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).

Technopolis
Piers 100 & Voutadon
Athens, Attiki, 11854
Greece

Anastasios Diolatzis

Anastasios Diolatzis is one of the main organisers of Reworks Festival which takes place every year, for 13 years now, in Thessaloniki with growing success. Reworks Festival has become one of the most important festivals in Electro music and one of the best in Europe. Festival culture is not easy nor quick to develop. The team of Anastatios Diolatzis worked hard and systematically for years in order succeed and have the festival grow into a major cultural and artistic event which attracts renowned artists from the electronic music scene. Every year, people from all around Europe rush to attend the Reworks Festival where artists from Greece participate in order to share their work with a European audience. Reworks Festival, other than a major musical event, is also a great source of income for the city of Thessaloniki due to its growing success.

Andromache Karanika

Andromache Karanika grew up in Volos, right next to the fabled Mount Pelion, the mountain of the Centaurs, a place filled with tales, myths, history and the magic of a unique landscape. She is a graduate of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki where she studied classics and Princeton University where she got her Ph.D. She has taught at many universities in the US such as Princeton, Stanford, Temple and is now an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests are orality and women’s presence in Greek literature. She has written many articles on Homer, Homer’s reception in Byzantium, lament and children’s songs, pastoral poetry, among others, and is the author of Voices at Work: Women Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece. She is the editor of TAPA, (Transactions of the American Philological Association), the flagship journal of the Society of Classical Studies (SCS). From Callisto to Arctos and to the galaxies, Andromache Karanika will speak to us about arctos as a primordial symbol of transformation and power. She will take us on a journey of analyzing myths and ancient games with arctos as our guide.

Bianca Mularoni

Bianca Mularoni is an Italian woman who lives in the United Kingdom. She has a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) from LUISS University in Rome (Italy). Nowadays, she is completing her Masters in Environmental Sustainability at the University of Edinburgh. In 2016, she interned at the Embassy of San Marino to Italy and to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), which gave her the opportunity to be involved in the Open-Ended Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She started her account and blog “Zero Waste Path” in March 2016, and has now launched her “Zero Waste Path Shop” in February 2018. Furthermore, Bianca was one of the founders of “Rete Zero Waste”, a website launched in December 2017 by a group of zero waste women with the aim of creating a network and improving the diffusion of Zero Waste living in Italy.”

Christianna Ekonomou

Christianna Economou was born and raised in Athens. She studied sculpture arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London where she stayed for five years. She left London to travel to India to participate in a voluntary programme of Art Therapy for children in New Delhi. When she returned from India, she decided to pursue her old passion which was related to the sea. She travelled around “Small Cyclades”, she used her educational and cultural work in order to showcase the culture of the islands by restoring traditional abandoned local fishing boats, a project named ‘Fearless boats’. She also teaches fine arts to children who live in islands of Agoni Grammi. Her deep love for art, tradition and the sea made her follow her dream, an Arctos which was active and creatively filled with love and respect for the past.

Eva Karra

Eva Karra was born and raised in Thessaloniki. She graduated from the school of commerce and advertising/marketing after having received a scholarship in order to get involved with her family’s business. Her love for communication and foreign languages (English, French and German) along with her commercial awareness and the challenges that the world of commerce entails seem to form the idea platform for her future development. At 17 years old she watched a documentary on Human trafficking which forever changed her way of thinking and constituted the lost decisive factor with regards to her future choices. She dreamt of travelling to con tires like Thailand and Cambodia in order to further explore the intricacies of the problem and contribute to its solution. This was how she shifted her focus towards social sciences starting by becoming an intern in Athenian NGOs. She actively participated in the efforts to support the underage victims of human trafficking who were found that same year and she also conducted research on spreading awareness on the issue children trafficking. After realising that there are people who are being used as if they were objects and are being exploited in that way she decided to leave marketing for good. She accepted a two year scholarship on the field of Youth and Community Work in Australia which included trips to South Africa, Germany, Tasmania, United Kingdom and Albania. Currently, she’s working at an NGO which is concerned with action against human trafficking.

Fiori - Anastasia Metallinou

Dr. Phiori – Anastasia Metallinou works at the National Observatory of Athens. She is responsible for Science Communication at the Visitor Center of Thiseio. She holds a Bachelor of Physics degree and a postgraduate degree in Atmospheric Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In her Doctoral Thesis she dealt with the “Development and Deterioration of Magnetic Storms in the Geodesy”. She has worked with the Center d’étude des Environnements Terrestre et Planetaires in Paris, Heliophysics Science Division, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laboratory of Computational Systems, National Technical University of Athens Technical University. After completing her doctoral thesis, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of NCA. Her research background relates to simulating the acceleration of charged particles in the Earth’s magnetosphere during magnetic storms. She has a degree in monody. It lectures and writes in order to facilitate students and the public to understand Astronomy and Space Physics. It uses sound and music as a means of communicating and teaching astronomy. She organizes and participates in evenings that combine Music with Poetry and Astronomy.

Fotini Pantzia

Fotini Pantzia was born in Lamia. She worked for 17 years in wine sales department, often travelling abroad. On her trips she ‘met’ wine bistro, and she thought that it could be introduced in nightlife of Athens. In 2012, she opened her own wine bistro in city center, the “by the glass”.

