Sesssion II: Global Vision | Karolina Frączek | TEDxMustafa Kaynak Anadolu High School

Karolina Frączek opens her talk by reflecting on a moment of joy at her current marketing agency job, which prompts her to trace back the journey that brought her there. She begins at the start of the millennium, describing her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher — one she had since childhood, when she would play school with dolls and teddy bears. When she finally became a teacher, she felt fulfilled, energetic, and creative, and she embraced opportunities to travel the world through community projects and connect with passionate educators from different cultures.

However, as years passed, the educational environment shifted. The focus moved away from communication skills and engagement toward tests, exams, statistics, and bureaucracy driven by Ministry of Education reforms. Frączek found that her creativity was no longer valued, and despite the difficulty of leaving a familiar and seemingly safe environment, her body began signaling distress through chronic lower back pain. The stress also spilled into her home life, affecting her family. After 18 years in teaching, she made the decision to leave.

She transitioned into entrepreneurship, starting a marketing and PR business after friends invited her to promote their architectural company. She invested in herself, built new skills, and her business grew — until the COVID-19 pandemic hit and her clients cut promotional budgets. Forced to adapt again, she discovered a company producing promotional animations, applied, and was hired as a scriptwriter. She worked with major clients across industries including automotive, medical, and public administration. This phase solidified her belief in visual thinking and the power of one image over a thousand words.

Seeking further growth, she pursued post-graduate studies in graphic design and eventually secured a role at a PR agency, where she absorbed knowledge about event organization, press releases, and graphic design. It was during this time that she faced one of her hardest lessons: making a significant professional mistake. She struggled to separate herself from the mistake, felt like a failure, and was overwhelmed — especially as others pointed it out. The turning point came when she encountered Winston Churchill's quote about success being the ability to move from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. This reframed her understanding of resilience: resilient people are not those who avoid mistakes, but those who redirect and learn from them.

After working through the fear of failure and treating repeated job interviews as training — a 'professional boot camp' — she landed a role in the promotions department of a sports university in Poland, where she was eventually promoted to lead the department. Recognizing gaps in her managerial skills, she pursued another post-graduate degree in management. By the time she completed her thesis, she had already moved on to her current PR agency role.

She closes by reflecting that the seven years since leaving teaching taught her more about herself than the previous 18 years combined. She encourages the audience — particularly young people — to take risks, leave uncomfortable situations, embrace mistakes as natural parts of transformation, and value every connection as a dot on the map of their life. She notes that a meeting nearly 20 years ago in the same location brought her to that very stage, underscoring the long-term significance of human connections.