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 RIO THEATER
1205 Soquel Ave
Santa Cruz, California, 95062
United States

David Vasquez

David Vasquez is a college instructor, book author, computer-graphic specialist, and filmmaker who is focused on renewable energy and sustainable urban design. He has a doctorate degree mixing cognitive science with science education and he wrote a book about next-generation solar-hydrogen railway-systems. His professional role has been as VISUALIZER of outside-the-box environmental solutions. He uses this craft both (a) as an independent consultant to public planning agencies in the SF Bay Area, and (b) to educate graduate students in a Landscape Design Dept. (Academy of Art University, SF) about how to create emotionally-engaging promotional images of proposed public projects.

Gregory Gavin

Gregory Gavin is an artist, inventor and educator. He founded Riveropolis in 2004 to design, build, install and facilitate innovative water play environments and to bring design experiences to schools, museums and neighborhoods. Since the 1991 his projects — ranging from woodworking to filmmaking, to interactive waterworks — have engaged a diversity of participants to both create and exhibit work in public places. His work has been particularly successful in overcoming the obsessive segregation of children, teen and adult activities into separate realms in a way that he feels damages the transfer of inter-generational knowledge and discovery. Gavin has been commissioned by National Endowment for the Arts, the de Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Seattle Public Art Program and the Bay Area Discovery Museum. He has taught at the California College of the Arts and is a California Arts Council Fellow.

Hannah Faris

Hannah Faris is a young environmentalist who became president of Kids 4 Hydrogen when she was a junior in high school. She created a white board video that describes how converting internal combustion engines to use a liquid hydrogen fuel can stop climate change.

Joe Jordan

Joe Jordan did atmospheric and space research at NASA/Ames and the SETI Institute (Mountain View) for decades, studying the two largely unrelated problems of stratospheric ozone depletion and tropospheric climate change. Since then he’s been working on solutions, involving education and training (for a new “green workforce”, etc.), and media outreach. He has long been on the Board of Directors of Ecology Action of Santa Cruz, and was the key driver steering that organization toward its present multi-million-dollar enterprise of promoting and implementing energy and water efficiency throughout California. He initiated the large installations of solar-electric (“PV”) systems on several of the Santa Cruz City Schools, as well as the very first PV systems ever to be located on public buildings in that town. Joe is currently co-hosting a new radio-show/podcast-series/social-media-enterprise called “Planet Watch” on KSCO.

Logan Conover

Logan Conover founded When, Not If…, a non-profit organization that educates people about their carbon emissions, the positive feedback loop, and easy solutions to reducing CO2 in the atmosphere. He stumbled across climate change when he learned that many congressmen/women were denying its existence. This frustrated Logan because he couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t believe 99% of the scientists who state with proof that climate change is real. Logan realized that he needed to do something fast and he needed to make it easy, so he created When, Not If… to share facts with people and get the world to take action against climate change.

Martin Gaskell

Martin Gaskell is a researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UCSC. He has over four decades of experience working on issues related to supermassive black holes (including a Ph.D.), a couple of hundred publications, and many research grants. He was a finalist for five years in a row for top teaching award at the University of Nebraska. Martin also engages in many popular talks to the public.

Mas Hashimoto

Mas Hashimoto was a child when his family was taken from their Watsonville home in 1942. He was sent to a federal prisoner of war camp during WWII because of racism, war hysteria, and political leadership failure. Mas taught US History in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District until his retirement. He speaks to groups of students about the wartime experience of Japanese Americans during WWII to ensure that this injustice never repeats itself again. Mas also headed the Re-enactment of the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII: “Liberty Lost; Lessons in Loyalty” in 2002, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Watsonville-Santa Cruz chapter Japanese American Citizens League.

Nicole D'Arcy

Nicole is a doctor of emergency medicine who is currently doing an EMS/Disaster Fellowship at UCSF. She completed her Emergency Medicine residency at Harbor UCLA and medical school at Stanford School of Medicine. She enjoys singing, dancing, and playing guitar, and she enjoys making music videos as a creative method for reaching her audiences. A native Santa Cruzan, Nicole loves to kayak and paddleboard. During the winter, she enjoys downhill skiing.

Pascal Costa

Pascal Costa founded Preventing OverPopulation, a non-profit organization that educates child-bearing people about how their decisions to have children directly affect the world. She has presented her project at the Earth Day Santa Cruz festival and she was interviewed on Earth Watch Radio. Pascal recently graduated from high school and plans to continue to advocate for population control in college.

Tim Niemier

Tim’s goal in life is to put “A billion butts in boats in healthy water.” He is the founder and designer/entrepreneur who introduced the sit-on- top Ocean Kayak to the world. These kayaks revolutionized all paddle sports because it made kayaking water-friendly. Bringing millions of people into the water makes them appreciate the delicate balance of our eco systems. Tim was 100% responsible for all post-consumer waste and pioneered product stewardship in the water-sport industry and other endeavors. He also continues to lead many environmental organizations with creative and sustainable innovations. Tim enjoys finding solutions to cleaning the ocean using resource management and recycling.