Download a larger image of Mann pulling a fighter jet.
There aren‘t many people who can pull a fighter jet weighing more than 14,000 pounds 47 feet in 60 seconds.
There aren‘t many people who have a 3.1 grade point average with a major in chemical engineering.
There aren‘t many men, much less women, who can claim to have
accomplished both difficult feats. Vanderbilt University junior Kara
Mann has achieved both and is a strong woman in every sense of the word
as she defies stereotypes on a daily basis. Mann is the reigning
national champion professional strongwoman in the sport of
Strongman, which features events in speed, strength and
stamina. She is also president of Vanderbilt‘s Society of Women
Engineers, a school where 26 percent of the engineering students are
female, which is higher than the national average.
The 5-foot 6-inch Mann spends her days in engineering classrooms, where
the majority of the students are men, and many evenings and Saturday‘s
training for her next Strongman competition, a sport dominated by
men. As a member of the North American Strongman Society, she is
among a handful of women who compete in this extreme sport on a
national level, whether it‘s flipping a 500 to 700 pound monster truck
tire or holding up two Mini Cooper cars on ramps for 80 seconds.
The Vanderbilt junior, from the Boston, Mass., area, got interested in
the sport in high school. During her senior year, the basketball, track
and cross-country athlete attended her first Strongman competition, and
she was hooked. “I fell in love with it after I pulled two Ford 350
pickup trucks chained together 50 feet in 30 seconds during my first
competition,” she said. “It‘s cool to do something that most guys can‘t
do.”
The Vanderbilt engineering student clearly likes challenges and hopes
to get more women into a sport dominated by men and at the same time,
get more women into the male-dominated engineering field. “I had a
female chemistry teacher in high school that encouraged me to go into
the field, and one reason I chose Vanderbilt is because it had a higher
number of women entering engineering.”
What does her father, an executive in medical imaging for Bristol Myers
Squibb, and mother, a psychologist, think of her Strongman sport? “My
dad is my biggest supporter, and my mom is supportive also, but she
can‘t quite understand why I chose a sport which, on the surface,
doesn‘t necessarily match what I look like or who I am. I chose this
sport just to prove to myself that I could do it.”
And that‘s exactly what she has done. Along with the 2004 national
title, Mann set a woman‘s record by carrying 200-pound weights in each
hand a distance of 200 feet in 39 seconds at the X-Treme Strongman
Showdown last year. And, she was asked to join Team USA in the All
Nations Strength and Fitness competition in Aruba, where her team came
in second in the eight-nation competition.
Mann isn‘t sure what she will do when she graduates but her ideal job
would be to work for an environmental engineering company, or maybe she
will start her own competitive strongman organization for women to get
more females into the sport. Either way, Mann clearly has the
experience to defy the odds and keep going where few women have gone.
Media contact: Emily Pearce, (615) 322-2706
emily.pearce@vanderbilt.edu