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).

UC Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720
United States

Adriana Quintero

As one of the leading voices in the movement to diversify the environmental movement, Adrianna Quintero founded one of the first organizations dedicated to building greater engagement and leadership among Latinos on environmental issues. Adrianna has been named in the Grist 50: the innovators, organizers, and visionaries who will lead us toward a more sustainable future. She was also named for the Sachamama Leadership Award, as one of the Huffington Post’s 10 Leaders Who Are Reshaping the Environmental Movement, and an Amplifier Climate Hero in 2018.

Amberly Lago

Amberly Lago was a former athlete and professional dancer turned fitness trainer when her life was forever altered by a devastating motorcycle accident, and the victory she discovered through her recovery. Even after 34 surgeries and being diagnosed with CRPS giving up was never in this Texas girl's wheel house. She encourages others to find resilience in their own difficulties and thrive, and has developed healthy tools for dealing with any kind of physical or emotional pain.

Ben Goertzel

Dr. Ben Goertzel is the CEO of the decentralized AI network SingularityNET, a blockchain-based AI platform company, and the Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics. Dr. Goertzel is one of the world’s foremost experts in Artificial General Intelligence, a subfield of AI oriented toward creating thinking machines with general cognitive capability at the human level and beyond He has published 20 scientific books and 140+ scientific research papers, and is the main architect and designer of the OpenCog system and associated design for human-level general intelligence.

Dan Ciccarone

Dr. Dan Ciccarone, MD, MPH is a Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His population-based studies, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, aim to deepen our understanding of HIV and related disease and risk-taking among socially marginalized groups. He is currently leading the Heroin in Transition study with its integrated multidisciplinary — ethnographic, economic and statistical modeling — aims to examine the recent rise in heroin use and the expanding diversity of heroin source-forms and illicitly-made synthetic opioids (e.g. fentanyls) and their relationship to sharp increases in illicit opioid-involved mortality and morbidity.

Dan Mulhern

Dan Mulhern has worked with a wide range of organizations, from start-ups to Fortune 500, from government to non-profits, including Ford, Google, Facebook, Goodwill of Greater Detroit, Americorps, and the Chicago Legal Aid Foundation. He researches and works closely with powerful dyads: both true co-founders or co-CEOs, as well as dyads in which one reports to the other like a CEO and COO or President and Provost, but whose leadership can be powerfully synergistic. Through his working as a public speaker, radio personality, writer, professor, leadership coach, and consultant, Mulhern has inspired thousands to lead with their best self. He received the Golden Apple Award, as the student-voted most exceptional teacher at UC Berkeley, and the Earl Cheit Award as outstanding undergraduate instructor at the Haas School of Business where he teaches leadership to graduate, undergraduate, and full-time executive students.

David Peterson

Language creator, author, and UC Berkeley alum David J. Peterson shares the importance of learning languages in today’s society and redefines language as more than just a tool. He has created languages for shows like HBO's Game of Thrones and the CW's The 100, as well as movies such as Marvel's Doctor Strange and Netflix's Bright. He is also the author of The Art of Language Invention from Penguin Books.

Fernando Perez

Fernando Pérez is an assistant professor in Statistics at UC Berkeley and a Faculty Scientist in the Department of Data Science and Technology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research focuses on creating tools for modern computational research and data science across domain disciplines, with an emphasis on high-level languages, interactive and literate computing, and reproducible research. He created IPython while a graduate student in 2001 and co-founded its successor, Project Jupyter. He is a National Academy of Science Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and a Senior Fellow and founding co-investigator of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science. He is a co-founder of the NumFOCUS Foundation, and a member of the Python Software Foundation. He is a recipient of the 2012 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software, and of the 2017 ACM Software System Award.

