Theme: Imagine. Innovate. Inspire

TEDxHarkerSchool is an innovative youth only conference that aims to spread cutting-edge ideas throughout its community and reach out to embrace the culture of Silicon Valley, a place where breakthrough concepts are supported and realized. We provide guidance for some of the brightest minds of the new generation–the future of what TED stands for: technology, entertainment, and design. With the help of our corporate booths, speakers, and mentors, TEDxHarkerSchool supplies the unique toolkit that enables our audience to imagine, innovate, and inspire.

We are a completely student led initiative, having students curate the event, find speakers, run activities, and bring awesome innovations to our students. Our goal is to bring students to greater intellectual heights. We hope to lead students to wisdom, revolution, innovation, and passion. TEDxHarkerSchool fully believes that young people will make positive change in the world.

The Harker School
500 Saratoga Avenue
San Jose, California, 95129
United States

Andy Fang

Cofounder and CTO of DoorDash

Andy Fang is the cofounder and CTO of DoorDash, a logistics company seeking to build an on-demand delivery network in every major city around the world. Andy cofounded DoorDash during his junior year at Stanford in 2013 before graduating with a BS in Computer Science in 2014. This year, he was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Consumer Technology. Andy is also a proud alumnus of Harker, where he served as student body president and graduated in 2010.

Helen Kassa

NAACP SJ Youth President, Founder of Giving Hope to Kids Like Me

Helen Kassa is the NAACP SJ Youth President, an emerging social entrepreneur, a senior at Prospect High School, and a humanitarian. At age eight, she founded a humanitarian educational program here in the United States and in Ethiopia, called Giving Hope to Kids Like Me. The primary focus of her work is the utilization of education as a tool to help communities raise themselves out of poverty. In 2012, United States Congressman Michael Honda Awarded Helen a distinguished honor and recognition of the 2012 Ethiopian Community Award. Helen is an accomplished athlete, an activist, and a soon- to-be published author.

Kaitlyn (Kaity) Gee

Writer, photographer, and artist from Bay Area, California

Kaity Gee is a writer, photographer, and artist from Bay Area, California. Kaity is in the process of writing a chapbook of poetry, Human Origami. She is also writing two YA novels- The Dotted Line, and [cat.] Details about the projects can be found on their respective pages here.

Kelly Sawyers

Senior Campaigner at Change.org

Kelly Sawyers is a narrative campaigning specialist with experience in the non-profit, political, and for-profit spheres. She began her career working on political campaigns, before transitioning into non-profit work with partners like Rock the Vote and the National MS Society. As a Senior Campaigner at Change.org, Kelly uses both her advocacy background and storytelling skills to craft powerful campaigns around issues affecting millions of people around the globe. She has worked to craft campaigns to end cyberbullying on anonymous messaging apps, pass laws to ban “ex-gay” conversion therapy, end forced and child marriage in the U.S., and many more. She received her Bachelors degree from Georgetown University, and a Masters of Fine Arts from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

Leila Janah

Founder and CEO of Sama Group

Leila Janah is the founder and CEO of Sama Group and an award-winning social entrepreneur. Prior to founding the Sama Group, Leila was a a visiting scholar with the Stanford Program on Global Justice and Australian National University’s Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. She was a founding director of Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor, and a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.). She has also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let’s Go in Mozambique, Brazil, and Borneo. Leila is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a Director of CARE USA, a 2012 TechFellow, recipient of the inaugural Club de Madrid Young Leadership Award, and the youngest person to win a Heinz Award in 2014. She received a BA from Harvard and lives in San Francisco.

Michael Snyder

Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine

Dr. Michael Snyder is the Stanford Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics and the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine. He is a leader in the field of functional genomics and proteomics, and one of the major participants of the ENCODE project. His laboratory was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism, and has developed many technologies in genomics and proteomics. He has also combined different state-of–the-art “omics” technologies to perform the first longitudinal detailed integrative personal omics profile (iPOP) of person and used this to assess disease risk and monitor disease states for personalized medicine. He is a cofounder of several biotechnology companies, including Protometrix (now part of Life Tehcnologies), Affomix (now part of Illumina), Excelix, and Personalis.

Neel Chatterjee

Partner in Orrick’s Silicon Valley office, Leading IP Lawyer

Neel Chatterjee, a partner in Orrick’s Silicon Valley office, is consistently recognized as one of the nation’s leading intellectual property litigators. He has a proven track record of court and trial wins in hard-to-win technology cases. Neel also is well known for handling cutting-edge legal issues that break new ground in uncertain areas of the law. His greatest professional achievement is saving a key company invention or product line. Nearly every ranking organization in the legal profession and numerous bar organizations consider Neel a leader in intellectual property litigation. Chambers USA has described Neel as having “the ability to think outside the box“ as well as “in depth knowledge of patent law.”

Puragra (Raja) Guha Thakurta

Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC

Dr. Puragra (Raja) Guha Thakurta is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. His research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies. In addition, he founded SIP, a renowned high school research program. GuhaThakurta’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies, large and small, near and far, through detailed studies of their assembly history, galaxy cannibalism, dynamics and dark matter content, chemical enrichment, and star-formation history. His research group studies the Andromeda galaxy, Milky Way galaxy, and many other galaxies in the Local Volume. The group frequently uses the Keck telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. See GuhaThakurta’s webpage for media coverage of his group’s research,publications, and his artwork.

Skye Delano

Major Gifts Officer of the Environmental Defense Fund, CEO and Founder of KEEL Solutions, and the Program Director of E3 Youth Philanthropy.

Skye Delano is a visionary leader with over 15 years of demonstrable impact in fundraising, capacity building, and strategic growth. She has proven success in building fundraising capacities, leadership and team building, innovative program design, and catalyzing organizational change and is passionate about the power of philanthropy to affect social change and deeply committed to growing the resources invested in social change.

Smriti Koodanjeri

AP Chemistry Teacher at the Harker School

Dr. Smriti Koodanjeri is the AP Chemistry teacher at The Harker School. She received her B.S. in Chemistry at Bombay University, her M.S. in Analytical and Medicinal Chemistry at SNDT University, and her Ph.D. in Organic Photochemistry at Tulane University.