Theme: Shaping Tomorrow

Showcasing Oakland’s best ideas to the world, and also bringing great ideas from the world to the TEDxOakland community to inform and drive change in our city. It will be a day of stimulating presentations, discussions, entertainment, and arts that will bend perceptions, Inspire Curiosity and spark new ideas in our community and beyond.

Oakland Technical High School
4351 Broadway
Oakland, California, 94611
United States

Beth Anderson

Science Visualizer

BETH ANDERSON fuses two of her passions – science and art she uses her 3D animation talent to make science visual and easy to understand. The road to the present has been circuitous, looping back to the sciences. Before founding her company Arkitek Scientific, Beth spent three years at Large Scale Biology Corporation where she helped to design and construct 2D electrophoresis equipment, as well as a high volume centrifuge-based oligonucleotide synthesizer, PCOS. She holds a US patent jointly with Dr. Norman Anderson and Doug Huff (U.S. Patent 6,702,229, B2 – Method, Apparatus and Article to Display Flight Information)

Butterscotch Clinton

Singer/Artist

Butterscotch, the retro-futuristic, voice percussionist virtuosa, is a force to be reckoned with in today’s music scene. Being the world’s first female beatboxing champion, she has created a unique style and is truly the definition of a one woman band. Butterscotch fuses multiple genres (jazz, hip-hop, soul, reggae) and creates endless layers of singing, beatboxing, guitar and keyboard, that she records live on her loop station, and sonically sounds like a live band. Her music always contains a message to reach those who are in need of love and inspiration. Butterscotch has opened up and shared stages with Erykah Badu, Thievery Corporation, Sergio Mendes, Wyclef Jean, Earth, Wind & Fire and other musical legends.

Ensemble Mik Nawooj

Hip-Hop Orchestra

Led by classically trained composer/pianist JooWan Kim, Ensemble Mik Nawooj (EMN), the ten-piece Hip-Hop orchestra with MCs/lyricists Do D.A.T. and Sandman, a soprano, winds, strings, funky drums, and piano, creates new concert music by injecting classical compositional techniques into hip-hop. The result, makes the Kronos Quartet or the Roots feel like they're afraid of their own voice (Pitchfork) and has been considered the cutting edge of Hip-Hop (Huffington Post). EMN has been featured on EPSN’s NFL Super Bowl 50 programming, Wall Street Journal, NPR, SF Chronicle, OZY, and more.

Eric Frenchiebabyy

Artist + Dancer

Tripple Jointed

Hailey Knox

Singer + Artist

Hailey is a New York-based singer/songwriter Hailey Knox rose to popularity with her acoustic covers of pop hits posted on the Internet. She signed a deal with S-Curve Records by late 2015 and, the following year, she had racked up over two million views and was nominated for YouNower of the Year at the 2016 Shorty Awards. Her debut EP, A Little Awkward, was released that summer.

Ken Goldberg

Professor in robotics + AI

Ken is a UC Berkeley Professor where he leads research in robotics and AI for applications in manufacturing, surgery, precision agriculture, and social media. His experience suggests that these innovations will empower humans, not replace them. As a response to the Singularity, when AI makes humans obsolete, he proposes "Multiplicity", where diverse groups of people and machines work together. Multiplicity characterizes most the recent innovation at Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Uber, where input from people plays a central role. An important new development is "Cloud Robotics," which can significantly advance robots using emerging advances in cloud computing, big data, deep learning, open-source, and the Internet of Things.

Lateefah Simon

President

Lateefah is the President of Akonadi Foundation, which nurtures movement building to advance racial justice in Oakland. A nationally recognized advocate for civil rights and racial justice, Lateefah brings over 20 years of executive experience advancing opportunities for communities of color and low-income communities in the Bay Area. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s 40 Under 40, and the Jefferson Award for extraordinary public service.

Laura Stachel

Laura E. Stachel, M.D., M.P.H., Executive Director, the co-founder of WE CARE Solar, is an obstetrician-gynecologist with fourteen years of clinical experience. She holds an M.D. from University of California, San Francisco and an M.P.H. in Maternal and Child Health from University of California, Berkeley. Laura was the Associate Director of Emergency Obstetric Research in West Africa for the Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability. She was the P.I. on a MacArthur Foundation project on We Care Solar Suitcase usage in Nigeria and Uganda, and was co-investigator for a collaborative Population Council study that assessed the standard of maternity care in Nigerian state hospitals. Laura was a staff researcher at the Blum Center for Developing Economies at U.C. Berkeley. She serves on the Editorial Board for the Berkeley Wellness Letter and co-chairs a international working group on Energy and Health for the UN Foundation. Laura has won numerous awards including the 2015 UN DESA “Powering the Future We Want” Award, the UCSF Alumni Award, the C3E Leadership in Developing Countries Award, and the Top-Ten 2013 CNN Heroes award. E-mail: laura_at_wecaresolar.org.

