Carin Anderson Named as New Chair of ACES Board of Directors

Carin Anderson Named as New Chair of ACES Board of Directors

by Jenn Schultz

We are excited to introduce Carin Anderson, Senior Vice President of Corporate Partnerships and Retail Management for the Minnesota Wild, as the new chair of ACES’ Board of Directors! Carin graduated with a finance degree from the University of Minnesota where she was also working for the Gopher Athletics department. After graduation, she remained with Gopher Athletics and started her career in sports marketing. This position connected her with the people responsible for bringing professional hockey back to Minnesota, allowing her to become part of the Wild organization from day one.

Her involvement with education at the University of Minnesota kept her interested in education throughout her time with the Wild. Carin has always been solution-oriented, which is a skill she has applied to her work within ACES as well. She has been passionate about finding ways for the Wild organization to help with ACES’ mission. As Carin looks ahead to her new position as Chair, she shares her biggest takeaways and favorite memories so far, as well as her vision and goals for the future.

What made you decide to get involved with ACES?

It’s probably best described as opportunity and timing. I had not heard about ACES until I was transitioning from my role as a Senior Director to VP here (with the Minnesota Wild) and at the time, Dale Peterson and Chad, the Executive Director, had approached my boss, our team president Matt Majka, about getting involved with ACES. Matt already had too many board commitments but said, “I’d like you to meet Carin and talk to her about it.” Here at the Wild, we’re focused on creating a greater State of Hockey. It just felt like a really good time for me to get involved with something that was about improving the quality of life for other folks. They asked me if I’d get involved and I just thought it was good timing for me. The opportunity felt good to me and was a way I could get my arms around education.

What has been most rewarding for you about working with ACES?

Seeing the growth of a solid and unique curriculum. I think what is really cool is when people find out that not only is ACES after-school tutoring, but the STEM-focused curriculum is all tied into sports, whether it’s physics or architecture or any of that stuff. We’re selling tickets, we’re putting on entertainment and a game here, but for me, it’s really fun when all of a sudden, we actually get to connect to somebody’s ability to learn. I just find it to be really awesome and it’s easy to talk about and it’s exciting to talk about it. People get excited to hear, “Oh, I can learn about math this way?” It’s a much more intriguing way to learn! The other thing that’s been really rewarding is, having been the chair of the team engagement committee the last couple of years, the ability to integrate that modern-day athlete in an authentic way into a child’s learning environment. Just the way athletes are, in season they don’t have the ability to be a tutor, but having them involved in the curriculum videos and making their appearances, I think that’s a great way to allow them to be connected. I think Matt Dumba did e-mentoring and I think a United player did. Even though it’s a one-on-one thing, it’s an authentic relationship versus just handing out posters with Matt Dumba or something like that. I think that’s really rewarding. That takes a lot to keep at it year after year and, for us on the Wild front, it’s been really nice for us because we’ve had Matt involved with it for so many years. He’s such a fixture here and then it helps with the consistency at ACES too. 

What is your favorite memory of your time with ACES so far?

I think the one that has been most favorite for me was watching Matt Dumba ham it up with the auctioneer three years ago at All-Star Evening, all with the idea that he’s doing it to leverage and raise more money, and then the outcome that we had, which was fantastic. I think it wowed a lot of people inside the organization as well as set us on this record pace to what we ended up doing last year. I just felt like we found some secret sauce there, figuring out ways to integrate our professional athletes that are involved to make some true contributions in ways that their celebrity status allows them. I thought that was fun; Matt’s a great representative for us and very sincere and I thought he did a great job with the auctioneer. It always puts a smile on my face when I think about him goofing around. 

When you think about team contributions and engagement, what does the perfect team partnership look like with ACES?

