Raising innovative kids and designing a career you love

Executive overview

Most children are never given the tools to discover what they're good at or what they love — and most adults aren't either. Jennifer Turliuk built MakerKids to fix that for children through hands-on coding, robotics, and Minecraft; she then extended the same design-thinking approach into a career framework for adults.

The core method is prototyping: run the smallest possible test before making a large commitment — whether that's a child starting a speaker business or an adult shadowing a law firm before applying to law school.

You can't design a great career (or childhood) by planning alone — you have to build, test, and iterate.

MakerKids: confidence and skills through making

• MakerKids runs coding, robotics, and Minecraft programs for kids aged 6–13.
• Started as the first makerspace for kids in the world, now fully virtual.
• Goal shifted from STEM skills to broader outcomes: confidence, social skills, resilience, positive relationship with technology.
• Kids have started businesses, won NASA prizes, and shown measurable mental health improvements.
• A 10-year-old in a robotics class started a speaker-building and audio-repair business to save for a laptop — and started engaging with math as a result.
• A high school co-op student represented Jennifer on a panel with a VP at Pearson Education; the audience didn't know he was a student until Q&A.

Technology as therapy

• Families with autistic or ADHD children began enrolling unprompted; mental health professionals started referring kids directly.
• Jennifer is pioneering technology therapy — using tech creation the way art or music therapy uses those mediums.
• A Minecraft-based social skills group, run in partnership with an autism organisation, produced observable results by the second session.
• Kids who are deeply engaged in a game take social risks they then transfer to other areas of life.
• One student who hadn't spoken to any adult outside their family for years spontaneously asked the instructor for help mid-session; the parent cried.
• Active screen time (creating) is measurably less harmful than passive screen time (consuming) — set limits that distinguish between the two.

Helping kids build a positive relationship with technology

• Sit with your child and build or play alongside them rather than monitoring from a distance.
• Create screen rules together with your child, not just for them.
• Prioritise active creating time over passive consumption time in any weekly screen budget.
• Kids will eventually have unrestricted access — practising self-management at home is more valuable than blocking.

The marshmallow challenge and uncapped imagination

• In the marshmallow challenge (build the tallest spaghetti tower), kindergarteners outperform MBA students.
• MBA students spend time assigning roles and planning; kids start building and iterating immediately.
• Children haven't yet imposed limits on what they can create — a quality worth preserving and emulating as adults.
• Exposing kids to real work environments — even in small ways — provides career exposure no classroom exercise can replicate.

Career design: prototyping your professional life

• Over 80% of people are dissatisfied with their careers (Deloitte).
• The framework is design-thinking based: know yourself → generate options → run minimum viable commitments → narrow down.
• Minimum viable commitment: the smallest action that tells you whether you'd like a career — reading, informational interviews, shadowing, internships, in ascending order of commitment.
• Don't commit to five years of law school before spending a day inside a law firm.
• Avoid the spray-and-pray approach; narrow to your top three options before investing heavily.

Getting to know yourself

• Useful inputs: meditation, digital detoxes, 360-degree reviews, career tests, career counselling.
• Key questions to work through:
  1. What did you love to do as a child?
  2. What themes have recurred throughout your life?
  3. How do you want the world to be different when you're gone?
• Recommended resource: What Color Is Your Parachute? — reflect on past projects and identify which strengths and activities gave you energy.
• Map options against criteria: company size, culture, how much you enjoy it, earning potential, contribution to the world.

Brainstorming career options

• Start from the self-knowledge exercise, then research what roles match your criteria.
• Use informational interviews, LinkedIn, and online research to surface roles you didn't know existed.
• Apply the same process at every career stage — early career, mid-career, or major pivot.

Work as calling, not just income

• Three ways to view work: work to live, stepping stone, or calling.
• The ideal is a portfolio: what you like, what you're good at, what you can earn from, what helps the world — all overlapping.
• Strengths alone don't create fulfilment; passion and play matter as much as capability.
• Activities you're competent at but don't enjoy (e.g. accounting) are poor career fits regardless of the grade.