Karen is an ordinary gal living an extraordinary life.
Karen was born with normal hearing and grew up hard of hearing, the result of a gene that existed in her family for five generations. Karen became deaf from a fall while barefoot water skiing as a teen. At the age of 44, she started walking on water again, becoming the only deaf woman to compete in barefoot water ski competitions.
Karen is a mom to three deaf and hard of hearing kids and an advocate for families with deaf and hard of hearing children. She serves on the board and Speaker’s Bureau for Hands & Voices and is the founder of Illinois Hands & Voices.
Karen Putz is passionate about living life to the fullest, and this passion is evident in her presentations. Karen’s most requested topics include:
Unwrapping Your Passion
The Gift of a Different Ability
Inclusion: Does It Really Mean Included?
Faceplants and Yard Sales: Overcoming Challenges in Life
You Were Born to Stand Out
To hire Karen as a speaker, contact her at karen@karenputz.com or call 630-405-6262.
Karen Putz delivered a profound, perfect, succinct, fantastic, to-the-point closing keynote at the Hands & Voices Leadership conference.
~Janet Des Georges, Executive Director, Hands & Voices
Karen touches the hearts of her audiences, sharing her personal story of becoming deaf with humor, passion and wisdom. Audiences LOVE and are inspired by her. Karen’s evaluations are always positive! Really!!!!
~Joni Alberg, Ph.D. Executive Director, BEGINNINGS for Parents of Children Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, Inc
I was privileged to book Karen Putz to speak at our Social Media Breakfast club in Madison, Wisconsin. Karen provided a great mix of humor and education. Her stories really connected to the audience and she kept them engaged for an entire hour. The feedback we received was that Karen kept things easy to understand and provided advice that was immediately useful. Karen is an inspiration and really quite an amazing communicator. Thank you, Karen, and I can’t wait to hear you speak again in the near future!
~Paul Stokes, Co-Manager, Social Media Breakfast Madison
Social Media Breakfast in Madison, Wisconsin:
Don’t Get in a Pissing Contest with a Skunk– Social Media Breakfast Madison
I registered for Karen’s seminar on using social media for small businesses hoping it wasn’t another talk on how to cross post and schedule tweets. Wow, did she deliver! In a short amount of time, Karen vividly demonstrated the impact one single individual can have in social media with simple, actionable techniques. Using her own rise to entrepreneurial success as an example, Karen discussed simple strategies and common-sense principles to attracting and engaging an audience using social media.
Karen’s inspirational, empowering style and infectious passion for life make her an outstanding speaker. Combined with her ability to simplify complex information to its core tenants, I left the seminar with a long list of ideas and specific tasks to help my business. Indeed, Karen’s seminar far exceeded my expectations and challenged me to view social media with a completely different lens.
~Heidi Moore, HKM Photography