wasn’t scared […] I remember thinking, ‘This is really exciting. I want to be a nurse.’” Other than a “tiny little scar,” the only permanent remnant from Hoyt’s hospitalization was a commitment to do for others what the nurses did for her.
Hoyt’s career as a nurse began with her “working in emergency departments all over the California area,” and then took a new course after she went back to school and became an NP. She believes that an ideal career consists within what she calls “the triad,” or “a little research, some education, some practice.” She credits this diversity of interests to her longevity in the nursing profession. “I think it kept me involved, because this year I’ll celebrate 50 years as a nurse.”
As for up-and-coming NPs, Hoyt believes they should root themselves in the “three Ps”: “passion, perseverance and the agility to pivot when necessary.” Nurses need to start with passion, “or you’ll leave the profession,” she notes. She also believes perseverance is necessary for being an NP in general, “because we’ve had so many barriers to practice, and by that, I mean lack of full practice authority.” Finally, she explains the ability to pivot as “looking ahead, being a visionary, willing to change, willing to grow.” For Hoyt, these guidelines have helped her navigate something bigger than just a career. “It’s not just a role,” she says. “It’s my life.”
“Electrifying” Education and Entrepreneurship
The recipient of the Sharp Cutting Edge Award, Mimi Secor, recalls that “I became an NP in 1977, which is just hard to fathom. The reason that I wanted to become an NP is because the education was free at the time, and I would be learning more than I had learned as an RN in my undergrad program — it intrigued me to have advanced knowledge and skills. Even though in the early days we were accused of selling out of nursing into medicine — we were referred to often as junior doctors — I felt like this was a great career opportunity to delve into the unknown.”
At the time, the NP role was poorly understood, and Secor remembers feeling as though she was in “purgatory,” where “we had the nurses on one hand and the doctors on the other,” with her role residing in the undefined middle. Despite this initial backlash, Secor was transformed by her advanced education: “It just electrified me. I became possessed. I felt like, ‘I need to learn more. I need to learn more.’ And it just because a passion.”
Secor expanded her reach outside of the clinic and began sharing her expertise at conferences and at what she called “lunch and learns” at universities. She also became an NP entrepreneur after landing a new job turned into an even bigger opportunity. “I left the emergency room to work with a midwife who had her own practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” she recalls. “And almost right after she hired me, she announced to me that she was going to go do international work — she was leaving, and I could just run the practice.” The transition from working in an emergency room to becoming the owner of a practice was quite an adjustment, but “it turned out that I loved that autonomy, loved it,” says Secor. Her business became the very first NP-owned practice in Massachusetts.
After owning and running her own practice for years, Secor took a page out of Hoyt’s playbook and pivoted. “My husband always said, ‘I bet you’ll never leave that practice,’ because he knew I was really passionate about it. Well, one day I took a job in Alaska by telephone. I didn’t fly up there; I didn’t interview in person. I just looked at a map and I said, ‘Well, there are three openings here: eeny, meeny, miny, moe. I’m just picking one.’ […] I went from owning my own practice to going 500 miles off the road system to live in western Alaska and provide rural health care. It was wild. It was so much fun. We raised our daughter there, and it was just an incredibly rich experience.”
Like Hoyt, Secor knew the namesake of her award, Nancy Sharp, MSN, RN, FAAN. “I’ve been involved with some of her organizing efforts over the years at conferences, when we were trying to figure out what we’re going to do organizationally to come together to be a more powerful source of support, not only for NPs, but also for our communities and for the nation,” says Secor. “She was really very much someone I continue to hold on a pedestal.” When Secor learned she was going to receive the award, she “just remembered nearly dropping the phone and bursting into tears. I was really, really shocked. Mostly because I’m so used to just doing what needs to be done […] I don’t look at anything I’ve done as a struggle. I look at it as a wonderful opportunity to serve my community and my wonderful profession I love so dearly.”
Nominate an NP for an AANP National Leadership Award, and Honor the Recipients in Person at the 2026 AANP National Conference
Current AANP members may nominate a colleague for an AANP National Leadership Award until March 3. Visit AANP’s website to learn more about the nomination process and the eligibility criteria for both the Sharp Cutting Edge and Towers Pinnacle Award.
At the 2026 AANP National Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, the recipients of the 2026 National Leadership Awards will be honored at the Opening General Session on June 24. The 2026 AANP National Conference will also include 330 sessions and workshops showcasing the diversity of the NP role, and in-person attendees of the conference have free access to the on-demand package from July 7 to Aug. 11.