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).

Ranney School
235 Hope Road
Tinton Falls, New Jersey, 07724
United States

Chella Man

Chella Man is a 19-year old deaf artist whose goal is to bring attention to and normalize conversation about gender issues for disabled and LGBTQ youth. Mr. Man is going through the process of gender transition through testosterone supplementation.

Cory Frank

Cory Frank is a 26-year-old filmmaker and photographer with a passion for surfing and music. Growing up, he spent the majority of his time surfing New Jersey beaches. When he wasn't surfing, he was watching surf films, which sparked his interest in filmmaking. Mr. Frank got his first mini DV camera when he was 15 and taught himself how to shoot and edit. Six years later he would turn his passion into a living, traveling the world to film and photograph friends and some of his favorite surfers.

Craig Schmell

Craig Schmell is a 27-year veteran of Wall Street, a successful business owner and a published author. His book, “The Uninvited: How I Crashed My Way into Finding Myself”, is the true story of a young imposter, with a talent for crashing celebrity events, who eventually learns what is really important in life. Mr. Schmell says telling his story helped him find redemption after years of troubling behavior. Among his many stories, Mr. Schmell drank from the Stanley Cup in the Rangers locker room and crashed the Grammy Awards in the late 1980s. Mr. Schmell's book has been featured on Good Morning America. Mr. Schmell says living a life of honor and integrity and helping others is a lesson he learned through life experiences and that how you live your life matters.

Douglas Pepe

Douglas J. Pepe is a partner in New York litigation boutique Joseph Hage Aaronson. By day, he represents hedge funds, financial institutions, corporations and large law firms in complex commercial disputes. On nights and weekends, he pursues his newfound passion in blockchain and crypto. He and a friend have been building a growing cryptocurrency mining operation and designing crypto-related algorithmic trading strategies. Doug’s two worlds are beginning to merge, as he has recently begun giving legal advice on cryptocurrency regulatory issues in his day job. He is the father of Ranney students Andrew, Desmond, Kyra and Deegan Pepe.

Dwight Brashear

Dwight Brashear started his long and successful career in the transportation industry as a bus driver after he graduated from high school. He spent the next 20 years in various positions of leadership with increasing responsibilities, working his way up from the front lines to Executive Management. On September 1, 2005, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mr. Brashear was asked by then Governor Kathleen Blanco to become the state transportation coordinator for the evacuation of the entire City of New Orleans. He was recognized for his efforts when Governor Blanco bestowed upon him a hero's designation. Mr. Brashear gave testimony relating to Hurricane Katrina before the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and is the only person to ever receive the Special Award for Extraordinary Leadership, which was presented to him by the American Public Transportation Association. Mr. Brashear graduated Cum Laude from Azusa Pacific University and holds a degree in Applied Leadership. Mr. Brashear has also studied multimodal transportation in France, Germany and Austria and Switzerland.

Dwight Brasher

Dwight Brashear started his long and successful career in the transportation industry as a bus driver after he graduated from high school. He spent the next 20 years in various positions of leadership with increasing responsibilities, working his way up from the front lines to Executive Management. On September 1, 2005, three days after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mr. Brashear was asked by then Governor Kathleen Blanco to become the state transportation coordinator for the evacuation of the entire City of New Orleans. He was recognized for his efforts when Governor Blanco bestowed upon him a hero's designation. Mr. Brashear gave testimony relating to Hurricane Katrina before the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and is the only person to ever receive the Special Award for Extraordinary Leadership, which was presented to him by the American Public Transportation Association. Mr. Brashear graduated Cum Laude from Azusa Pacific University and holds a degree in Applied Leadership. Mr. Brashear has also studied multimodal transportation in France, Germany and Austria and Switzerland.

Elena Man

Dr. Elena Man graduated from Harvard Medical School, completed residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and has been practicing pediatrics in Pennsylvania for over 20 years. Recognizing unmet need and desiring to work on this challenge, she is a faculty member and Board Chair for The REACH Institute, a national nonprofit dedicated to improving mental health care for kids by educating pediatricians, counselors, and school faculty.