Haroon Moghul

Haroon Moghul is the Fellow in Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He's appeared on all major U.S. media networks, and has been published at the Washington Post, TIME, CNN, and Foreign Policy. In 2016, he was honored with the Religion News Writer's Awards for Religion Reporting Excellence. Haroon is the author of three books, including How to be a Muslim: An American Story, which the Washington Post called "an extraordinary gift," and "an authentic portrayal of a vastly misunderstood community." He was a Fellow at Fordham Law School's Center on National Security and with the National Security Studies Program at New America Foundation. Haroon is also on the Multicultural Audience Development Initiative at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Heather Bowerman

Named a Top 35 Global Innovator by the MIT Technology Review, Heather Bowerman is the founder and CEO of DotLab, a personalized medicine company for women's health. DotLab’s first product is DotEndo, the world’s first non-invasive test for endometriosis, a disease that is a leading cause of unexplained infertility and affects 1 in 10 women. For her work as a bioengineer and entrepreneur, she has been recognized as a Top 35 Global Innovator by the MIT Technology Review and she was a former associate in the White House Office of Science and Technology during the Obama administration.

Jeremy Richman

In the past 6 years, our country has seen nearly 2,000 mass shootings. Why does such terrible violence occur so frequently? And what can we do to prevent it? After the tragic death of his daughter Avielle in the Sandy Hook shootings, Jeremy Richman, a renowned neuro-pharmacology research with faculty appointments at Yale, started the Avielle Foundation to bring awareness to brain health and bring about a more peaceful world.

Lucinda, Eoin Belle, Harrington

Eoin Harrington is a multi-instrumentalist, song-writer and innovator who is continuously searching for new ways to blend styles, songs and voices. He will perform with Lucinda Belle, a Harpist, Chanteuse and songwriter who is famous for disrupting the classical form of the Harp.

Miko Fogarty

As a dancer, Miko has received worldwide recognition, including the Gold Medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition and featured in the award-winning ballet documentary "First Position". Miko received a contract with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in England at the age of 17 years old and stayed with the company for one year. She danced and taught in over 20 countries prior to and during this time. She is now an undergraduate student majoring in Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley and researching brain cancer therapies at UCSF. She is also the Conservatory Director of San Jose Dance International, a non-profit arts organization with a mission to provide entertainment to the community through dance performance.

Nanxi Liu

Nanxi Liu is the CEO and Co-Founder of Enplug, the leading open digital display software company that is used by stadiums, banks, universities, hotels, and Fortune 500 companies. She is also a co-founder of Nanoly Bioscience, a venture-backed biotech company that develops polymers to eliminate refrigeration for vaccines. As a producer for The Bay, an Amazon TV show, Nanxi won an EMMY.

Niloufar Talebi

Niloufar Talebi is an author, award-winning translator, and creator. Her work has been featured at the Kennedy Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and she has received commissions from Carnegie Hall and Cal Performances. Her upcoming projects include the hybrid memoir Self-Portrait in Bloom, and Abraham in Flames opera. Other projects include Belonging, The Persian Rite of Spring, ICARUS/RISE. Her work has been published in World Literature Today, PBS Frontline, and Poetry International.

Royce Lovett

Royce Lovett anchors much of his sound and lyrics on his deep belief that “Love is the most durable power in the world “ (MLK). “We can’t wait for America to fix itself; we have to fix it. We have to know love, show love, and teach love. That’s our purpose”, says Lovett. It’s a purpose Royce has been working toward since beginning his career over six years ago. Throughout that time, he toured the globe and performed alongside the likes of Wale, Vince Staples, George Clinton, and P-Funk in between releasing a series of independent albums culminating in 2015’s Write It On The Wall, and 2016’s Love Wins for Motown (CCMG). Receiving acclaim from BET, Jet Magazine, Rapzilla, and more, he stirred up an authentic style steeped in hip-hop, soul, rock guitar, and pop expanse. Royce’s most recent release, Love & Other Dreams, has over a million plays on Spotify, and his single, “Runnin” was recently featured on the CMT network show, Music City. With Royce, it’s a simple message, with a deep meaning.

Salsa at Cal

Salsa at Cal is a student club on the UC Berkeley hoping to spread the fun of salsa dance through beginner classes and free social events.