Ilias Bissias

Ilias Bissias is a lawyer, Director of ‘Naftika Chronika’ and Gratia Publications, as well as, he is the founder of the isalos.netplatform. Also, he is professor at ALBA Graduate Business School, member of the Working Group on the Administration of Maritime and Shipping Businesses of the University of the Aegean and one of the founding members of the venture "Epilego Naftilia" ("I Choose Shipping"), which studies issues related to further education on shipping matters. His vision is to create a stable and substantial channel of communication between young people and the shipping industry. He accomplishes this goal through various actions in Greece and abroad.

Lydia Vousvouni

Designer

Lydia Vousvouni was born and raised in Athens, Greece in 1988. She studied fashion design in three universities in the UK and was awarded at the end of her studies for her final collection. Between 2008 and 2012 she assisted in several luxury fashion brands like Chloe in Paris and Aquascutum in London in the design sector as well as Maison Martin Margiela and Loewe in the retailing and merchandising sector. In 2012 she met D. Kolotoura and M. Grabowski, founders of Zeus+ Δione. Having been highly attracted by the concept and ethos of the brand she returned to Athens where she begun working as the head designer of the brand.

Maria Tsaroucha

Maria has been extensively prolific in generating all sorts of ideas and all of her work captures her need to understand humans. She has created “Perceptual acting and directing” (PAD), her own new theory and method of teaching young actors and directors and coaching professional artists. The need to create a new theory arose from the fact that acting methods only teach how “to act on stage” and not “who the person is who is acting on stage”. The new PAD theory comes to fill this enormous gap of "Who Am I". It focuses on the compositional harmonization of the triptych body spirit soul & Ego, subconscious, Higher self and the exploration of Self-Universe relationship.

Panagiotis Madamopoulos-Moraris

Panagiotis Madamopoulos-Moraris is a Sloan Fellow at Stanford Business School and the Co-founder of ReGeneration, the largest personal and professional development and placement impact program for graduates in Greece. He’s also the Founding Partner of Nireus Capital Advisors, a boutique international strategic advisory firm with a focus on the three pillars of rapid, multinational growth: capital, talent, and sales. It supports a diverse range of firms, from start-ups and family offices to consumer brands, on Business and Corporate Development, Corporate Innovation, Strategic Diversification, Legal, Talent Acquisition & Development, Impact Investing and Fundraising. Panagiotis serves as a Venture Partner at Big Pi, a seed-stage technology fund operating in Greece. He previously served as a Board Member and Strategy, Business Development and Real Estate Director of Agora Trading (now "Amarla Retail"), a cross-border fashion, retail and consumer goods operating group. Agora, until its 2016 sale to a Greek Family Office, was operating retail and wholesale vehicles in 15+ markets around EMEA and was an employer to 500 of staff. Panagiotis sat on the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Advisory Council on Partnerships. He holds an LLB from Democritus University Law School as well as an LLM from University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Spyros Dafnis

I was born and raised in Agios Mattheos, Corfu, a place which hold a special spot in my heart and soul. A place filled with age-old olive trees and is interlinked with my memories as a child and my overall youth experiences. Upon the completion of mystudies in Finance at the department of Financial Science of the Democritus University of Thrace, I returned to my special homeland in order to take over the family business of olive oil production. My grandfather was the first member of my family who was evolved with olive oil production and my parents turned this mill into a modern centrifuge in 1987, when the needs for mostly larger production were increased. And we come to today where, together with my brother, we have laid the foundation for a radical renewal and transformation of this family activity. Along with my brother we modernized the old family oil press business and increased production. As a result, we managed to make famous, around the world, an ancient kind (of olive oil) thereby launching a new era where olive oil production became associated with scientific research and the betterment of health. Knowledge and passion was guiding us through ourjourney to follow our dream; a dream which led us to success, from a really young age, and rapid growth which has made usproud of our choices. Based on my interference with business industry, a business looks like a puzzle game and you only have to combine all the pieces to get a picture and a final result. This is one of thefactors that led to our success, a success which has not been completed yet.

Sworr .

Sworr is an electronic trio that started a band in October 2014 in Patra. Their sound ranges between electronic music, hip-hop and wonky bears with post guitars. In 2015 they participated in the musical competition Jumping Fish with the sound “Troubled Thoughts” where they won the first place and managed to create a video for their music. Since then they have made a series of live performances, namely, at the Street Art Festival and Sofar Sounds. During the following year and a half they collaborated with Cayetano (Etage Noir Music), who is one of the most renowned Greek artists, and worked very hard on their first studio album and which is now out and it includes nine new songs.

Ton Koene

Ton Koene (1963) holds a degree in Humanitarian practice from Oxford University. After graduation, he worked for sixteen years (1989-2006) for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), primarily as Head of Mission in twelve conflict areas including Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Angola and Sudan. In February 2006, he resigned from MSF and began working as a news and documentary photographer. As he is experienced working in dangerous areas, he continues travelling to ‘hairy’ countries, exchanging the syringe for a camera. Humanity is always the main focus of his features. Koene photographs ordinary people in extra-ordinary situations. Between 2010 and 2013, he was based in Afghanistan/Pakistan for the Dutch leading newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’ for which he won a World Press Photo award in 2013 and other awards. He undertakes assignments for humanitarian organizations and many different media such as National Geographic, Geo, TRVL. Koene has published several photobooks and recently produced a three film documentaries on Afghanistan broadcasted for Dutch TV.