Kari Turkowski enters her second season with the College of Saint Benedict volleyball in the 2022 as the team's setter's coach.
Turkowski has many ties to the local community as she is a ROCORI High School graduate and completed her undergraduate degree at St. Cloud State. She served as an assistant volleyball coach for the Huskies from 2011-15 and she helped with everything from strength training to drawing up practice plans to recruiting to working with alumni. She has served as a private volleyball instructor since graduating college, and works with athletes at all levels on their phsical, psychological and leadership training.
While at SCSU, Turkowski competed on the volleyball, hockey and track and field teams. She was the volleyball team captain from 2001-03 and the team's MVP in 2001, 2002 and 2003. She earned North Central Conference All-Conference accolades in 2002 and 2003, and was named to the all-academic team in 2003. She earned Western Collegiate Hockey Association All-Academic Team honors in 2004-05and was also part of the USAW Olympic Weightlifting team in 2005-06.
After obtaining her Bachelor of Science in accounting in December 2005 from SCSU, Turkowski earned her Ph.D. from the May Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in October 2020. She is currently a posdoctoral fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester where she is developing and conducting a research and discovery process to identify and develop impactful and beneficial next generation platform products and services based on the insights of of clinician-investigators. She is also a Clinical Transitional Sciences faculty member at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
Turkowski also serves as a motivational speaker and has served as the keynote speaker at TEDx in St. Cloud, the Forum of Executive Women in St. Cloud and the May Clinic Well-Being Leadership Banquet on several occasions. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., Turkowski was a senior tax accountant for CliftonLarsonAllen LLP in Minneapolis.
