Theme: WonderLust

TEDxRaleigh will showcase a taste of NC's Ideas Worth Spreading. Join us for a full day of brilliant and entertaining Talks that will inspire, educate, and stimulate us all toward making the worlds even more wondrous than it is.

Church On Morgan Community Hall
136 E. Morgan St.
Raleigh, North Carolina, 27601
United States

Bill Cummings

Bill is the founder and CEO of Lemonade International, a nonprofit community development organization based in Raleigh, NC that works in partnership with indigenous leaders and in solidarity with an urban slum community in Guatemala City. Bill has served in leadership roles in urban community development work since 1994.

Darian Colbert

Darian is the founder and CEO of Cohesion. He has served in leadership positions in urban development work since 1998. Darian has worked in partnership with leaders in schools, universities, and the juvenile justice system. He has traveled the world in support of indigenous leaders working in community development in the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa.

Dhvani Bhatia

High school student at Apex High

Being passionate about serving the community, Dhvani Bhatia was determined to make a difference in the world, not knowing that sometimes even noble intentions can face some practical obstacles. Being a 12th grade student with high-aspirations, Dhvani was not ready for rejections.

Doug Stewart

Why is mentorship so elusive? When will someone mentor me? How do I find a mentor? Using the power of personal accountability, Doug Stewart has been able to answer these questions for himself and he offers an opportunity for you to do the same. Instead of giving you a theory about mentorship, Doug shares his personal experience and unique perspective of what mentorship really is and how you can choose to leverage it in your life to achieve amazing results. Doug Stewart is a student of Mentorship, speaker, writer, facilitator and Dale Carnegie instructor.

Jason Goldberg

Jason Goldberg is a geek, turned comedian, speaker and entrepreneur. Throughout the course of a successful 13-year career in information technology and after leaving the corporate world to launch multiple start-ups, Jason found himself so inundated and overwhelmed by the speed and quantity of information and stimulation flying at him that he became uninspired, unengaged and unsatisfied with much of his day-to-day life. In an effort to rid himself of his boredom and apathy and to reclaim and reactivate his excitement for life, he set out to see if there was a way to engineer enthusiasm and manufacture fascination – even in situations where neither of those things were anywhere to be found.

Larry Burk, MD, CEHP

Larry Burk, MD, CEHP, is an academic holistic radiologist whose unusual career path from MRI researcher to dream researcher has prepared him in a very unique way to give this talk on warning dreams. He is a consulting associate professor of radiology at Duke University Medical Center and a member of the International Society for the Study of Dreams. His research experience in the early days of MRI of the knee and shoulder allowed him to respond to his friends’ amazing breast cancer dream stories in a scientific way and lay a foundation for future studies of warning dreams in all different types of cancers. The dreams that changed the lives of the women in his pilot study are shared here in hopes of inspiring everyone to reclaim the time-honored practice of keeping a dream diary. It may save your life.

Larry Burke

Holistic Radiologist, Duke University Medical Center

Stimulating research on warning dreams derived from studies of cancer patients. Larry’s goal in spreading the word about this phenomenon is to stimulate enthusiasm and funding for more rigorous studies of warning dreams. Hopefully further research will lead to a return of dreams to a position of importance in the medicine of the future. His vision is to inspire everyone to reclaim the time-honored habit of keeping a dream diary with the modern option of doing it on a smart phone.

Lynette Lewis

Amidst great loss, Lynette Lewis has learned how to live with relentless hope and joy. She has been teaching the art of connecting daily work with bigger dreams for over 30 years as a corporate executive, author, and speaker navigating the complex worlds of higher education, Wall Street, and motherhood with six kids. Her blog “The Daily Dream,” along with her books, “Climbing the Ladder in Stilettos,” and “Remember the Roses — How to Hold Out, Hang On, and Marry the Man of Your Dreams,” have earned her platforms and influence around the world.

Michael Penney

Michael is a Marine Corps combat veteran, former infantryman and, Combat Arms instructor. During his eight-year career in the Corps, he served in with distinction on the battlefields of Ramadi Iraq (2005-2006/2007), Kajaki and Sangin Afghanistan (2011). As an Instructor, Michael has trained Marines in combat marksmanship, precision weapon systems and foreign/ threat weapons. Since leaving the Corps in 2012, Michael has found new ways to serve the country he loves. He is an inventor, entrepreneur, author and public speaker; contributing to worthwhile organizations that help change the world in positive ways. Michael’s goal is to help fellow veterans to achieve greatness after leaving the military. Professionally, Michael is the founder and cohost of Cigars and Sea Stories, a podcast devoted to sharing sea stories with veterans who are adding VALUE to the world. You can linkup with him at Bunker Labs RDU where he spends most of his time connecting and working with fellow veterans.

Nilda Cosco

Nilda Cosco, PhD, is Research Associate Professor, College of Design, and Director of Programs at the Natural Learning Initiative, North Carolina State University. With a background on the psychology of the learning processes and the impact of the built environment on behavior, she shares her experience observing children’s adventures in nature and highlights the power of the outdoors to support child development.

Peyton Holland

Having grown up in rural North Carolina, Peyton learned the value of hard work and skill early in life. His father encouraged and taught him what it meant to be a student of life as well as the importance of technical and academic education. Peyton’s mission is to remind people of the value of skilled labor and its necessity. Peyton is the Executive Director of SkillsUSA North Carolina and has been involved in Career and Technical Education for over 15 years. He has devoted his career to helping create partnerships between education, industry and the community as he works to help students develop workplace, personal, and technical skills grounded in academics that will prepare them to be leaders in the workforce.

Ricky Hopper

As a software engineer in a nascent industry, Ricky strives to utilize emerging technologies to enable profound change. As an artist, he brings his influences to life through musical instrument design, strategic doodling, music composition, and computer interface design. Why You Should Listen: Since he got his start developing video games in elementary school, Ricky has experimented with a variety of creative media. He has fused electronic and classical genres into a progressive musical suite, designed and built a fully custom electric guitar, launched a mobile game at the advent of the smartphone movement, and built software that informed safe regulation of airspace for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Now a Senior Software Engineer at PrecisionHawk, he consistently experiments with new devices, developing prototypes that explore our automated, fast-approaching future.

Veena Misra

Veena Misra is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University. She is also the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Center on Advanced Self Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST) that focuses on self-powered wearable devices for health.