In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

98 Beaumont Street
Freemans Bay
Auckland, Auckland, 1010
New Zealand

Riley & Steve Hathaway

Riley Hathaway is a passionate 14-year-old ocean ambassador, who is already presenting her own TV series called ‘Young Ocean Explorers’. In Young Ocean Explorers, Steve and his daughter Riley present a captivating series of stories about what happens when a teenager comes face to face with the marine animals we’re all curious about, such as stingrays, orca, and turtles. It’s a winning combination: Riley’s got the questions and the teenage-cred, and Steve’s got the boat and underwater know-how. Together, they take us on a journey that has never been previously imagined: a fun, accessible glimpse into the world of New Zealand’s incredible underwater species.

The Hip Op-eration Crew

The Hip Op-eration Crew started as a flash mob initially in response to society's outcasting of elderly people. What grew from there was an amazing dance group and community that is centred around the idea of having big goals and adventure later on in life. The Hip Op-eration Crew are officially the worlds oldest dance troupe listed by the Guinness World Records. http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/111063-oldest-dance-troupe

Billie Jordan

After narrowly surviving New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake in Christchurch in 2011, Billie Jordan felt there was more to life than working as a communications consultant for large corporations. So she quit her job and moved to a small island off the East Coast of Auckland in New Zealand. Once there she taught herself how to dance following hip hop clips on YouTube, then gathered up her elderly neighbours (aged 68 to 96 years old) and established them as a hip hop dance crew with the audacious goal of performing at the World Hip hop Championships in Las Vegas within eight months. From that point on her life and the lives of her dance group changed forever.

Dale Nirvani Pfeifer

Dale is changing the way we connect online. Her #donate software, developed to make giving easy on social media, is unleashing the next generation of generosity. Her goal is to support the evolution of the human experience with money by creating a generosity-based financial system. A native Kiwi, her company GoodWorld is based in Washington DC. Prior to going to the United States, Dale ran Victoria University's Center for the Study of Leadership. Her award-winning research took her to Harvard where she applied the theory of Allophilia to Maori leadership. This work demonstrates how the power of love and effective leadership can bring big diverse groups of people together.

Gavin Healy

Gavin Healy has over 20 years’ experience in the media industry. He is currently the Director of a marketing for social good publishing company called Viridian Media. Viridian co-founded Element magazine with the New Zealand Herald, which is the largest sustainability magazine in NZ. It gained global accolades within the media industry as it was crowned Best New Product at the International News Media Marketing Awards. “The whole idea of Element was to craft engaging media for positive social behavioural change”. Gavin is originally from Ireland and from a very young age has been researching Celtic spirituality, behavioural change psychology and the medias influence on society. His talk weaves the impact of growing up in country devastated by centuries of civil war, and how the 5,500 year old spiritual sites that surrounded his childhood home gave him hope, while leading him to his current profession and mission in life.

Grant Schofield

Grant Schofield is Professor of Public Health at AUT, and director of the University’s Human Potential Centre. Grant’s career has focused on preventing the diseases of modern times, and seeing what it takes to help people live a long, healthy and happy life. He lives and breathes the motto “be the best you can be”, and sees this as a game-changer for the health system – capable of transforming the current deficit (sickness) model, to one in which we aspire to be well. Grant is well known for thinking outside the box and challenging convention wisdom in nutrition and weight loss, as well as physical activity and exercise. He is best known for his work in three areas: abandoning rules and embracing risky play in his free range kids work; leading public discussion in flipping the food pyramid, by challenging the low fat nutrition dogma with low carb high fat diets; and developing national accounts of well-being through his Sovereign Well-being Index research.

Hong Sheng Chiong

Dr. Hong Sheng Chiong is currently an eye doctor in Gisborne hospital. He completed his clinical training in Ireland before he crossed over to New Zealand where he initially worked as a registrar in neurosurgery and general surgery before he stepped into the world of eye. His main interests are eye regenerative medicine, bioengineering and telemedicine. His exposure to third world medicine in Kenya, Nepal and Malaysia have given him the insight to the burden of preventable blindness. He believes the problem lies in the access to quality eye care. In 2014, he founded OphthalmicDocs, an R&D company that focuses on the development of ultra mobile and economical eye tests and diagnostics devices. He has invented several eye imaging adapters that can be used in conjunction with a mobile application to diagnose and monitor eye diseases. Fighting preventable blindness is his career's primary mission.

Janette Searle

Janette Searle had a life changing conversation that turned into ‘Take My Hands’ a not-for- profit organisation that redistributes prosthetic, orthotic and medical equipment to those in need. Every day, freight carriers and warehouses are often only partly full, so, Janette asked, what if we take advantage of that spare capacity and send vital equipment to those that need it? So far, the organisation has sent 50 boxes of artificial limbs, over 35 boxes of medical equipment and used just a fraction of the spare capacity that exists in the industry. So what might happen if we started a global economy of spare capacity? Janette believes there is power in the collective when its collaboration is focused, and that it is people that make the world go round, not money.

