Cait Donovan, a 2023 Penn State World Campus graduate, is a keynote speaker, author, and podcaster. She is the co-host of “FRIED. The Burnout Podcast,” which shares stories and strategies of healing from burnout and rebuilding lives.
Before earning a Bachelor of Science in Biobehavioral Health online through Penn State World Campus, Donovan worked as an acupuncturist in Europe and studied Chinese medicine. When she moved to the United States, she needed a bachelor’s degree to continue practicing.
Read about how her degree in biobehavioral health and experience in the program helped evolve her career and impact thousands of people fighting burnout.
Why did you choose to pursue a bachelor’s in biobehavioral health through Penn State World Campus?
I had a two-fold reason for this degree. First, I had gone through my own burnout and subsequent recovery, and I wanted to have more information to be able to help more people. My story alone wasn’t enough — I needed data, research, stats, and understanding. I earned other degrees but didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, which was necessary to be licensed in New Jersey.
Biobehavioral health was an easy fit for me. It addresses the stress response, it is holistic like Chinese medicine, and the online degree meant that I could continue to live in New Jersey, do my work, and afford to pay for my degree along the way.
What is a highlight from your student experience in the biobehavioral health program?
My final paper for BBH 411W: Research and Applications in Biobehavioral Health is one that I refer to often and share on social media. This paper, “Childhood Adversity as a Predictor for the Occupational Stress that Leads to Burnout,” allowed me to make the connection that I noticed in myself and then during my course work between adverse childhood experiences and burnout.
It has become a podcast, been incorporated into speeches, and helped tens of thousands of people around the world come to terms with their burnout experience and one of the reasons it may have happened.
How has your Penn State degree helped you in your career?
It had been 14 years since I was in an academic environment and I had forgotten how to truly read and assess research, as well as how to properly cite sources. This may seem like a small thing I could have learned on my own, but I didn’t even realize I needed it until I was in the rhythm of school again.
Being able to support podcast episodes with high-quality research and share the citations for the research is one of the ways that I was able to create a community for burnt-out people that feels safe. Safety is key for burnout recovery. There are a lot of people whose work is on burnout right now, and most commonly, they have their own experience and a couple of books from which they work. I wanted more than that — and my audience responded. During this time, my base audience grew from around 5,000 downloads per month to 15,000 downloads per month. Each week, I share a piece of research in a newsletter, and it is one of the most clicked links.
The concept of a web of causation (which came from one of my courses) helped me bridge the space between Eastern and Western medicine in a way that allows me to utilize my Chinese medicine knowledge and latest research. It is also the tool that is the base of my next book, the information that I use to help people eliminate the shame, blame, guilt, and judgement they feel around burnout, and the core of my best-selling keynote.
How are you making a difference in your community?
Thanks to my degree, the work I do is literally reaching hundreds of thousands of people a year between the podcast and my work as a keynote speaker.
One particularly poignant moment came in the mail from a podcast listener who was able to turn her entire life around, leave burnout behind, and build something she loved.
Another came from a CEO who realized after a keynote session that he was burnt out, which led to a sabbatical and a subsequent culture shift away from urgency for him and his entire team.
This Q&A spotlight is part of “40K alumni: 40 stories celebrating 40,000 graduates,” a series marking the milestone of more than 40,000 Penn Staters earning their degrees online through Penn State World Campus.