Eric Hernando

Eric Hernando is a detective with the Holmdel, New Jersey Police Department, a Lieutenant with the Holmdel Fire Department, and he also serves as the Holmdel Township Emergency Management Coordinator. In addition to his regular duties in law enforcement in the sprawling township, Mr. Hernando is a drone expert. He started the drone program for the department, knowing that drones can be an important tool for public service agencies. Mr. Hernando says with proper training by police, drones can be used to assist in law enforcement, as well as the Fire Department, Emergency Management and Emergency Medical Services.

Frank King

Frank King, a suicide prevention and postvention public speaker and trainer, was a writer for The Tonight Show for 20 years, is a corporate comedian, syndicated humor columnist, and podcast personality, who was featured on CNN’s Business Unusual. Depression and suicide run his family. Mr. Frank has fought a lifetime battle with depression, turning that long dark journey of the soul into a TED Talk, “A Matter of Laugh or Death.” Mr. King looks to give people who battle mental and emotional illness permission to give voice to their feelings and experiences surrounding depression and suicide, and to create a common pool of knowledge in which those who suffer, and those who care about them, can swim. Mr. King believes that where there is humor there is hope, where there is laughter there is life, nobody dies laughing. He is currently working on a book on men’s mental fitness, Guts, Grit, and the Grind, with two coauthors. Mr. King lives in Eugene, OR and speaks around the US, and all over the world.

Gary Chan

Gary Chan has led a successful, thirty-four year career at Kraft Foods and Mondelez International, one of the world's largest snack, food, and beverage companies. He joined the company as a project engineer in 1980 at the Maxwell House Coffee manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas and has served in several top leadership positions in finance and strategy in the Global Supply Chain, International, and North America businesses. Mr. Chan redesigned the company's global finance processes and systems to a world-class level before he retired in 2013 as senior vice president of Finance Transformation. The Organization of Chinese Americans recognized Mr. Chan’s outstanding accomplishments and contributions towards enhancing opportunities for minorities in the corporate world and honored him with the Asian American Corporate Achievement Award in 2000. He was also recognized as a Business Leader of Color in 2011 by Chicago United, a nonprofit which promotes multiracial leadership in business. Mr. Chan was the president of the Lehigh University Alumni Association Board of Directors and also served on the Board of Directors of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He is currently a member of the Lehigh University Board of Trustees.

Glenn Freezman

Glenn Freezman was 14 when he was told his mother had just three months to live. The repo man had taken the family cars and the Freezman home was in foreclosure. The young Mr. Freezman had few options and one savior, a compassionate Philadelphia pretzel vendor, who took him under his wing. Mr. Freezman learned the trade, eventually selling more than 400,000 Philly soft pretzels by working the streets and stadiums of the city. Mr. Freezman tells people he earned his Ph.D. in Pretzel Logic at the Schools of Hard Knots. He believes his most valuable lesson is giving of oneself without the expectation of anything in return.

Hufsa Ahmad

Hufsa Ahmad is a Muslim woman, social worker, and standup comedian who lives with schizoaffective disorder. Having transformed from a victim of her illness to a champion of recovery, Hufsa dedicates her life to smashing the stigma of mental illness and helping others with mental health diagnoses find treatment, recovery, and peace. She was awarded the Mental Health Association “Hope & Courage” Award and the National Alliance on Mental Illness “Next Step Award” for her advocacy efforts. She currently serves as the only person with a mental health condition on the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled. She is pursuing her Masters of Social Work at CSU Long Beach and received her B.S. in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College.

Jeanne Marie Blodi

Jeanne Marie Blodi is a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach from Monmouth County. Her mission is to empower others to reach for natural solutions for maintaining and building physical and emotional health. Ms. Blodi is a Silver Leader for doTERRA International, a company that promotes the use of essential oils to achieve strong immunity and resiliency. She leads educational workshops in area communities and as a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, Ms. Blodi cultivates therapeutic partnerships with her clients through the use of positive lifestyle change, mindfulness and elimination of toxins. She uses the principles of functional medicine to help discover root causes of symptoms during personal wellness consults. Ms. Blodi and her husband Alex have two children and live in Little Silver.

