Theme: From I to We

At TEDxOakland 2018, scientists, adventurers, Artists, inventors, and fighters will gather to share ideas and engage in game-changing conversations about the future of our community. We will discuss the glue that bonds us together as a people. The Theme this year is From I TO WE. People of all ages and all backgrounds will gather to forge a path forward for our local community, our humanity and our planet.

Tortona Big Top
1911 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland, California, 94612
United States

Adrian Richardson

Adrian is the Sr. Activity and Exercise Designer at Fitbit. He is an NSCA, NPTI, and TRX Certified Personal Trainer, and received his Bachelors of Science in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. You can find him racing obstacle courses, snowboarding, and mountain biking when he’s not helping his clients get and stay in great shape.

Andrew McPherson

Andrew McPherson is a Lecturer at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, UC Berkeley College of engineering. He also holds a position as an educational R&D engineer helping to build an accessible bio inspired design, STEM curriculum to help bring underrepresented groups into the STEM fields. He received a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley at which time he was working on upper extremity exoskeletons and assistive devices for people with disabilities. Much of his time at UC Berkeley has been spent helping engage students in engineering to work with community members with disabilities to create novel custom devices to address daily challenges.

Ashanti Branch

Ashanti Branch works to change how students, especially young men of color, interact with their education and how their schools interact with them. Raised in Oakland by a single mother on welfare, Ashanti left the inner city to study civil engineering at Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo. A construction project manager in his first career, his life changed after he tutored struggling students and realized his passion for teaching. In 2004, during Ashanti’s first year teaching high school math, he started The Ever Forward Club to provide support for African American and Latino males who were not achieving to their potential. Since then, Ever Forward has helped all of its more than 150 members graduate from high school, and 93% of them have gone on to attend two- or four-year colleges, military or trade school. The Ever Forward Club was featured last year in the documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. After completing a fellowship at the Stanford d.school in 2016, Ashanti, stepped away from working for a school district and began working as the Founding Executive Director for Ever Forward-Siempre Adelante in an effort to grow the organization to serve thousands of Bay Area students. Ashanti was awarded a fellowship from the national organization CBMA - Campaign for Black Male Achievement and is currently a presidential fellow at Saybrook University.

Ayla Schlosser

Ayla Schlosser is a social entrepreneur from California who founded an organization in Rwanda to unlock the leadership potential of women in East Africa. In her talk she explores how she is advancing the mission of the organization by stepping down from her role as CEO so that it can be run by East African leaders.

De Kai

De Kai is a Professor and a Musician. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to machine learning of the cognitive relationships between different languages, De Kai is among only 17 scientists worldwide selected in 2011 by the Association for Computational Linguistics to be awarded the honor of Founding ACL Fellow, and is a Distinguished Research Scholar at UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute. A native of St Louis, he worked and traveled extensively in San Francisco, New York, Germany, Spain, China, India and Canada before joining Hong Kong's ambitious creation of Asia's now top-ranked HKUST, where he developed the foundations of modern statistical machine translation technology, with broad applications in computer music and computational musicology as well as human language processing, and built the world's first public web translation service resulting in global coverage. De Kai's cross-disciplinary work relating music, language, intelligence, and culture stems from a liberal arts perspective emphasizing creativity in both technical and humanistic dimensions. A multi-instrumentalist songwriter classically trained at Northwestern University's School of Music, De Kai started piano and composing at age 4 while simultaneously immersed in the improvisational, rhythmic, conversational forms of Chicago's blues, soul and funk. At Berkeley he studied West African polyrhythms prior to years of intensive training on flamenco cajón with a wide range of top Spanish percussionists and dancers. In parallel with music performance and theory, De Kai began building analog synths at the age of 12. Several years later, he began studying computer music at the UCSD Center for Music Experiment and Related Research (CME / CRCA). At Berkeley he subsequently designed digital additive synthesis chips. His recent work explores the potential of cognitive machines that learn the relationships between various different kinds of musical languages. During his doctoral studies in cognitive science, artificial intelligence and computational linguistics at Berkeley, he worked on seminal projects on intelligent conversational dialog agents. His PhD dissertation employing maximum entropy to model human perception and interpretation of ambiguities was one of the first to spur the paradigm shift toward today's state-of-the-art statistical natural language processing technologies. De Kai also holds an executive MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) and HKUST. His undergraduate degree at UCSD was awarded cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and won the liberal arts oriented Revelle College's department award. In 2015, Debrett's HK 100 named De Kai as one of the 100 most influential figures of Hong Kong.

