Theme: Think Viral

TED has a simple motto that says it all: Ideas worth spreading. Their entire model—and ours—is centered around the power of ideas to capture the minds of the audience, spread from person to person, and change the perspective, if not also the behavior, of those who have been exposed. Ideas spread through human contact, can explode exponentially to change our world forever, or can lay in wait for years—even decades—until the conditions are right.

At TEDxABQ 2016, we will focus on the potential in every idea to spread and affect epidemics of change. Our goal is to inspire you to intentionally engage in being a contagious host, sharing the ideas you find worth spreading to impact your world. We invite you on September 17th to THINK VIRAL and become patient zero in the next beneficial epidemic to sweep New Mexico.

Ideas are contagious. Get infected.

ABQ Convention Center
401 2nd St NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87102
United States

Dancing Earth Creations

Dynamic Animators

Dancing Earth Creations dynamically animates their mission to support Indigenous dance and related arts, to encourage and revitalize awareness of bio-cultural diversity through artistic expression for the education and wellness of all peoples.

REIGHNBEAU

Multimedia Artist

REIGHNBEAU is the work of visual and sound artist Bryce Hample, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Aaron Kie

Traditional Pueblo Farmer

Aaron Kie is a pueblo farmer from the Isleta Pueblo and Laguna Pueblo. He started teaching traditional pueblo farming at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center where he designed and created a traditional garden which he used as a platform to educate children, college students, and nontraditional farmers on traditional farming techniques used by pueblo farmers for thousands of years. Aaron is now focusing his work on revitalizing traditional and endangered pueblo plant species by growing and preserving seeds from each of the 19 pueblos and neighboring southwestern tribes. Educating fellow and amateur farmers on seed preservation is an important component of Aaron’s work.

Ann Rhoades

Executive Vice President

Ann Rhoades was Vice President of the People Department of Southwest Airlines, Executive Vice President of Team Services for Promus Hotel Corporation and most recently, the Executive Vice President of People for JetBlue Airways where she served for 15 years as a Board Member. She is President of People Ink, her consulting company that helps organizations create unique workplace cultures based on values and performance. Ann is respected in the industry for her creative approach for building strong values based service cultures, blending cultures in merger situations and creating cultures around fun. When she led the People Department at Southwest Airlines, she solidified Southwest’s reputation of retaining and hiring the best people in the airline business despite Southwest’s rapid growth during that time. And, as one of the founding executives of JetBlue Airways, Ann took responsibility for the creation of their People Team in New York.

Bill Shuttleworth

Professor and Scientist

After decades of denial, massive waves of brain activation–called “brain tsunamis”—are finally recognized as phenomena that make injuries like stroke much worse. Dr. Bill Shuttleworth believes this discovery will not only change stroke treatment, but also lead to new discoveries about how the brain works, how to treat other disorders, and even how we feel during our daily lives.

Bruce McCormick

Scientist

Bruce McCormick is an inventor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is the president and founder of SAVSU Technologies, holds numerous US patents, and is responsible for the commercialization of a number of products ranging from consumer products to medical devices approved by the FDA. Bruce’s current focus is in the development of technology to allow for the safe movement of biologics used in cell therapies and regenerative medicine including tracking, monitoring, and real time reporting of conditions during transits. He is committed to the expansion of global health to the farthest reaches of the earth to ensure that all people have protection from communicable diseases.

Charles Ashley

Entrepreneur

Charles L. Ashley III was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Las Vegas, NV. He received his Bachelors in Science in Business Administration from Adams State University (Alamosa, Colorado). After graduation and a two year stint as a Senior Academic Counselor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Charles relocated to Albuquerque where he was hired to create and manage the Bernalillo County Film Office. After holding several marketing positions with organizations in the Albuquerque area, he founded Cultivating Coders in 2015 where he currently serves as President.

Cindy Nava

Dreamer and Doer

In 2015, Cindy Nava became the first undocumented student to serve as an intern for the democratic national committee in Washington, DC. Later that year the Huffington Post called her “a Latina political star in the making” after being named one of “40 under 40” Latinos in American Politics to watch out for during the coming election cycle. In 2016 Cindy went on to be named one of 5000 national change making women in the US by the White House and was part of the first ever WH United State of Women Summit in DC. Cindy arrived to the U.S. as a child from Chihuahua Mexico. She currently serves as a Graduate Research Assistant for the UNM Center for Education Policy Research & the RWJF Center for Health Policy as well as a Graduate fellow for ENLACE NM. Cindy is currently working on her MA degree in Education Leadership and Policy.

Debra Haaland

Political Representative

Debra Haaland is the Chairwoman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. She has been a grassroots community organizer, businesswoman, and administrator and is highly active in the advocacy of Native American issues. She is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna. Debra ran for Lt. Governor of New Mexico in 2014, is the former Chairwoman of the Laguna Development Corporation Board of Directors, and the former Chairwoman of the Native American Democratic Caucus of NM. Debra holds a B.A. from UNM, and a J.D. from the UNM School of Law. She resides in Albuquerque where her daughter Somáh attends the University of New Mexico.

Hakim Bellamy We Are This City

Spoken Word Artist

Hakim Bellamy is a man with a passion for words, from poetry slams to enlightening young minds in the classroom. Hakim kicks off our event In collaboration with We Are This City. We are this city develops authentic local, national and international infrastructure for creatives to develop long-term, sustainable growth for the creative economy.

Jessica Goodkind

Sociologist

Jessica Goodkind is a community psychologist and Associate Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. She is the founder and director of the Refugee Well-being Project, which started in 2000 and brings together university students and newly resettled refugee families. They devote a school year to learning from each other and working together to access needed resources and transform communities to be more welcoming to refugees and more open to the opportunities for connection and learning that refugees bring with them. Jessica has been partnering with refugee, immigrant, and indigenous communities to promote social justice and eliminate mental health and other health disparities since 1993.

