Karen Walrond

Karen is an attorney, speaker, photographer, author and leadership coach. She is the creative mind behind the award-winning website, Chookooloonks, an inspirational source for living with intention, creativity and adventure, and featuring travel, art, food and life. Her work is all about the connection and creativity and determination and resonance that we all experience, if only we look for the light, and her writing, images and other projects have been featured on CNN.com, USA Today, Good Housekeeping and Wondertime magazines, among others.

Her bestselling book, The Beauty of Different, is a chronicle of imagery and portraiture, combined with written essays and observations on the concept that what makes us different makes us beautiful — and may even be the source of our superpowers. She has appeared on both local & national television and other news media, including PBS, Huffington Post, CNN.com and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Prior to her current career, she was the former Chief Counsel of Landmark Graphics Corporation, one of the largest software companies in the oil and gas industry, as well as the former Chief of Staff of Halliburton Energy Services. Karen remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas, and is certified in The Daring Way, the highly experiential methodology on authenticity, vulnerability, empathy and courage by researcher Dr. Brené Brown.