Theme: Taking the World by Storm

2016 is the third annual event where Youth Voice contributes to and influences the future of Ann Arbor. The intention is that each year high school aged students will share their ideas, vision and innovation with the wider community.

Our TEDx event is independently organized by a city-wide group of motivated high school student leaders.

Skyline High School
2552 N Maple Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48103
United States

Abdul Kizito

Abdul is a young boy who holds dreams of one day being successful and having an influential effect to the people around him. Abdul Kizito was born in Kampala, Uganda on 30, October 2001. He has been studying in Ugandan Schools like Aga Khan Primary School, Entebbe Junior School and the most recent school Kibuli Secondary School. He currently resides in the United States of America which for him is a dream come true. Abdul is a freshman at Huron High school, where he enjoys learning new things. He is currently a performer in Huron Mock Trial. His major interests are in politics, law, public speaking and writing. He enjoys swimming and tennis, though he doesn't often play tennis or swim. His current goals are to be able to make great speeches that touch people. Abdul’s majorly enjoys sharing his life experiences in Uganda. He currently wants to pursue a career in Law. Abdul Kizito lastly enjoys meeting and learning about new experiences and people.

Alfred Shiomi Jensen

Junior at Skyline High School.

Ali Schulte

Ali Schulte is a junior at Greenhills School. She is a member of the Ann Arbor Dance Theatre Company and enjoys artistic experimentation with film photography. Ali serves as counselor at the overnight summer camp YMCA Camp Al-Gon-Quian in Northern Michigan. She is interested in discussing, analyzing, and challenging the social stigmas surrounding depression. Ali is considering pursuing a career in bioethics, so she can have a voice in debating controversial health issues.

Amy Poling

Amy Poling is a senior at Washtenaw Technical Middle College. They are a passionate writer and devoted equal rights activist. Amy identifies as a transgender male, and has experienced firsthand the prejudice and misinformation surrounding transgender people, so they hope to educate and inform the public about the lives of transgender individuals. Amy is interested in pursuing a career in screenwriting, where they hope to create thrilling stories with relatable transgender protagonists.

Arifa Syeda

Arifa Syeda is a seventeen-year-old junior at Skyline High School. She loves writing, performing with the Skyline forensics speech team, and producing videos. Arifa loves to travel with her parents and two brothers to experience different cultures, as she hopes to one day put this insight to use in her pursuit of a journalism career. She is excited to share her story at the 2016 TEDxYouth@AnnArbor conference.

Calvin Mayman

Calvin Mayman is a sophomore at Community High School. He plays the flute in the Huron Symphony Band and Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Civic Youth Ensembles. He is also on Community High School’s mock trial team. Calvin’s talk will be about the impact humans have had on the planet as a result of our belief that the Earth belongs to humans.

Charde Madoula-Bey

Charde Madoula-Bey is a senior at Skyline High School. Charde is a student athlete, and is on the Skyline Women's track and field team. Charde enjoys all sports and competing. Charde will be discussing a satirical topic about black privilege, she is discussing this topic because she feels she needs to bring light to the disadvantages black people face everyday. Charde plans on attending the University of Michigan to become a lawyer.

Charles Graham

On-stage Host

Charles Graham is a senior at Skyline high school. He is currently in his third year in the Business, Marketing, Information, and Technology magnet, which is a series of classes that prepares students for the business world. Charles is also 1 of 12 youth reporters nationwide for the 2016 presidential election. Charles gave a TEDxYouth@AnnArbor talk in 2015 on "The Oreo Category -How the African American Race Degrades the African American Race". He strongly believes that the potential of each TEDx talk is vast and can hardly wait to step on stage.

Clarice Wang

Senior at Community High School.

Dea Chappell

Senior at Pioneer High School.

Emily Ross

Emily Ross is a senior at Community High School. She is interested in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy, and she hopes to pursue these studies in college. She plans to continue advocating for teen health as a result of her experience with Graves’ disease. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, music, and public speaking.

Gabi Telemaco

Gabi Telemaco is a Junior at Skyline High School. She is highly committed to the Ann Arbor YMCA community, by attending Camp Al-Gon-Quian for 6 summers, working there for 2. Gabi is interested in Clinical Research and the genetic and environmental variations in brain chemistry which develop in those with Special Needs. She is pursuing these career plans by being apart of the Health and Medicine Magnet at Skyline, as well as attending a conference of Future Medical Leaders at Boston College in the summer.

John Crawford

John Crawford is a senior at Pioneer High School. He enjoys being onstage, whether it is with the band, theatre, or TEDx. However, he also enjoys working behind the scenes, where he writes scripts, runs cameras, and programs software. Through his myriad of activities he’s met some people who conform to the traditional ideas of success and others who do not. He hopes to encourage people to define success for themselves.

Johnny Kroll

Johnny Kroll is a senior at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor MI, and is excited to be giving his first TEDX Youth talk! Johnny is heavily involved with Pioneer Theatre Guild, and this spring will be participating in his 15th show with them. Johnny will be talking about speech judgement and how people make immediate assumptions about others based on the way they speak. Although Johnny hasn't decided where he wants to go to college yet, he intends on majoring in Musical Theatre, with a minor in Biological Sciences.

