Speaker Julie Kertesz How I discovered standup at 77

When she was 10, her family fled Romania and the Nazis, and for a year she lived in Budapest as “Mary.” As a teen, she learned to study alone at home because the Communist authorities wouldn’t let her attend school.

In Paris, Kertesz earned her Ph.D. in chemistry at age 43 and began a career as a research chemist. She liked chemistry very much, but a few years later she discovered computers and realized that she loved them even more. And so in 1982, at the beginning of the computer revolution, Kertesz founded a computer company in France. “Being a woman was no problem, but being an old woman was,” Kertesz says. “Most of the computer people were young boys, ages 20 to 23. Since I was nearly 50, I was the ‘nice old lady.’”

Some 10 years later at age 60, Kertesz retired from the computer industry and applied her tech smarts to a pursuit of the arts. She became an active blogger and digital photographer, as well as a Toastmaster, teacher, keynote speaker and professional storyteller. Her Flickr account, which she started in 2005 with the tag Julie70 (she was 70 at the time), now holds over 56,000 images – including an album of selfies – and has recently surpassed 10 million hits.

Then, at the age of 77, she reinvented herself as a stand-up comedian. In the three years since, she has performed more than 70 gigs.