Glenn Karwoski
Minneapolis, MN
Managing Director & Adjunct Professor
Karwoski & Courage Public Relations and University of St. Thomas
Briefly describe your daily job duties.
I am the founder and managing director of a public relations agency that works with Fortune 500 companies including 3M, Walmart, and others. Duties include managing staff, client planning and presentations, new business development.
As an adjunct professor in the marketing department at the University of St. Thomas I teach two courses, one at the graduate level on creativity and one of the undergraduate level on integrated marketing communications. Duties include lectures, in-class workshops, grading, and mentoring students.
As a person who stutters, share the most challenging part of your job.
On days when my disfluency is more severe it can be challenging talking to people and getting my ideas across. I’m sometimes concerned if the person/people I’m talking with are more focused on my disfluency versus what I’m communicating.
What are your long-term career aspirations?
I’m continuing to grow the agency and I plan to continue teaching and hopefully do some primary research and writing on the subject of creativity and aging.
Did you self-disclose your stuttering during the job hiring process?
I did not disclose it because at that time in my life my fluency was near normal. It’s been in the past eight years that my disfluency has come back and has been more challenging.
What is your proudest moment at your current company?
Teaching people how to tap into their creativity and realize that we’re all creative beings, and then having former students contact me and share how they’ve used what they learned in my course.
Describe how stuttering makes you a better, more valued contributor at work.
I think it makes me more thoughtful and deliberate about what I want to communicate. I’ve become a more succinct writer because I’m a more succinct speaker.
What’s your best advice for people who stutter just entering the workplace and for those in a career striving to achieve greater success?
Don’t be afraid to share that you stutter. I tried to hide the fact when I entered the workforce in the early 1980s but realized throughout the years that the vast majority of people aren’t going to judge you solely based on your speech but more on the quality of your ideas and overall work.
