Theme: Imagine Anew

Hear from great minds who are fiercely re-imagining the future and propelling effective change in our world. The evening will be an interdisciplinary exploration covering a range of projects including levitating cars, life-saving medical discoveries and the future of leadership.

Schultz Cultural Arts Hall at the OFJCC
3921 Fabian Way
Palo Alto, California, 94303
United States

Dr. Anita Sengupta

Rocket Scientist and Aerospace Engineer

Dr. Anita Sengupta is a rocket scientist and aerospace engineer who, for over 20 years, has been developing technologies that have enabled the exploration of Mars, asteroids and deep space. She started her career working on the Delta IV launch vehicle at Boeing Space Systems. Her doctoral research at NASA focused on developing the ion engines that powered the Dawn spacecraft to reach Vesta and Ceres in the main asteroid belt. She was then responsible for the supersonic parachute system that was integral to the landing of NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars in 2012. Dr. Sengupta is the Senior VP at Hyperloop One. She received her MS and PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California, where she teaches spacecraft, entry and landing system design for planetary exploration. For a full bio please see www.TEDxPaloAlto.com Imagine Anew

Guy Kawasaki

Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, and Evangelist

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He also serves on the board of directors of Cheeze, Inc. He was the chief evangelist of Apple and a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Henry Elkus

Founder and CEO of Helena

Henry Elkus is Founder and CEO of Helena. Helena brings together some of the world’s most remarkable people and works alongside them to materialize ideas that address significant global issues and create new innovations. Helena's past and current projects have sought to address elements of climate change, global security, economic inequality and the development of advanced technologies. Helena's "Factory in the Sky" Project supported the development and construction of the world's first commercial carbon-capture factory, and its "Shield Project" catalyzed state and federal action to help protect the North American Electrical grid from threats due to solar storms and cyber-attack. Outside of Helena, Henry serves as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at The Boston Consulting Group and a Special Advisor to the Berggruen Institute, and writes for the Wall Street Journal’s online small business panel. Henry is 23 and left Yale University after his sophomore year to operate Helena full time.

Marc Bamuthi Joesph

Spoken-word poet, dancer, and playwright

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a 2017 TED Global Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. In pursuit of affirmations of Black life in the public realm, he co-founded the Life is Living Festival for Youth Speaks, and created the installation “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” for Creative Time. Joseph’s opera libretto, We Shall Not Be Moved, was named one of 2017’s “Best Classical Music Performances” by The New York Times. His evening length work, /peh-LO-tah/, was commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and was presented at BAM’s Harvey Theater as a part of the 2017 Next Wave Festival. His latest piece, “The Just and the Blind” investigates the crisis of over-sentencing in the prison industrial complex, and will premiere at Carnegie Hall in March 2019.

Michele Gelfand, PhD

Cultural Psychologist and Author

Michele Gelfand, PhD, is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. She uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscientific methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences for human groups. Gelfand's work has been cited over 20,000 times and has been featured in The Washington Post, The NY Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, The Economist and De Standard. She is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology Annual Series and the Frontiers of Culture and Psychology series (Oxford University Press) and the co-author of The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture (2004, Stanford University Press), Values, Political Action, and Change in the Middle East and the Arab Spring (2017, Oxford University Press) and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire our World (2018, Scribner). For a full bio please see www.TEDxPaloAlto.com

Phoebe Hunt

Violinist, Vocalist, Songwriter

Phoebe Hunt is a violinist, vocalist and songwriter whose artistic and personal journeys have deep storylines. An accomplished instrumentalist with foundations in jazz and swing music, Hunt makes an impressive creative leap with her latest album, Shanti’s Shadow, recorded with her band The Gatherers (Brooklyn, NY). Recently honored by Rolling Stone Country as one of their "Top 10 New Country Artists You Need To Know", Hunt has hit her stride and continues to be guided by music that calls to her soul's development. For a full bio please see www.TEDxPaloAlto.com Imagine Anew

Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD

Physician and Data Scientist

Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD, is co-founder and CEO of Inflammatix, a molecular diagnostics company focused on understanding the immune response to sepsis and acute infections. Dr. Sweeney started studying sepsis over a decade ago during his PhD studies at Duke University (Molecular Pathology). He then spent time training as a general surgeon before completing a postdoctoral master's degree in bioinformatics with a special focus on the immune response to infections, both at Stanford University. He left clinical practice and co-founded Inflammatix with Jonathan Romanowsky, MBA, and Purvesh Khatri, PhD. His proudest professional accomplishment is in gathering a world-class team of diagnostic industry experts (across clinical affairs, assay design, instrumentation, operations and bioinformatics) at Inflammatix to solve the sepsis problem. Dr. Sweeney has published over 50 manuscripts, is an inventor on five patent applications, and serves on the editorial board of Critical Care Medicine.