Theme: Roads Less Traveled

To mark our 5th year as a TEDx community, TEDxMtHood (formerly TEDxConcordiaUPortland) will bring together a community of people to listen, learn, discuss, engage, innovate, and inspire on May 2, 2015! We will highlight individuals who have chosen roads less traveled, literally or figuratively, and have lived to tell their tale. It is our hope that their experiences will encourage others in our community to take a detour off the well-worn paths in their lives and see where it leads.

Revolution Hall at Washington High School
531 SE 14th Avenue
Portland, Oregon, 97214
United States

Alialujah Choir

Alialujah Choir came about when three well-known members of Portland’s notable music scene took time away from the comforts and constraints of their primary bands to focus on the natural beauty they found when singing songs from their more personal artistic quivers. The songs immerse the singers as their voices entwine with one another and then expand. Sparse arrangements create an open bed for two, three, and four part vocal harmony, while instrumentation ranges from guitar to upright piano to Theremin to marching drum. Allow Alialujah Choir to sing their stories in ethereal allure.

Laura Veirs and Tucker Martine

Portland couple, Laura Veirs and Tucker Martine, have been deeply involved in the DIY indie music movement for decades. Laura is a world renowned folk songwriter who has enchanted a generation of music lovers with her beautiful and gentle songwriting. Tucker is a world-famous, Grammy- nominated producer, who has worked with bands such as REM, Bill Frisell, Spoon, My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens, and Death Cab For Cutie. In 2010, Paste Magazine included Tucker in their list of the “10 Best Producers of the Decade.”

Anton Cobb

Anton Cobb is a Chicago native who moved to Portland in 2013 and has never looked back. He lives in Northwest Portland and works downtown as a Sales Manager, just around the corner from Director Park where hOURLUNCH began. Each Wednesday, Anton skips lunch and sits in Director Park with a sign that says “I am skipping lunch. So that 30 children won’t. Will you join me?” He gives the donations he collects to the Oregon Food Bank to combat child hunger.

Dan Carlin

Dan Carlin is a former television news reporter and radio talk show host who since 2005 has been producing two popular podcasts — one on history called Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and one on current events called Common Sense with Dan Carlin. The history podcast recently won iTunes' "Best Podcast of 2014" award and the Hardcore History episode/series on the Eastern Front in the Second World War was recently named the 5th best podcast episode of all time by Slate Magazine. His most popular podcast episodes have been downloaded between 2.5 and 3 million times. Total downloads for both podcasts since he started exceed 60 million.

Dave Miller

Dave Miller has spent 14 years making radio and he still thinks it’s the best job in the world. He’s currently the host of Think Out Loud on Oregon Public Broadcasting, where he gets to talk to scientists and senators, writers and ranchers, cooks and cops. From 2008–2011, he worked as the online host of the show. Before coming to OPB, Dave was the senior producer of Open Source, a nationally syndicated radio show based at WGBH in Boston, where he convinced the team to do two separate full-hour shows about the movie Groundhog Day. He began his radio career as a documentary producer at Sound Portraits Productions and StoryCorps. His stories have aired on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition Saturday.

Gayathri Ramprasad

Gayathri Ramprasad is the Founder and President of ASHA International, a nonprofit organization promoting personal, organizational, and community wellness, and the author of Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within. Her successful battle in overcoming life-threatening mental illness and her amazing recovery taught her the power of hope and holistic wellness. Now she shares that message with others. Since the launch of ASHA International’s wellness campaign, “Healthy Minds, Healthy Lives” in 2006, Gayathri’s keynotes, wellness workshops, and cultural competence trainings have reached more than 35,000 people nationally and internationally, with a resounding message of hope and healing. Individuals and organizations alike applaud Gayathri as an agent of hope and transformational change.

