Since she was small, all Chris Hurt wanted to be was a nurse.
"Once I got over wanting to be a ballerina, I wanted to be a nurse," she said.
Hurt, a second-generation nurse, said her aunts and cousins served as inspiration as many of them are also nurses.
She received a bachelor's degree in nursing from Rockhurst College/Rockhurst Research College of Nursing. She earned her master's degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.