Theme: Flourish

For our inaugural year, our theme is Flourish. But what does it mean to flourish? Speakers will present an expanse of ideas intended to inspire the continuance of growing, thriving, and flourishing.

TEDxUCCS offer free event entry as well as reserved seating but requires a RSVP. Space is limited for this event.

1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway
Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80918
United States

Ethan Beute

Ethan Beute has a background in and passion for brand, strategy, content, and communication. For 14 years, he directed the marketing efforts for local broadcast television stations and websites in Chicago IL, Grand Rapids MI, and Colorado Springs CO. With BombBomb, he helps people use simple videos to communicate more effectively, to build relationships, and to grow their businesses. BA: University of Michigan. MBA: University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. A happy husband and father, Ethan's a big fan of fresh air, clean water, and warm sunshine.

Jon Khoury

Jon Khoury is the Executive Director of Cottonwood Center for the Arts. A Colorado College graduate, Jon returned to Colorado Springs in August of 2012. Previously, Jon had represented artists and musicians in New York City for 25 years. He was awarded "Mover and Shaker in the Arts," "7 People to know in the Arts in Colorado Springs," and "The Cultural White Knight" by the Colorado Springs Independent. Additionally, he serves as a board director of The Southern Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce, is part of many arts committees around town and is a huge advocate and voice for artists for Colorado Springs. Jon is married to Karen Khoury, who is a painter, has three growing children, and currently resides right in downtown Colorado Springs.

Kim Cameron

Kim S. Cameron is William Russell Kelly Professor of Management and Organizations and Professor of Higher Education at the University of Michigan. He served as Dean at Case Western Reserve University and Associate Dean at the Universities of Michigan and Brigham Young University. His past research on virtuousness, positive leadership, effectiveness, downsizing, and culture has been published in more than 140 academic articles and 15 scholarly books. His current research focuses on positive leadership and the effects of virtuousness in organizations. He was recently recognized as among the top 10 social science scholars in the world whose work has been downloaded from Google. He is one of the co-founders of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan. He assists organizations throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa to develop positive organizational cultures and positive leadership.

Patricia Marx

Patricia Marx is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former writer for Saturday Night Live and Rugrats. Her most recent book is Let’s Be Less Stupid; An Attempt to Maintain my Mental Faculties. She teaches at Columbia University and Stony Brook University. She was the first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon and in 2015 received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her children’s book Now Everybody Really Hates me was the first and only winner of the Friedrich Medal, an award made up by Patty and named after her air-conditioner. She can take a baked potato out of the oven with her bare hand.

Shane Lopez

Shane J. Lopez, Ph.D., author of Making Hope Happen, is the world’s leading researcher on hope. His mission is to teach people that investing in their future pays off today. Dr. Lopez is also one of the most vocal advocates of the psychological reform of America’s education system. He helps schools function less like impersonal factories and more like dynamic human development centers that enable students to achieve the meaningful futures they say they really want, including a good job and a happy family. Dr. Lopez is a Gallup Senior Scientist and Research Director of the Clifton Strengths Institute. He is the chief architect of the Gallup Student Poll, a measure of hope, engagement, and well-being that taps into the hearts and minds of U.S. public school students to determine what drives achievement. It is available at no cost to public schools or districts interested in using it to start a hope conversation in their community. More than 4 million students have participated since its inception. Dr. Lopez researches the links between hope, strengths development, academic success and overall well-being and collaborates with scholars around the world on these issues. He specializes in hope and strengths enhancement for students from preschool through college graduation, advocating a whole-school strengths model that also builds the strengths expertise of educators, parents, and youth development organizations. He is a coauthor of the statistical reports for the Clifton StrengthsFinder and the Clifton Youth StrengthsExplorer. A prolific author, Dr. Lopez has published more than 100 articles and chapters and 10 books. These include Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths, winner of the SAGE Press Book of the Year Award (with C.R. Snyder and Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti); The Handbook of Positive Psychology (with C.R. Snyder); Positive Psychological Assessment: A Handbook of Models and Measures (with C.R. Snyder); Positive Psychology: Exploring the Best in People; The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology; and The Psychology of Courage: Modern Research on an Ancient Virtue (with Cynthia Pury). Dr. Lopez is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the International Positive Psychology Association.

Valerie Anderson

Dr. Valerie Anderson is the Clinic Director of the Veterans Health and Trauma Clinic at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She currently works on developing research-informed and theoretically-based interventions to assist military clients and mental health providers address post-traumatic stress, secondary traumatic stress and job burnout. She is also working as a licensed psychologist providing mental health services to a variety of military members and their families. Dr. Anderson has been involved in the startup and operations of several mental health clinics.