Jonathan Lynn

Jonathan Lynn is a senior at Pioneer High School. He is dual enrolled at Community High School where he studies Jazz and English Literature. He is a member of Pioneer Interact, National Honor Society as well as four music ensembles. Jonathan is very passionate about music. He teaches the saxophone and piano on weekends and enjoys performing with his Community High classmates at gigs around the area. Most of the limited free time that he has is spent listening to music. Jonathan is interested in pursuing dual degrees in music performance and computer science so he can use his programming skills to further the love of music across the world.

Katie Sesi

Katie Sesi is a sophomore at Huron High School and Co-Concertmaster of the Huron Symphony Orchestra. As someone who enjoys teaching, Katie started the Young Musicians Mentors Alliance, a group of experienced high school orchestra students who mentor budding orchestra students at Clague, Scarlett, and Tappan Middle Schools. Concerned that 50% of students learning an instrument quit within two years, typically in middle school, Katie felt her fellow orchestra members could use their unique talents as musicians to encourage younger students to persevere. Encouraged by the fantastic response, she plans to expand the program throughout southeast Michigan and beyond.

Lydia Miteza

Lydia Miteza is an eleven-year old 6 th grader attending Scarlett Middle School. She has done competitive gymnastics and musical theater. Lydia has been in two plays and a movie. She enjoys debating ideas and hopes to study law when she gets older. Lydia sings, plays the guitar and French horn, and is now learning the ukulele.

Meghan Gupta

Meghan Gupta is a Junior at Pioneer High School. She enjoys being a part of the National Honors Society and Student Council at school. In her free time, she works at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube as a coach of the Learn-to-Skate program and a volunteer for Special Olympics Figure Skating. The topic of her talk is to expose bias in the media concerning terrorism, and she aims to do this while examining its effect on the American people. For the future, she is interested in political science and biology. Her biggest goal is to run for President of the United States.

Mira Kaufman

Mira Kaufman is a junior at Community High School. She is a competitive figure skater, and trains in Detroit Michigan. Mira dedicates most of her time to her training and has Olympic aspirations. In this journey she urges herself to contemplate her goals and question what qualifies as success in her sport and in her life.

Nathan Hadjiyski

Nathan Hadjiyski is a 7 th grader at Forsythe Middle School. He was interested in science since he was young, constantly looking for more fascinating facts, exiting discoveries, and challenging problems. Nathan Hadjiyski’s presentation topic is about his experience at a camp that taught the statistical language R.

Natsume Ono

Natsume Ono is a senior at Community High School. She has been dancing since the age of 4, and currently dances ballet, modern, and jazz. She will share a lesson about breathing that she learned through dance, because it has affected her life very positively. In college, she would like to major in architecture, but continue dancing as well.

Nayab Ali

Nayab Ali, an exchange student from Pakistan is currently a sophomore at Huron High School. From being a member of various clubs like Huron Players, Key Club and Poetry Club etc to being actively involved in community service and sports like soccer and swimming, Nayab is busy in making the most out of her year in United States. Nayab is highly ambitious and enjoys presenting about her country at different levels which is one of the reasons she is hopeful to become a successful Ambassador of her country in the near future.

Rebecca Galler

Rebecca Galler is a junior at Huron High School. Rebecca enjoys acting in plays with The Huron Players, drawing, and writing. Rebecca is adopted and through her experiences of seeing how adopted people are judged and portrayed everywhere it inspired her to speak about adoption in order to educate people on the topic to try to help break the stereotypes on adoption. Rebecca hopes to pursue the field of interior design, and possibly psychology.

Sadie Zinn

Sadie Zinn is a junior at Community High School. She started a Service Club for her school and the experience inspired her Ted Talk. Sadie enjoys theatre and fashion. She plans to attend college to pursue a career in fashion business or developmental psychology. She will continue to do volunteer work and hopes to travel around the world to do different types of service work.

Sanelma Heinonen

Sanelma Heinonen is a senior at Pioneer High School where she runs cross country and plays in the orchestra. Sanelma also loves competing in triathlons and spending time outdoors. Her family lived without a car for the first thirteen years of her life during which Sanelma learned the value and joy of commuting by bike. She is excited to share this passion in the hope of inspiring others to help their health and the beautiful planet.

Sofia Rodriguez-Dantzler

Sofia Rodriguez-Dantzler is a sixth grader at Scarlett Middle school. She enjoys art and likes to sketch people. Her other interests include running and being apart of the track team. She would like to talk about body image because she knew a girl who was bullied because of her size even though she was healthy and a kind person.

Teya Bond

Teya Bond is a Senior at Skyline High School. She spends most of her days making clothes and watching K- Dramas. She loves reading and music; she plays the violin and listens to mostly Socially Conscious rap, K-pop and Korean Rap music. Teya wants to share her story on being a Black student in Ann Arbor. She knows that we can only become better if we share our experiences with others and listen to others experiences, so she has decided to participate in TEDxYouth@AnnArbor. Teya believes that she was placed on Earth to make people happy and laugh and wants to use this gift to advocate and to be a voice for those that others ignore.

William Wang

William is a 11th grader at Huron. He enjoys walks in the woods and sleeping in. William also likes to bringing new perspectives to both young and old. He hopes to continue talking to audiences and is looking forward to share new ideas that will make us think.

Zayd Mian

Zayd is a freshman at Washtenaw International High School. He runs track and cross country. He loves the use of technology, and believes that it is a great way to help make education better for all students in a both fun and beneficial way.