Jesse Lueck

Jesse Lueck was hired at Prudential Financial just as she finished college and started her career as an associate in Fixed Income and Performance Reporting. She worked her way up to the management level and has transitioned into project management. Ms. Lueck is very active with diversity and inclusion and was appointed as a member of the Board of Directors for one of the business resource groups called Pride at Prudential. Because of her expertise, Ms. Lueck now speaks at other companies on the topics of inclusion in the workplace and the gender continuum. Ms. Lueck earned her B.S. in Mathematics from Seton Hall University and a Master of Science in Applied Statistics from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Ms. Lueck is an avid soccer player and in her spare time enjoys home renovation and spending time with her wife and dog.

JoAnn Pileggi

JoAnn Pileggi is a Reporter at Fox 29 in Philadelphia. She has worked in the media industry for affiliate stations of CBS, NBC and Fox. Over the past three decades, Ms. Pileggi has interviewed victims and survivors, heroes and homeless people, scientists and students, athletes and artists, farmers and firefighters. She has also had the opportunity to interview Joe Biden, Beyonce, President Bill Clinton, Derek Jeter, Barbara Bush and Bon Jovi. She has covered and reported thousands of stories on different issues and problems as well finding uplifting stories that reflect the human spirit. Ms. Pileggi has worked at Fox owned Channels 9 and 5 in the New York Metro area. She has also worked for companies producing and marketing sporting events, as well as appearing in corporate marketing videos. Last year, Ms. Pileggi launched a new business, Final Draft Essay, to help high school students define, design and write their best college application essays. Ms. Pileggi lives in Monmouth County with her three children. She is a triathlete and runner and has completed seven Ironman events and other races in the last seven years. Writing well is a passion and part of her life.

Lavaba Mall

LaVaba Mallison is a master of the music recording industry whose mantra has been, "the sky has always proven not to be a limit," and that is why Mr. Mallison has been a driving force in the industry over the last two decades. Mr. Mallison started in the entertainment business as a member of the CBS Records kids singing group "Kids at Work" and never looked back. He eventually joined forces with other industry giants like Sugar Hill Records and legendary musicians and promoters. Mr. Mallison started his own recording label called Roof Top Records, which had several platinum-selling albums. Mr. Mallison worked with the legendary producer Quincy Jones and also started a production management company, which produced, remixed and placed tracks for Usher, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton and Seal. He has also produced music for major films.

Mark Malkoff

Mark Malkoff is a comedian, writer, and filmmaker. He worked for Comedy Central's The Colbert Report and gained worldwide media attention when he made a video detailing his attempt to visit all 171 Starbucks franchises in Manhattan in a single day during the summer of 2007. He also lived in and slept at IKEA in Paramus New Jersey for a week in 2009. Mr. Malkoff has partnered with companies including Microsoft, Disney, PayPal and Kodak to create videos for them. He has been featured on Fox, the Today Show, and Good Morning America. Mr. Malkoff is a graduate of NYU and lives with his wife in Manhattan. His video social experiments have been designed to illustrate the power of "asking" and to demonstrate "what human beings are capable of with perseverance”.

Melanie Carpenter

Melanie Carpenter is a Managing Director at i-advize Corporate Communications, a financial services firm in Manhattan. Ms. Carpenter was eager to utilize her language skills and MBA in finance and she founded the company 18 years ago at the age of 26, as the first investor relations agency specializing in the Latin American market. i-advize is the largest agency dedicated to the region with over 50 clients including some of the largest publicly traded companies in Mexico and South America. Ms. Carpenter and her team assist senior management teams to prepare and disseminate information to the investing public. They design and create investor relations materials, earnings and annual reports, and investor events including site visits and presentations She works with major companies such as Arca Continental, Volaris, VALE, PetroPeru and Argentina's largest media company. Ms. Carpenter has a BBA in international business and an MBA in finance from Hoftra University, which she attended on a basketball scholarship. She is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Nachum Serota

Nachum Serota joined Ranney School in 2015 and teaches Biology, Neuropsychology, and Environmental Science. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Biology as well as a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brandeis University. Mr. Serota seeks to prioritize empathy and scientific literacy to redefine the conversation around mental illness in his community.

