Ms. Curnes previously served as the Associate Director of the Eastern Kansas Health Care System over operations to include Finance, Engineering, Logistics, Privacy, Community based outpatient clinics (CBOC), Occupational Health & Safety as well as a liaison to Human Resources, the Office of Information and Technology, and Contracting for a dual campus facility with 8 CBOCs.  She has over 26 years of health care experience in the provision of care to Veterans within the VA Health Care System.  She has held numerous roles of increasing responsibility to include her previous role as the Chief of Prosthetics, Acting Associate Director at VA Central Iowa Health Care System (VACIHCS), Acting Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 23 Prosthetic Manager and Acting Chief of Logistics at VACIHCS. 

Ms. Curnes graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Science in Nursing from the University of Iowa in 2003 and received her Master’s Degree in Health Administration from Des Moines University in 2006.  She also currently holds a certification as Fellow Mentor, Green Belt, and is working on her certification as a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Ms. Curnes has completed the Iowa Hospital Executive Academy (2016), Health Care Leadership Development Program (HCLDP) (2017) and the Corporate Executive Development Training (CEDT) Program (2019). Currently she is enrolled in the MidCon Quad to Director program, 2021.

In 2011, Ms. Curnes Prosthetic team received the Prosthetic Service of the Year award from across the nation. In 2016 she was named by the Under Secretary of Health as a Gold Status Fellow for her work with the development and spread of the promising practice of the JumpStart program which is an onboarding program for new employees at VHA that has been spread across the enterprise to multiple VA Health Care Systems.