Scott Stephens

Scott Stephens is a leading expert on fire science and director of the UCB Center for Fire Research and Outreach. Stephens’ research expertise and interests include fire management, forest ecosystems, and fire ecology. He is interested in the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems, which includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires, changing climates, and management may change this interaction. Stephens also is interested in forest and fire policy and how it can be improved to meet the challenges of the next decades, both in the USA and internationally.

Shontina Vernon

A theater artist, filmmaker, director, and educator, Shontina’s interdisciplinary and experimental work centers on the narratives of traditionally marginalized communities. She is a recipient of the 2019 Creative Capital Award for performance and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artist as Activist Fellow for her work through Visionary Justice StoryLab addressing the impact of systemic oppression through media, storytelling and performance based healing practices. Shontina's work champions the necessity of arts and culture to catalyze social change. As such, it has been recognized nationally and internationally for both its artistic merit and risk taking. Currently, Vernon is developing a film project based on a historical account of queer women from the 1930s, and Forging Ahead, a multimedia performance exploring the impact of youth incarceration on adult identity.

Tim Freke

T!m Freke is a pioneering English philosopher and the author of 35 books. Tim is also the founder of ‘Unividualism’, which combines evolutionary science and deep spirituality to offer a visionary new understanding of the nature of reality and the purpose of life. He is a passionate and playful communicator with a contagious enthusiasm for life, who has often been featured in the global media, such as the BBC and the History Channel.

UC Jazz

UC Jazz Ensembles is an on-campus music performance program dedicated to the performance, study, and promotion of jazz at the University of California, Berkeley. Each year, UC Jazz consists of roughly ten to twelve small combos filled with undergraduate students/graduate students of ANY major or field and friends from the community. Each combo rehearses for two hours a week, and musicians frequently get together to practice or jam in their free time. They perform a wide range of styles, from latin to contemporary. They also host and perform at a wealth of exciting on- or near-campus events each semester, including Thursday noon shows in the MLK Student Union, the “Jazz in the Basement” evening concert series, and the bi-annual showcase at the luxurious Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley. Members of UC Jazz also perform at various departmental events around campus.

UC Berkeley Raas Ramzat

Established in 2017, Raas Ramzat is UC Berkeley’s premier competitive Raas/Garba team. Raas/Garba is a traditional Indian folk dance originating from the state of Gujarat and is typically associated with the festival of Navratri. Raas is a high energy dance style involving the use of sticks called dandiyas, while Garba is usually performed in a cyclic formation. UC Berkeley Raas Ramzat aims to spread their passion for Raas/Garba throughout Berkeley and the greater Bay Area by adding a modern twist to this traditional dance form.

Zachary Norris

Zachary Norris is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and a former director of our Books Not Bars campaign. Prior to rejoining the organization, Zachary co-founded and co-directed Justice for Families, a national alliance of family-driven organizations working to end our nation’s youth incarceration epidemic. During the seven years he led the campaign, Books Not Bars built California’s first statewide network for families of incarcerated youth, led the effort to close five youth prisons in the state, passed legislation to enable families to stay in contact with their loved ones. In addition to being a Harvard graduate and NYU-educated attorney, Zachary is also a graduate of the Labor Community Strategy Center’s National School for Strategic Organizing in Los Angeles, California and was a 2011 Soros Justice Fellow. He is a former board member at Witness for Peace and Just Cause Oakland and is currently serving on the Justice for Families board. Zachary was a recipient of the American Constitution Society's David Carliner Public Interest Award in 2015, and is a member of the 2016 class of the Levi Strauss Foundation's Pioneers of Justice.

Zhen Dao

Zhen Dao is a poet, novelist, playwright, and director of SACRA Theater Company. A transgender woman, she was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and has published fiction with Penguin Books. She is the founder of the practice tradition of MogaDao, which incorporates original forms and practices of qigong, meditation, and yoga, and the Heartmind Warrior Training Program (studies in spiritualized martial arts), and the Depth Sexology and the Erotic Basis of Being Program.