Full Talk Title: The Remarkable Impact of Hobbies on Your Career

We are masters of feeling guilty every time we get distracted by our hobbies when we feel like we should be working.  But what if our hobbies are actually enhancing our careers? Bolstered by a recent scientific study, scientist and punk rocker Karen McFarlane Holman proposes a way for us to quickly dispel guilt and identify our strengths that we may not have recognized before. Karen McFarlane Holman, Ph.D. is a chemistry professor at Willamette University and is the Founder and Director of Science Rockstar Kids, a unique online program that offers interactive online science explorations for elementary school-aged children.

As a recipient of the Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year award, Karen has been inspiring and empowering tens of thousands of budding scientists for 30 years through her classroom and online teaching, science camps for girls in Saudi Arabia, laboratory research mentorship, a scientific TEDx talk, and 26 book chapters and articles. As Founder and CEO of Punk Rock Professor, LLC, her current mission is to use creativity and connection in a variety of accessible platforms to inspire kids and adults to follow their
curiosity of the world around us.

Karen’s dedication to empowering unheard voices extends into music as a punk rocker, having performed on hundreds of stages for over three decades. She still plays in two actively performing bands, City of Pieces and Hot Sheets. She is a podcaster, longtime radio programmer, and is the Founder of KMUZ-FM, the first community radio station in Salem, Oregon. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx