Theme: ReThink..

It’s time to challenge the status quo. To consider new perspectives. To rethink the way we address our world and all things in it. Whether it’s a radical reassessment or a minor adjustment, let’s come together to discover the possibilities presented when we approach things anew.

We invite you to join us at TEDxGlasgow 2018 to uncover the best and brightest ideas and innovations. Be part of an inspirational day, attended and watched by curious individuals from across the globe.

Clyde Auditorium, SEC
Congress Rd
Glasgow, Glasgow City, G3 8YW
United Kingdom

Adam Kashmiry

An Egyptian refugee, Adam is a performer, an LGBTIQ advocate and an educator for transgender issues. He has recently made his professional debut in the theatre production called ADAM as part of the Fringe 2017. This play went on to win the Fringe First Award, the Scottish Arts Club Award and was shortlisted for Amnesty International’s coveted Award for Free Speech. Adam has also won a Herald Angel Award for this role. Prior to this, Adam appeared in the short film ‘Time for T.E.A’ by LGBT youth Scotland, as well as a 2012 production in the Citizen’s theatre called ‘Here we stay’.

Adam Rutherford

With a PhD in Genetics and a degree in evolutionary biology, Adam Rutherford is well known for his BBC Radio 4 flagship science programme ‘Inside Science’, as well as many documentaries, on the inheritance of intelligence, on MMR and autism, human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex. On television, his latest series was The Beauty of Anatomy on BBC4, on the role of the human dissection in art. Adam also presented the award-winning Horizon: Playing God (BBC2, Jan 2012); The Gene Code (BBC4, Apr 2011); and the award-winning The Cell (BBC4, Sept 2009). A movie geek, Adam was scientific advisor to Björk’s movie Biophilia Live and worked on World War Z, The Secret Service (2014) and Ex Machina (2015). His critically acclaimed first book, Creation – on the origin and future of life – was published in 2013, and was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. He is currently writing his second, and third.

Andy Haldane

Andrew G Haldane is the Chief Economist at the Bank of England. He is also Executive Director, Monetary Analysis, Research and Statistics. He is a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. He also has responsibility for research and statistics across the Bank. Andrew has an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University, is Honorary Professor at University of Nottingham, a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, a member of Economic Council of Royal Economic Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and Member of Research and Policy Committee at NESTA. Andrew is the founder and Trustee of ‘Pro Bono Economics’, a charity which brokers economists into charitable projects and a Trustee of National Numeracy. Andrew has written extensively on domestic and international monetary and financial policy issues and has published over 150 articles and four books. In 2014, TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Catherine Heymans

Catherine Heymans is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in observing the dark side of our universe, using deep sky observations to test whether we need to go beyond Einstein with our current theory of gravity. Catherine has co-authored over 150 articles in scientific journals and written the popular science book “The Dark Universe”. She is a fellow of both the European Research Council and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and she holds the 2017 Darwin Lectureship from the Royal Astronomical Society. When Catherine is not busy unveiling the mysteries of the universe or enthusiastically lecturing undergraduates, she can usually be found building sandcastles and paddling in the sea with her three small children.

Darren McGarvey

Going by the stage name Loki, Darren McGarvey is a Scottish rapper, hip hop recording artist, columnist, author and social commentator, who is passionate about exploring community and social responsibility. Brought up in Pollok, in Glasgow’s south side, surrounded by poverty, addiction, and mental troubles, Darren went on to study journalism at Glasgow Clyde College and wrote and presented eight programmes about the cause of anti-social behaviours and social deprivation for BBC Radio Scotland. In 2017, he published his first book Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass.

David Webster

David Webster is a Partner at global design and innovation company IDEO, and is based in Palo Alto, California. Immersed in the heart of Silicon Valley, Webster and his colleagues are passionate about using design to humanise technology. They channel this into the creation of valuable new user experiences and businesses for tech giants, global brands, and startups. David is particularly focused on exploring the new affordances of emerging technologies. A current example is ‘augmented intelligence’, where the goal is to use artificial intelligence to extend and complement, rather than replace, human capability. David has played multiple leadership roles in his 20-year tenure at IDEO. He was previously the Managing Director for each of IDEO’s largest studios, in Palo Alto and San Francisco, and also led the company’s global Health and Wellness practice. Before IDEO, Webster worked at GK Design in Tokyo, where a renowned Japanese industrial designer taught him the phrase, ‘Human-Machine-Soul-Energy.’ He firmly believes in the value of designing at the intersection of all four, making it a core theme in his work and many talks for conferences, clients, and universities. Webster holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from University of Edinburgh. He is happiest being a kid with his kids and building things in their imaginary worlds.

Jack Kreindler

Jack is a doctor, serial technology entrepreneur, and international thought leader on the future of life science and medicine. Having trained at UCL in Medicine and Physiology, and after practicing in Emergency Medicine and High Altitude Physiology, in 2007, Jack founded The Centre for Health and Human Performance (CHHP) in London. CHHP is now renowned for its work with elite athletes and applying sport science to help the sickest and most unlikely individuals succeed in extraordinary challenges, including all the Sport Relief charity challenges. With an interest and professional experience in information technology since the age of 13, Jack has founded and funded several innovative medical technology ventures in the UK and California aiming to bring predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence into healthcare management and medical practice to enable doctors and patients make better, earlier decisions.

Jean MacAskill Kerr

Jean MacAskill Kerr has spent over 20 years working in the tech industry developing a deep fascination with change and how people react to it – in today’s’ increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world the need for resilience and strength in the face of change has never been more critical. Through Jean’s day job, supporting leaders and teams in Cisco as they transform the business, her passion to learn more about wellbeing and resilience become strong enough to have her step forward and volunteer to learn more deeply about wellbeing first hand. By becoming an early pioneer for the Cisco Pavelka initiative Jean had the opportunity to work closely with international health and wellbeing expert Jessie Pavelka who is partnering with Cisco to re-imagine how we tackle wellbeing in the workplace. Always an enthusiastic student, Jean threw herself into the experience and learned how to completely rethink her approach to health and most importantly how to put small and sustainable changes in place to make a real transformation that can “stick” – even when things get challenging.

Karen Dunbar

Born in Glasgow and brought up in Ayr, Karen Dunbar is one of Scotland’s best-known and loved comedy actors. Starting off her television career in the sketch show Chewin’ The Fat, she went on to star in four seasons of The Karen Dunbar Show, which received four Rose d’OR nominations, and, most recently, joined the infamous River City cast. But television is just one string to her bow, Karen has repeatedly appeared in British theatres including London’s West End, the National Theatre, acted in Shakespeare plays, performed Burns poetry, done stand up comedy, recorded her own album and DJ-ed in New York and Australia. For over 25 years she has charmed audiences with her comedy, music and acting talents and now she brings her unique style of storytelling to our TEDx stage.

Kirsty Wark

One of Britain’s most experienced television journalists, Kirsty Wark has presented a wide range of programmes over the past thirty years – from the groundbreaking Late Show to Election specials, live stadium events and the BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs show Newsnight. She also hosted the weekly Arts and Cultural review and comment show, The Review Show (formerly Newsnight Review) for over a decade. She has conducted long-form interviews with everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Madonna, Harold Pinter to Pete Doherty, Damian Hirst to George Clooney and the likes of Toni Morrison, Donna Tartt and Philip Roth. Kirsty has made cameo appearances in a range of television dramas, radio programmes and films. She has featured in Dr Who, Absolutely Fabulous, The IT Crowd, Spooks, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, The Acid House, Beyond the Pole, Party Animals, With Great Pleasure and The Politician’s Husband. She reached the final in Celebrity Masterchef in 2011 and hosted the culinary quiz A Question of Taste for BBC2. Kirsty has won several major awards for her work including BAFTA Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcasting, Journalist of the Year and Best Television Presenter. Kirsty was born in Dumfries and educated in Kilmarnock. She is married to Alan Clements and has two children. Her debut novel, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle, was published in March 2014 by Two Roads – an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. She is currently writing her second novel.

Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne

Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne is a trained chef and food entrepreneur. She studied Physiology at the University of London and after graduation, trained at Leith’s School of Food and Wine before honing her skills as a Chef at Conran’s Bibendum Restaurant. Lucinda also ran a successful catering company in London for three years before returning to Leiths as a cookery teacher and co-author of the Leiths Techniques Bible. In 2008, she founded Genius Foods, a company with a mission to deliver delicious gluten-free products and promote gastronomy inclusivity. Now with in excess of 25 products, Genius exports across the globe to Europe, Australia and North America. In addition to Leiths Techniques Bible, her literary portfolio now also includes How to Cook for Food Allergies published 2007 and most recently The Genius Gluten-Free Cookbook published in January 2016. Lucinda was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017 where she now sits on the Enterprise Fellowship Panel. She has also recently been announced as Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Edinburgh.

Marcela Navarro

Marcela is the award-winning Co-Founder and CEO of Project-X. Their mission is to radically transform 10 industries in 10 years – making whole industries more sustainable in the process. By working within the value chain, working with tested and viable sustainable innovation substitutions, they are achieving exponential impact. Her career has spanned over 20 years, three continents, four languages and the fields of value chain, sustainability and banking for the likes of WWF, RBS and ABN Amro. She is a recognised leader in purpose-led transformation, value chain and open innovation models.

Miha Pogacnik

Speaker & Violinist, Cultural Ambassador of Slovenia

Miha's life has been marked by social innovations, including creation of over 200 intercultural festivals in crisis areas of the world, and in the course of last 20 years working with leadership of over 100 global brand companies, appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos and China, and European Economic Forum in Alpbach, Austria, as well as in different Agencies of the UN.

Nick Earle

Nick spent 30-years in the high-tech industry and led two cross-company transformation programs for $50 billion-dollar IT giants prior to applying his change management skills to the transportation industry. He has also co-authored two books; Mesh Collaboration: Creating New Business Value in the Network of Everything (2008) and From Dot.com to Dot.profit (2000). Today, Nick leads Virgin Hyperloop One’s Global Field Operations organisation. Virgin Hyperloop One is leading the world in designing and building the first new mode of mass transportation since the aeroplane. Prior to this, Nick was responsible for the Cisco Systems’ global cloud go-to-market strategy and Cisco Services worldwide field organisation and grew the business to over $10 billion in revenue. He was tasked by the CEO to lead the company’s efforts to transition from hardware-centric company to a cloud, software, and services-led company. He has also held senior executive roles at Hewlett Packard, where he ran the Worldwide Enterprise Marketing function and was appointed by the CEO to define and roll out the HP Internet strategy to transform HP for the dot-com era.

Philippa Waller

Philippa is CEO of 4D Human Being. She is passionate about bringing Conscious Leadership and Conscious Communication to leaders, teams and individuals all over the world. With a background in business, theatre, improvisation and psychology, Philippa works extensively in the fields of personal impact, presentation skills, storytelling, creativity and communication at all levels within organisations. And in all formats – from fully immersive 4D Leadership & Communication skills Programmes to 1-2-1 Executive Coaching to Interactive Conference Keynotes.

Rachel Woods

Rachel was diagnosed with High Functioning Autism at the age of 10 at the Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital. She went on to receive speech and social therapy from a very young age. Anxiety plays a big role in her everyday life but with a supportive network of family, friends and colleagues, she can confidently turn to those people when she is in need of help. Now, Rachel works for VisitScotland, has delivered a speech to HRH Princess Anne and is representing Scotland’s youth as a Year of Young People Ambassador.

Roie Galitz

Israeli born photographer Roie Galitz’s greatest passions in life, nature and photography, take him into the wild. As an adventurous wildlife photographer, he travels in extreme conditions to some of the most remote places on earth, capturing images of rarely viewed animals in their natural habitats. He believes that a unique perspective, in photography and life, can actualize any vision. His lifelong mission is to take pictures that have never taken before, through which he is able to raise awareness to increasingly pressing environmental issues. Roie is an award-winning wildlife photographer and a Greenpeace ambassador to the Arctic and the Antarctic. For over a decade, he has been exploring and documenting our planet’s wildlife. His photographs get great exposure worldwide, millions of views and frequent appearances in the media (most recently featured in the BBC’s Snow Bears film, aired Christmas 2017). He has been showcased in international exhibitions and featured in exclusive magazines, and this year, he will share his exciting adventures here at TEDxGlasgow.

Sethu Vijayakumar

Professor Sethu Vijayakumar holds the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering – Microsoft Research Chair in Robotics at the University of Edinburgh and is the founding director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics. He has pioneered the use of large scale machine learning techniques in the real-time control of several iconic robotic platforms, including the SARCOS and the HONDA ASIMO humanoids, KUKA-LWR robot arm and iLIMB prosthetic hand. His latest project (2017) involves a collaboration with NASA Johnson Space Centre on the Valkyrie humanoid robot being prepared for unmanned robotic pre-deployment missions to Mars. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a judge on BBC Robot Wars and winner of the 2015 Tam Dalyell Prize for excellence in engaging the public with science.

Shona McCarthy

Shona McCarthy is the Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society – the charity that underpins the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Originally from County Down, Shona has dedicated her career to championing and developing arts and culture. From 2011 to 2014 she was Chief Executive of the Culture Company, leading on Derry-Londonderry’s transformational year as UK City of Culture, creating and delivering a world-class, citywide cultural programme for 2013. Prior to that she was Director of the British Council Northern Ireland leading a team of 40 to oversee international programmes of work across schools, arts and Higher Education to build positive international cultural relations. She was the CEO of Imagine Belfast, heading up Belfast’s bid to be European Capital of Culture. She was Head of Exhibition at the Northern Ireland Film Council and also spent many years as Chief Executive of Cinemagic Film Festival for young people in Belfast; and the Foyle Film Festival in Derry. In 2007 she was the Northern Ireland recipient of a NESTA cultural leadership award which took her to live and work in India with Seagull Foundation for the Arts in Calcutta, and in 2014 she was Northern Ireland’s recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship. As well as her Fringe commitments, Shona is Chair of Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast, and Walk The Plank, a Salford-based Creative agency specialising in spectacular outdoor arts and pyrotechnics.

Simon Bowers

With a notable career as an investigative journalist spanning over 20 years, Simon Bowers worked as Senior Business Reporter for The Guardian before joining the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) as its senior reporter in January 2017. Specialising in investigative stories, he has worked on projects involving large data leaks, including the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. His reporting has featured in The Guardian, BBC Panorama, New York Times, The Irish Times, CBC News, ABC News, Vice News, Le Soir and El Confidencial. Often working closely with whistleblowers, his articles have helped to win awards, spark political resignations, prompt parliamentary inquiries, change laws, build lawsuits and bring criminal prosecutions. And now, he brings his story to our TEDx stage.

Van Ives

VanIves is a music production collaboration between childhood friends Stuart Ramage and Roan Ballantyne, from Castle Douglas, Scotland. The songs are written in an innovative manner when Stuart began producing tracks by sampling Ramage family VHS tapes. Emotively drawing inspiration from memories captured in these tapes, Roan and Stuart have cultivated an exciting blend of chilled guitar riffs and banging, bass heavy dance music. Debut single Positive is being released on Vielen Dank Records 31st May. The track was recorded at home and self produced by VanIves.

Victoria Heaney

Victoria Heaney is a woman on a crusade for menstrual justice. She is a member of one of Scotland’s most effective grassroots organisations “Women for Independence”. Her commitment to feminism and gender equality led her to create #FreePeriodScotland, a national research study that set out to create a never seen before evidence base around period poverty. The findings of her research highlighted that period poverty was but a scratch on a surface of one of the most salient hidden issues of our time. This has propelled Victoria to go beyond period poverty and to take the topic of menstruation into the mainstream. Fighting for equality is intrinsic to her values and something that has followed her all her life. From supporting women to pursue equal pay in her hometown as a trade unionist to being an International Observer for the Catalonian Government, her pursuit of doing the right thing is a natural part of her character.