TEDxBend is about bringing great ideas and interesting thinkers to share their perspectives with our community.

Bend High School Auditorium
Bend High School
230 NE 6th St
Bend, Oregon, 97701
United States

John Gray

An all-time bestselling author of 17 books sold in 45 languages, including Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, John Gray is arguably the world’s foremost expert on relationships. Gray’s focus is helping men and women understand, respect and appreciate their differences in both personal and professional relationships

Ellen Waterston

Literary muse Waterston brings a powerful voice to arts and humanities in Central Oregon. An award-winning author and poet, she teaches and inspires emerging writers of all ages. As founder and former director of the local nonprofit The Nature of Words, she has opened hearts and minds through creative writing classes and an annual literary festival. Waterston is now the founder and president of The Writing Ranch in Bend where she leads retreats and workshops for fiction writers and poets from around the world.

Sarah Red-Laird

Red-Laird transformed a childhood fascination with honeybees into an impassioned career as a research scientist, educator, conservationist and revered beekeeper. From her first taste of freshly harvested honeycomb at age three, through the undergraduate research program at the University of Montana, she cultivated the art and science of beekeeping. Today, Red-Laird is based in Ashland where she educates the next generation of honeybee keepers through her Kids and Bees program and the Southern Oregon University Beekeeping Club. She also helps farmers and other land managers conserve bee habitat.

John O'Sullivan

O’Sullivan remembers when youth sports was about children competing with other children instead of adults competing with each other through their kids. Following nearly three decades as a soccer player and coach, O’Sullivan began working to reshape youth sports and inspire a major shift in culture. After serving as a youth coach for the Portland Timbers in Bend, he founded the Changing the Game Project and is now an international speaker and national best-selling author of Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High-Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports back to Our Kids.

Brad Robertson/ Shelley Darcy

Brad Robertson and Shelley Darcy are the brainchildren of a unique project that blends business and art to help companies like Disney, Nike and Intel create and relate more effectively. On Your Feet uses improvisational theater and other nontraditional tools to teach leadership development, communication, team building and other skills for business success. Robertson began his career as the owner of a successful shaved ice company and later served as the Director of the Business Outreach Program at Portland State University. Darcy, a professional improv writer, performer and sketch comedian has worked with Second City LA, The Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade and Big News, one of L.A.’s longest running live-sketch comedy shows.

Brianna Mercado

At only 22-years-old, Mercado lives by the personal credo “Go big.” A professional dancer with two college degrees, she has survived bone cancer and works tirelessly as a role model for children with cancer and as an advocate for cancer study, treatment and prevention. Mercado is a native Californian, living and dancing in New York City. She is admired by family, friends and fellow dancers as a warm and glowing soul who has lived more intensely, intentionally, gratefully and lovingly in the past eight years than most people live in a lifetime.

Moe Carolin-Anderson

Carolin-Anderson believes that the current public school paradigm is not effective in fostering independent thinkers necessary for social renewal. A veteran educator with 30 years of cross-cultural teaching experience, she has an advanced degree in pedagogy, the science and art of instructional theory. Through holistic learning and teaching practices, Carolin-Anderson strives to create a higher level of social justice and well-being by uncovering emotional, social, academic and spiritual/metaphysical potentialities in our children.

Paula Byrne

Following a 20-year career in the corporate high tech world, Byrne rediscovered her roots and a lifelong passion for dance. Raised in a world of rhythm and movement with a jazz drummer father and figure skater mother, she became a professional modern dancer. After giving up dance for many years, she returned to find her calling as a movement teacher and is now the owner and director of SomaSpace – Studio of Movement Arts in Portland, Oregon. She also leads Wild Grace and DanceQuest transformational dance classes, workshops and retreats worldwide. Byrne believes the body is a source of wisdom, pleasure and joy in the present moment.

Charles Precourt

Precourt launched on his first space flight in 1993, aboard the Columbia. A highly decorated veteran of four different missions, Precourt was Chief of the Astronaut Corps from 1998-2002 and was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2012. He retired from NASA in 2004 and now leads the Space Launch Division at ATK, where he is overseeing the development of a launch system that he hopes will enable human-manned deep space exploration.

Bob Hurley

Hurley founder and CEO Bob Hurley made his work his play from the beginning. Hurley started as a surfer and board shaper in Huntington Beach, before acquiring the license to Billabong USA in 1982, starting his own eponymous surf and skate company in 1999, and folding into the Nike brand in 2002, where he continues to lead the $252M business. Hurley’s instincts to make surf culture less insular and more inclusive have led the brand toward successful alignments in music, art and youth culture. He still surfs and shapes boards today.