Lauren Poole

Actress & Emcee

She came to local fame with the success of viral video “Shit Burqueños Say.” Lauren is an ensemble member of Blackout Theatre, a company specializing in original works, comedy, and film. She is also an ensemble member of Improv Troupe “the Show,” which performs every Friday and Saturday night in Downtown Albuquerque, and she can be spotted in several movies that were filmed in New Mexico. Lauren will provide an event wrap-up to close the event.

Leon de la Vega

Contemporary Artist

Leon de la Vega is a contemporary artist and short story writer. He works mostly from his studio in Puerto Vallarta, which he designed and built as a community cultural center and restaurant with the objective of promoting the arts and protecting the local environment. His interest in issues affecting an increasingly technological society led him to study the significance of handwriting for the mind. He has created a collection of paintings, sculptures and writings to express the playful allure of learning and practicing handwriting and the importance it holds for civilization even in the future. Other works include more traditional decorative painting in a modern impressionist style, which he has shown in several galleries in the US and Mexico, and short stories that compare the cosmopolitan with the provincial, supporting high tech, yet questioning some of its applications and ontology.

Mary Lou Robinson

Researcher

Mary Lou Robinson is Division Chief for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s High Power Electromagnetic research and development work at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM. She leads over 80 military and civilians in executing roughly $50 million per year to transition technologies to improve U.S national security capabilities. Ms. Robinson has worked for the U.S. Air Force for 23 years both as an officer and as a civil servant. Her family has a strong sense of patriotism, as her husband retired after 20 years active duty in the U.S. Air Force, her oldest son is active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard, and her youngest son will enter active duty with the U.S. Air Force upon graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Embrey Riddle Aeronautical University, a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico, and an aerospace-focused MBA from the University of Tennessee.

Max Baptiste

Adventure Capitalist

Max Baptiste is the founder of the nonprofit/for profit hybrid We Are This City. He is passionate about working with creatives to develop their work into successful entrepreneurial businesses. Max finds that creatives are the hardest working entrepreneurs on the planet, yet are not valued as such. He believes this is changing, and he works diligently to help strengthen the creative ecosystem within his local community with the intentions of developing a model that is scalable and will help creative entrepreneurs around the globe. Hakim Bellamy became the inaugural poet laureate of Albuquerque in 2012. Many poems later, Bellamy has been on two national champion poetry slam teams, won collegiate and city poetry slam championships, and has been published in numerous anthologies and on inner-city buses. Bellamy is also a musician, actor, journalist, playwright, television host and community organizer.

Rulan Tangen

Internationally Regarded Dance Artist

Rulan Tangen’s dance journey centers around the founding of Dancing Earth Creations in 2004. After years of teaching dance workshops to reservation youth, she strove to create hope and opportunity for aspiring performers, theater artists and technicians, who also serve as culture carriers, art educators, and leaders. Dancing Earth has thus inspired a new generation of Indigenous performers to express their culture in vital contemporary and experimental forms. Her work values movement as an expression of indigenous worldview, honoring matriarchal leadership, dance as functional ritual for transformation and healing, the process of decolonizing the body, and the animistic energetic connection with all forms of life on earth. Surviving cancer to discover her leadership purpose, Tangen continues to teach extensively in Native communities across the Americas, as well as institutes of higher learning.

Stephanie Stewart

Beauty and Boudoir Photographer

Stephanie Stewart is a beauty and boudoir photographer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After realizing that she had a loud self-hate voice when she was 20 years old, Stephanie changed the way she thinks about herself and became dedicated to helping others find the true beauty in themselves.

Steven Kotler

Author and Researcher

Steven Kotler is a New York Times-bestselling author, an award-winning journalist and cofounder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project. He is one of the world’s leading experts on ultimate human performance. His work has been translated into over 40 languages and his articles have appeared in over 80 publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Time, Wired, and Forbes. He is also the cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary.

Sylvie Obledo

Creative Director

Sylvie Obledo discovered that creativity satiates the hunger for more. For almost 30 years, she fed the marketplace with clothing that consumers didn’t actually need through her career in the fashion industry. Sylvie transitioned her career from developing and selling product to creatively directing experiences. As Director of Ambiance Décor of the 2016 International Folk Art Market her days are filled with creating experiences that touch and transform while supporting cultural, social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

TEDx Speaker

TEDxABQ Speaker

Talk description unavailable

Troy Bradley

Adventurer

Self proclaimed adventureur, Troy Bradley, is a prolifically accomplished balloonist with over 64 World Records in hot air, gas, and hybrid balloons. In 2015, his flight across the Pacific Ocean in a helium balloon smashed global records for distance and duration.

Wes Naman

Photographer

Photographer Wes Naman became internationally recognized through his work on the Invisible Tape Series and his 505 Faces Project. He is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Zane Fischer

Designer

Zane Fischer is a lifelong problem solver and solution seeker. He has spent his professional life in a variety of roles balancing big ideas and iterative implementation. The core values Fischer has developed--community, design, creativity, irreverence and always-be-making-something-real--inform his latest endeavor. Extraordinary Structures is part entrepreneurial startup and part social experiment with the goal of creating modular systems and processes for digital fabrication and houses and structures as customizable products and sweat-equity construction kits. Fischer believes that the availability of digital fabrication tools and access to global, open source design can result in smaller, smarter, structures that spread like networks through urban cores, filling unexpected spaces and alleviating housing issues through the manifestation of pocket neighborhoods and compact communities.