Jacob Jakespeare

Jacob is a member of a Bay Area-based entertainment company Vau de Vire which has been titillating crowds around the world with its unique brand of interactive and thematic art, dance and circus productions while the performance ensemble, Vau de Vire Society consists of classically-trained dancers, some of the nation’s most acclaimed acrobats, aerial artists, sideshow acts, fire-performers, thespians and beautiful circus freaks. The group has been cross-pollinating genres by collaborating with an eclectic variety of world-renowned musicians and DJs in the creation of original stage shows. Notable collaborators include The Edwardian Ball (SF & LA) Cirque du Soleil (Corteo), San Francisco Symphony, Bassnectar, The Dresden Dolls, Calvin Harris and The Madd Vibe Orchestra…with live support performances for James Brown, Primus, 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean, Velvet Revolver, The Cure and many other highly respected international artists.

Jim McCarthy

Jim McCarthy is the author of Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness. His innovative talks and workshops aren’t just inspirational. Audiences take away practical strategies, science-based insights, and daily action plans —because happiness is a skill you can develop. Jim is recognized for his unique perspective as a Stanford MBA, internet pioneer, and person living with a cancer diagnosis.

Karla Monterroso

Karla Monterroso is committed to closing the opportunity gap for Black and Latinx people. As the CEO of CODE2040, Karla leads an organization that equips Black, Latinx people and their allies with the tools needed to dismantle the structural barriers that prevent the full participation and leadership of Black and Latinx people in the innovation economy. Code2040 believes the Digital Revolution provides the biggest opportunity for equitable and structural change in the American economy since the Industrial Revolution and aims to train their community to navigate and lead that change through early career services, community mobilization, and knowledge sharing. Karla has spent close to two decades focused on growing the people and program functions of rapidly scaling social enterprises driving youth advocacy and leadership. Prior to joining CODE2040, Karla built the tools and ran the systems that supported the scale of healthcare non-profit, Health Leads. She did similar work in college access for low-income communities with national organizations College Summit, and College Track. She is also currently a board member for One Degree a tech non-profit enabling families with a path out of poverty. Karla is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.

Lindsey Quinn

Lindsey Quinn is a comedy writer and tech reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area. As Managing Editor of tech/business publication The Hustle, Lindsey fielded story pitches from startups day-in and day-out. In the process, she realized that every startup journey sounds eerily similar…

Lori Fogarty

Lori Fogarty is the Director and CEO of the Oakland Museum of California. She led the Museum’s $63 million capital campaign and building renovation project that culminated in 2013, which and included the reinstallation of 90,000 square feet of gallery space, as well as the major enhancement to the Museum’s landmark building. She is currently on the board of The Crucible and the Association of Art Museum Directors.

Maya Diamond

Maya Diamond is an expert Dating and Relationship Coach who is known for helping her clients finally find their partner after years of trying, so that they can have happy, healthy, and fulfilling relationships. Maya believes that having a great relationship positively impacts all areas of your life. Maya is is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT) and holds a Master’s Degree in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, Maya was named one of the best life coaches in San Francisco by Expertise.com. In 2014, she was named one of the Best Relationship Experts in California by DatingAdvice.com. Maya’s dating advice has been featured on mindbodygreen.com and elephant journal.com, and she’s been a regular guest expert on the Brian Copeland Show on KGO-860 Radio in San Francisco. To go deeper with Maya, visit: www.empowerlove.us/join

Maya McNeil

Maya McNeil is a musician and an artist. Through her dynamic voice, she likes to weave emotion and storytelling.

MISTA F.A.B

Stanley Petey Cox, best known as Mistah F.A.B., is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, community organizer and activist. F.A.B. is known as one of the most prominent and colourful figures of the San Francisco Bay Area since the late 2000s—sometimes hailed as the scene's "Crown Prince" F.A.B.'s community activism and philanthropic efforts, have been highly visible throughout the years. Most notably, he hosts and organizes annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaways, backpack and school supply drives, holiday toys event and various charitable events benefiting Cancer and Domestic Violence.

Tope Alabi

Tope Alabi is a blockchain developer who works to enable private data communications on the blockchain. As a developer, he has made meaningful contributions to the ethereum ecosystem and how it all affects the future of internet trends and the very real impact that they have on the lives of everyday people.

Umma Amina

Umma Amina has 16 years of experience as a registered nurse in high risk labor and delivery. With over 15 medical volunteer trips around the world, Umma is on a mission to help mothers not only survive but thrive.

Vimbayi Kajese

Vimbayi Kajese is an activist entrepreneur who works at increasing the visual representation of POC in ads and media by making such content easier to find, more accessible, relatable and thus ubiquitous.