Karen P. Summey
Conover, North Carolina
828.466.1822
karen@karensummey.com

About

Biography  |  Interests  |  Advocacy  |  Favorite Quotes

Professional Biography
Throughout my career, I have challenged myself to work in positions I find personally rewarding, primarily those requiring a high level of creativity. The holder of six to eight start-up positions, I have been responsible for setting directions for numerous initiatives. I have worked in both the private sector and higher education.

I have a strong love of words. In school, I excelled at reading, writing, and spelling. In early life, I was honored to win the title of School Champion Speller a total of three times. The old adage "three's the charm" must have been correct, as I was also able on my third trip to the county bee to become Catawba County Champion Speller and participate in the North Carolina State Bee.

In high school, I continued my love for words, participating on the yearbook staff, joining the Quill & Scroll National Honor Society, and National Beta Club Honor Society. I completed my secondary education in the top 10% of my graduating class.

Several years later, I was hired from a field of approximately 120 candidates as a professional proofreader with the Hickory Printing Group. I considered this my first "real" job. This experience would lead me to progressively responsible positions over the years, including 17 years with Siecor Corporation, a Fortune 500 joint venture of Siemens and Corning, which later became Corning Cable Systems.

I earned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Lenoir-Rhyne College in 2001 and a master of arts degree in educational media, with a concentration in instructional technology and media production, from Appalachian State University in 2005.

Currently, I am pursuing a Ph.D. in technical and professional discourse at East Carolina University. Areas of interest include health literacy, doctor-patient communication and public policy.

For more details about my career, please visit the Experience link on this site.

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Interests
As mentioned above, I thrive in creative environments. I have played piano since the age of 8 and also enjoy listening to music in many genres. I am an avid reader and enjoy numerous topics, including health communication, current affairs, nutrition and bestselling fiction. I frequently publish non-fiction topical articles for local publications.

I also enjoy film and digital photography, scrapbooking, and hand crafts. These have been lifelong pursuits.

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Advocacy
Today's environment calls for advanced citizenship. My interests include learning about political candidates on the local, national, and world stage and encouraging others to do the same. I am also following the health care reform debate with great interest.

In 2008, my husband and I started "greening" our home. We switched out all light bulbs in our home from incandescent style to compact fluorescent lighting. (Yes, it's really true! The power bill dropped an average of $55 per month!) We are currently implementing additional green living as well.

Finally, my professional activities in higher education have caused me to become a walking advocate of lifelong learning. I believe that we can all learn something new for as long as we are here. With the flattening of the world (e.g. globalization) in the 21st century, this is more important than ever and is imperative for survival.

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Favorite Quotes

This is a brief collection of some of my favorite quotes. They are listed primarily as a mechanism to provoke thought on the part of the reader.

"The illiterate of the future are not those who are unable to read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

          - Alvin Toffler
          Future Shock

"The best educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed."

          - Helen Keller

“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run – in the long run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you have forgotten to think of it.”

          - Victor Emil Frankl
            Man’s Search for Meaning
            Vienna 1983

"If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of becoming, then I warn you that you'll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities."

          - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

        - Anna Farmery

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