Ivo Lukas

Ivo Lukas is the Founder/CEO for 24Notion. 24Notion is the first integrated marketing/digital PR and lifestyle agency with special emphasis on giving back to the global community. Ivo is an advocate and sits on the board of many nonprofit organizations that encourage the empowerment of next generation leaders. Moreover, Ivo is passionate in mentoring, leading, and supporting many young women to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers.

Jia Jiang

Jia Jiang is the creator of 100 Days of Rejection, speaker, and author of a new book called Rejection Proof. After many years in the corporate world, Jia took a life altering risk and stepped into the unknown world of entrepreneurship, which resulted in everyone’s biggest fear... REJECTION. This became the catalyst that set Jia on the path to his true calling. To conquer the fear of rejection, Jia embarked on a personal quest and started a blog to face 100 Days of Rejection. His journey revealed a world where people are much kinder than we imagine, discovered that rejection can be much less painful than we believe, and that it is the fear of rejection that is much more destructive than we know.

Kelly Schwan

Kelly Schwan is an occupational therapist at a level 1 trauma hospital in Portland. As someone who works with people with disabilities every day and has been involved with wheelchair athletes at all levels, Kelly is excited to get a ground-level view of adaptive sports throughout the Americas. When she’s not working or riding her bike, Kelly likes to be traveling — exploring the accessibility of other cultures and being creative to overcome obstacles to see the beauty of the world. In 2013, Kelly and her fiancé, Seth, were named the National Geographic Travelers of the Year for their 10,000 mile journey traveled by bike and wheelchair from Portland to Patagonia.

Laura Peterson

Laura Peterson is the founder/director of Hands to Hearts International (HHI) a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health and development of vulnerable children (ages 0–3) by training caregivers in early childhood development and nurturing parenting skills. Prior to starting HHI, Laura worked for 10 years with children struggling with severe mental health issues. Her background as a clinical director for a nonprofit serving these children led her to found HHI in 2004 to reach the most children at the earliest time possible. Laura has led HHI’s efforts in India, Uganda, and Swaziland, benefiting almost 200,000 moms, dads, health workers, orphanage staff and young children. Laura’s work has been recognized and awarded by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Fetzer Institute, UNESCO Asia, and others.

Principal Dean

Unhindered by scene politics or overburdened by fleeting trends, Principal Dean's music rests beyond categorization while staying curiously relevant. After producing soul-laden Hip Hop beats for years, most notably for Maine rapper Spose, Principal Dean found an inspirational gold mine in both the evolving underground club scene of North America and the experimental downtempo fueled by the internet. The creative freedom this espoused tore down the limiting conventions he grew up with and allowed him to develop an evolving signature sound that refuses to be static.

Sabina Zeba Haque

Sabina Zeba Haque is an artist of South Asian descent raised in Karachi by her American mother and Pakistani father. Sabina received an M.F.A in Painting from Boston University and teaches Fine Art at Portland State University. She exhibits her work throughout the US and internationally, connecting her personal experience of living between cultures and exploring the creative potential of the many places she calls home. Sabina’s work broadly explores the collisions between art, religion, politics, and technology. In 2014 she was awarded the Oregon Art Commission Individual Artist Fellowship and the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at the Sitka Art Center. Noteworthy exhibits include solo and group shows at Avampato Museum of Art, Bowery Gallery in NYC, Boston Contemporary Art Center, Los Angeles Arts and Cultural Center, SAVAC Visual Arts Center, Toronto, Canada and Koel Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan.

Tom Henderson

Tom Henderson is a Cascadian mathematician, comedian, and writer. You can hear him talking about quantum game theory and whether to buy a monkey in the podcast Math for Primates. His first book, Punk Mathematics, will be finished in 2015.

Tom Shrimpton

Tom Shrimpton is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Portland State University. He earned a Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of California (Davis), and he is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Tom’s research focuses on the theory and application of cryptography. In 2012–2014, he worked on a technology called Format-Transforming Encryption. For this, he and his collaborators were awarded a generous gift from Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.