Max Cryer

Max Cryer (MBE) worked as a singer in London, at Sadlers Wells Opera, Wigmore Hall and the BBC, then was contracted to a Hollywood agency for ten years, during which he made fifteen tours of USA as an entertainer. He became New Zealand television’s first quiz host, hosted NZ’s first live talk-variety show “Town Cryer,” and 300 television appearances in entertainment shows, was awarded ‘New Zealand Entertainer of the Year.’ Max has an Honours degree in English Literature and Etymology, and for TVNZ he produced over 100 episodes of “University Challenge” and 100 episodes of ‘Mastermind’ plus the five-nation ‘Mastermind International’ for the BBC. He directed all NZ entertainment at the World Expo in Brisbane (1988) and the next Expo, in Seville (1992). Max has been Chairman for the Oxford Union debating team (1975). Now an established writer in New Zealand, with eighteen books published (in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, America, Italy, Germany, Spain and Russia).

Shaun Hendy

Shaun Hendy is the founding Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a Centre of Research Excellence hosted by the University of Auckland. Shaun is an advocate for multi-disciplinary research and teaching, and lectures in the University of Auckland’s Department of Physics and the University’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His interest in innovation led him to co-author the 2013 book, “Get Off the Grass” with the late Sir Paul Callaghan. Shaun believes that the challenge for New Zealand - if we want to base our economy on knowledge rather than nature - is to overcome our relatively small and widely dispersed population base and build a city of four million people. To do this, we'll need to start trusting each other more so that our ideas will spread, and we'll need the infrastructure that connects us. If we can do this it would make us one of the most innovative places on the planet.

Siouxsie Wiles

Award-winning scientist Dr. Siouxsie Wiles describes herself as a microbiologist and bioluminescence enthusiast but to others she is “that pink-haired science lady”. With a PhD in microbiology, Siouxsie heads up the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland. After recently becoming a parent, Siouxsie has realised that sexism and gender- stereotyping prevails even in the simplest Lego toys. She believes that playmakers like Lego should lead the way in stamping out this gender-stereotyping in toys, with easy fixes like producing mini-figs with double-sided heads: one male, one female, letting children decide who they want them to be, regardless of their roles. For Siouxsie it will, at the very least send out the message that everything is possible and that means everything would be awesome.

Sir Bob Harvey

Sir Bob Harvey is the Chairman of Waterfront Auckland, has served 6 terms as Mayor of the city of Waitakere, and was awarded, with six international Mayors, the United Nations Award for Peace in 1997; the United Nations Life Time Achievement Award for the Environment in 2007 and a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year Honours for 2013 for services to local body affairs and the community. Sir Bob is a prolific leader in both the arts and politics, having led an advertising agency for many years prior to his mayoralty, working with leading talent and winning numerous awards. He recently published his biography ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. Sir Bob’s involvement in leadership, creativity and his passion for the environment will be the foundation of his TEDx talk.

Steve Pointing

Steve Pointing is Professor of Applied Ecology at Auckland University of Technology and director of the university’s Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand. He pioneered the use of molecular techniques to understand how simple microbes cling to life in extreme environments such as the icy deserts of Antarctica, boiling geothermal pools and lakes that are ten times more salty than the ocean. This led to interest from NASA astrobiologists, those who seek to understand if life could exist beyond Earth, since the harsh conditions mimic those encountered on the surface of other planets. Steve has led an astrobiology research team collaborating with NASA for over a decade, and broadened his interests to consider the societal impacts of discovering life on other planets: How will this change our perception of humanity? What practical steps should we consider in preparation for this?

Tame Iti

Tame Iti (Ngai Tuhoe/Waikato/Te Arawa) is known as many things... Activist, Artist, Terrorist and Cyclist. Literally wearing his Tuhoe heritage on his face, Iti is hard to miss in a crowd despite being just 5ft 4" tall. His 40 year history of controversial and theatrical displays of political expression have included pitching a tent on parliament grounds and calling it the Maori embassy, shooting a national flag in front of government officials and the curious spate of public meetings where he appeared with a ladder so as to speak eye to eye with officials who were seated on stage. Iti explores how the old saying of "Te ka nohi ki te ka nohi" (Dealing with it eye to eye) creates a far more productive space for open dialogue around any issue. "No one can tell you that you are not important and your experience does not matter and if they do... I challenge them to say it to your face... where they can see your eyes and feel your breath."

Tom Scott

Tom Scott (ONZM) is an award winning political columnist, editorial cartoonist, documentary maker and dramatist. Six collections of his satirical writings and five collections of his cartoons have been published. In 2007 he was one of 17 editorial cartoonists from around the world invited to a ‘Cartoonists for Peace’ conference in Rome sponsored by the UN. In 2010 some of his works were selected for a permanent ‘Cartooning for Peace’ exhibition at Memorial de Caen in France. His stage play - The Daylight Atheist was a critical and commercial hit in Australia and New Zealand. His films and television dramas he wrote or co-wrote include Footrot Flats, Tiger Country, Separation City, Rage, The Kick, and Seven Periods with Mr. Gormsby. A six-part television series on Sir Edmund Hillary is currently in production. A gold card holder he has no plans to retire.