Liz Klinger

Entrepreneur

Liz Klinger is the Co-founder and CEO of Lioness Health, a company dedicated to improving the lives of women by opening up the conversation around women's sexual health using technology. After leaving her job at an investment bank to pursue her passion of gender and sexuality, she sold intimacy products to women of all ages. There she learned that many women had unmet questions, curiosities, and shame around their own sexuality. These stories motivated her to do something about it so that women had resources they can comfortably turn to when they have questions about sexuality and their own bodies. Liz has been featured in the The New York Times’s Women of the World and was named a Ladies We Love by Ravishly. She has also appeared the Huffington Post Live’s morning show and spoken at top universities about women’s health and technology. Liz attended Wellesley College and graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Philosophy and Studio Art, focusing her studies on Sexuality.

Los Rokas

The Grammy nominated group, Los Rakas was born in the youth centers of Oakland, CA in 2006. This duo are of Panamanian descent and raised in both cultures. They are the future of world music and have trendsetted their way into mainstream, touring nationwide and internationally. Performing in both English and Spanish, their specialty is that they teach Spanish through their music- no more Rosetta Stone is needed!! Los Rakas are known for rocking any party - from youth events to world wide festivals, they hype the crowd and get the party all the way live! What is a Raka? a person who is proud of who they are. The Rakas are making sure that the voice of the pueblo is heard, their unique sound bridges cultures from all over the world. Listen to them here, listen to them on the news, on the radio, the television, in movies, hear them in your favorite video game, read about them in the paper or online - AND be sure to catch them at a live show... Raka Party...

Marwa Azab

Marwa Azab, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of psychology and human development at California State University, Long Beach. She studied psychology for many years and completed a masters in counseling from Toronto, Canada and her Ph.D. in neuroscience from University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the biology department. She has given three TEDx talks, including “The Logical Vs. The Reflexive Brain: Only One Wins” & "5 Ways Negative People Can Harm Us"

Peter Leyden

Founder and CEO

Peter Leyden is the Founder and CEO of Reinvent, a media company that engages top innovators in deep conversations about solving complex challenges and then creates media about their big ideas. He is the host of What’s Now: San Francisco, a monthly event showcasing thought leaders from leading centers of innovation throughout the Bay Area. In the past Leyden worked for several innovative organizations that helped reinvent the fields of media, business and politics: He was managing editor at Wired magazine that helped introduce the digital revolution in the 1990s. He worked at Global Business Network, the pioneering think tank helping corporations and governments plan for the future. He was founding director of the New Politics Institute that helped those in Washington transition to politics on the Internet. Leyden frequently gives keynote talks on new technologies and trends shaping the future.

Porsche Kelly

Porsche Kelly is a spoken word artist from Oakland, Ca. She performs gut-wrenching, heartfelt poetry in a variety of spaces and is especially passionate about social justice, including fighting against racism, sexism, and human trafficking. She has performed at several open mics, college campuses, corporate events, conferences and churches, as well as performed in stage plays and productions. She is currently working on her first poetry book, which she hopes to release next year. While she calls herself "The Poetic Activist", Porsche writes about an array of topics: God and faith, freedom, hope, social justice, peace, love/romance and more. Her aim is to speak truth with raw and unapologetic lyrics, inspiring others to rise up and fight for justice.

Reggie Brown

Comedian, Actor and Keynote Speaker Reggie Brown challenges our understanding of perception, image and realizing truth through a powerful and comedic experiment.

Rey Faustino

CEO & Founder

Rey launched One Degree to ensure that all families have access to services they need to overcome poverty. Rey began his career as a teacher and later was the site director at BUILD, a college access nonprofit organization that propels low-income youth to attain a college education. Rey received his B.S. in Business Entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California and earned his Master in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is an alumnus of Y Combinator, an Echoing Green Fellow, and an Education Pioneers Fellow. Rey, MPP 2012 received Harvard’s 2017 Emerging Global Leader Award. In his spare time, Rey practices yoga, plays with gadgets, and builds furniture from scratch.

Steven Wolfe Pereira

Committed to inspiring people to ignite their true potential, Mr. Wolfe Pereira serves as the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Quantcast.