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).

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

Alexander Lam

Alexander Lam is currently a senior at the Harker School (class of 2017), where he has attended since Kindergarten. Passionate about debate, he serves as captain of the school team and possesses a keen interest for international affairs and economics. Alexander equally enjoys studying the ancient past and harbors an intense enthusiasm for Latin and the classics. Embodying this unique world view which combines the past with the present, Alexander desires to use his voice to impact positive change. In his leisure time, Alexander enjoys playing chess recreationally and watching Giants and A’s baseball games.

Katherine Isbister

Katherine Isbister is a Human Computer Interaction and Games researcher who creates and studies digital games and other playful computer-supported experiences. Her lab group’s work has been cited in Wired, Scientific American, and NPR, among other venues. Her recent book, How Games Move Us, explores connections between game design and players’ emotional responses. She is currently a full professor in the Department of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is a core faculty member in the Center for Games and Playable Media. Until June 2015, she was an associate professor jointly appointed between the Computer Science department at New York University’s School of Engineering in Brooklyn, and the NYU Game Center, and she was the founding Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU’s School of Engineering.

Prateek Joshi

Prateek Joshi is an Artificial Intelligence researcher and a published author of 3 books. He is the founder and CEO of Pluto AI, a Silicon Valley startup building an analytics platform for water management based on Deep Learning. His work in this field has led to patents, tech demos, and research papers at major IEEE conferences. Prateek actively blogs at www.prateekjoshi.com on topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Python programming, and abstract mathematics. His blog has received more than 1 million page views from 200+ countries. Prateek has been an invited speaker at tech and entrepreneurship conferences, and he’s also been featured as a guest author in prominent tech magazines. He graduated from the University of Southern California, where he was elected to become a member of the Honors Society and an ambassador for the school of engineering, with a Masters degree specializing in Artificial Intelligence. You can learn more about him on his website at www.prateekj.com.

Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty is a Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on tax policy, unemployment insurance, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. His current research focuses on equality of opportunity: how can we give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding? Chetty is a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given by the American Economic Association to the best American economist under age 40. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 at the age of 23 and was a professor at UC-Berkeley until 2009, when he returned to Harvard as one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Chetty moved to the Department of Economics at Stanford in 2015.

Sarisha Kurup

Sarisha Kurup is a senior at The Harker School. She spends her time outside of the classroom writing, painting, and creating music. She has been writing from a very young age and hopes to continue with the art of the written word until she is very old, and has received various accolades for her work. An avid lover of literature in all aspects of her life, she works as an intern at Litquake, spends her weekends volunteering at 826 Valencia—a nonprofit that aims to teach under-resourced children how to write—and runs her own publication, Centerlight Magazine. When she isn’t engaged in her various artistic pursuits, she can be found debating, conducting research in the field of art history, or hiking.

Shahid Buttar

Shahid leads EFF's grassroots and student outreach efforts. He's a constitutional lawyer focused on community organizing and policy reform as a lever to shift legal norms, with roots in communities across the country resisting mass surveillance. From 2009 to 2015, he led the Bill of Rights Defense Committee as Executive Director. After graduating from Stanford Law School in 2003, where he grew immersed in the movement to stop the war in Iraq, Shahid worked for a decade in Washington, D.C. He first worked in private practice, with public interest litigation projects advancing campaign finance reform, and marriage equality for same-sex couples as early as 2004, when LGBT rights remained politically marginal. From 2005 to 2008, he helped build a national progressive legal network and managed the communications team at the American Constitution Society for Law & Policy, and in 2008 and 2009 he founded the program to combat racial & religious profiling at Muslim Advocates.

Umi Garrett

Hailed by The Huffington Post as “a budding musical genius,” Umi first made her public broadcast appearance on NBC’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show at the age of 8. A Young Steinway Artist, Umi is studying with Professor John Perry and Mrs. Mina Hirobe-Perry, and recently performed in a solo charity concert at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, Germany to collaborate with the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, and a 9-concert tour with Symphonia Boca Raton in Florida. In addition to performing with the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Wuhan Symphony Orchestra in China, and many more orchestras, Umi also gave solo recitals in a total of nearly 60 cities throughout the United States just between 2013-2015. Umi has also received first prize at the 13th Osaka International Music Competition in Japan and in the Chopin International Competition Chopin Plus in Budapest, Hungary, and her second album, “Music in Life” was released by Naxos Japan.