Patrizia Bonaventura

Dr. Patrizia Bonaventura has worked as a speech scientist and a phonetician for eleven years in the field of speech technology, in the domain of multilingual speech synthesis and recognition, collaborating with national and international labs and companies. After obtaining her PhD in Speech and Hearing Sciences at The Ohio State University in 2003, she worked as a post-doc the Department of Linguistics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, and as an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, and presently, at Monmouth University, in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology. She teaches courses in phonetics and phonology, speech science, instrumental measurements, linguistics, research methods, and motor speech and voice disorders. Her research focuses on analysis of coarticulation and timing coordination in speech by individuals with apraxia of speech, autism and speech sound disorders, through both articulatory and acoustic measurements. Also, she is currently conducting an international study to test efficacy of robots for rehabilitation of pragmatic language and social emotional skills in children with autism.

Sarah Gaer

Sarah Gaer is a Mental Health Clinician with her Masters Degree from Antioch University who has worked in human services since 1998. She is currently a Suicide Prevention Specialist with Riverside Trauma Center in Massachusetts and a Master Trainer for the OPR Institute, whose mission is to reduce suicidal behaviors and save lives by providing suicide prevention training. Ms. Gaer has been a selected speaker at national and international suicide prevention conferences. She recently completed her second fictional novel which was inspired by her work in Suicide Prevention and her experience as a young adult losing her best friend to suicide and struggling to find her way. Ms. Gaer's presentations combine her passion for helping people with her sense of wonder and a splash of humor.

Steve Aguirre

Steve Aguirre is a leadership consultant working closely with leaders in financial services, professional services, industrials, automotive, and retail. During his time working as a leadership consultant he has had the opportunity to work with leaders on change management, developing corporate culture, and leadership development. Mr. Aguirre has 10+ years of experience in a variety of sales and account management roles. He began his career at PIMCO in Newport Beach, CA before moving to Sydney, Australia where he served as Vice President, Account Manager, managing some of PIMCO’s largest Australian relationships. Mr. Aguirre started at Saddleback Community College in Orange County, CA before transferring to UC Berkeley where he obtained a B.S. in Business Administration. He then went on to obtain an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Finance and Management. He is also a CFA Charterholder.

Teja Anderson

Teja Anderson grew up around animals on a farm in VT. When she moved with her family to New Jersey twenty years ago, she discovered the shortage of Wildlife Rehabilitators in the state and immediately researched how to become one. After a long apprenticeship, she received her license from the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife. Since then, Ms. Anderson has cared for over 1,500 wild baby rabbits, as well as numerous baby chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, ducks, opossums, field mice and for the first time last year, two baby flying squirrels. Ms. Anderson is also an accomplished photographer, actress, artist, and designer. She lives in Monmouth Beach.“Talk to a Robot or to a Peer: What’s easier for a child with Autism?”

Tilden Brighton

Tilden Brighton is the founder & editor behind NYC Life and Style Blog, To Be Bright. What began as an online resume in 2013 to help her land a job has transformed into her full-time career today, as a result of organic growth and readership. Tilden’s style and aesthetic grabs the attention of leading retailers to collaborate with her on her blog, including known-labels such as Banana Republic and Henri Bendel. To Be Bright has been featured in numerous publications such as InStyle Magazine, Teen Vogue, and Refinery29.

Vincent Lam

Vincent Lam has had a passion for fitness for as long as he can remember. His goal is to help people restore, maintain, and promote quality of life and optimal physical function. He is devoted to helping others achieve their fitness goals. He graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in kinesiology and is also a certified personal trainer.