We’ve done a good job of molding an expectation of all the teams and coming into agreement with the teams that there’s this basic set line of how ‘here’s how we believe you can best get involved’. I think the perfect team partnership with ACES includes a set of consistent representatives participating with ACES, whether it’s appearances or e-mentoring or gala or just being an advocate through their own social channels. That’s the player piece. Then, a team that can provide unique learning opportunities whether it be a field trip or educational materials that can be used in the classroom: hockey sticks, golf clubs, things like baseball bats and baseballs. The fact that teams have things at our disposal, we can leverage those here and provide unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that drive the fundraising at the All-Star Evening. Also, being able to get the rest of the organization involved in e-mentoring, whether it’s five people or fifty. Taking each of the pieces where ACES is involved, having a team touch it in some way, shape or form.Everybody kind of rowing the same way, pulling the rope in the same direction, and having that team truly engaged, not just participating because all the other teams are participating. 

What do you see as the benefit for the teams that are involved?

I think it’s the opportunity for our athletes to be able to give back in ways that they experienced at one point in their life and/or it’s just an opportunity for them to recognize they can make a difference in somebody else’s lives. When it comes to children, you can find most professional athletes are all about it and probably get more out of the situation than the kid does. Professional athletes can get pretty isolated to their world, especially when they’re in season, and not be aware of issues like a fourth through eighth grade learning gap. I think those are opportunities for us as a team to say we are involved with an organization like ACES. For us, when our mission is to create a greater State of Hockey, we feel like we are positively doing that by being involved and helping ACES.

What’s your biggest takeaway from your time on the ACES board thus far?

There’s a passion and a need in the community for this safe, comfortable environment for learning and growing kids who might not otherwise have the opportunity. It’s become more and more real for me, maybe it’s because my children are almost grown up, but we take for granted their basic daily ability to get to and from where they want for what they want. After talking to a student and asking them what their favorite sport is and finding out it’s football, I ask them if they’re in football and they say no because nobody can get them to practice. It just breaks my heart how much most of us take for granted and so the fact that we at ACES are trying to bring some of this to folks who can’t otherwise is really meaningful to me to be a part of that. 

As the new chair, what are your goals and visions for the next 5 years?

I spent some time over the summer and recently talking to Christina (Saunders, Executive Director) about getting involved and becoming the chair. It’s really important for me to understand the desire of an organization to want to grow and, while we can’t grow leaps and bounds overnight because there’s infrastructure that needs to happen, not to mention funding, I want to understand and believe that there is a real path for us to go from four sites to eventually eight sites and that we’re looking at the opportunities of how do we best serve those who need it. Right now, our focus is obviously in the inner metro area but there’s learning and achievement gaps everywhere, including more rural parts of the state. I think there’s a real need and desire to grow. How do we get in front of the funding to grow? In the past, it’s always been the reverse, where we did the programming and then fight and scratch all year long to get the funding. I think reversing is the right strategy, to be proactive as opposed to reactive. Reactive is a lot easier for life in general but doing it the other way is going to force us to take a pause in growth to get this piece figured out and figured out for the best success in the long run. We’re not necessarily taking a step backwards. We’re going to pause to go forward and hopefully figure out ways in which to not have the funding issue be a day-to-day, hand-to-mouth crisis and have that set so we can create true growth plans and opportunity. As important as it is that we are helping 450 kids, I can’t wait to say that it’s 1000 or 1500 because the need is so great. 

How do you think Dale’s time as president of the board has helped prepare you to take over in his position?

I think just being able to observe him for the last half a dozen years. I’ve never been the chair of a board before but watching how he managed board situations where we’ve got professionals who have other careers and jobs and having to get them all on and in sync, figuring out how best this board can exist. Watching him figure out what was important, what was not important, and how to conduct a board meeting and to see him walk the walk related to fundraising, whether it was his personal contributions or his ability to drive annual funding because of his connections and really put his money where his mouth is, was something that is not lost on me.

I can’t say enough about Dale as it relates to how great a job he has done, not only getting me involved in ACES but also knowing that what he has put in place made it easier for me to say yes to being the chair and knowing that he’s going to continue to be here to help us. Having a guy who’s so passionate about pushing through over so many years and to now really start to see the wheels turning really quick. I’m excited, not only for us but for him, to get to see this thing really go into orbit.