Theme: Fast Forwaard

TEDxDePaulUniversity is independently organized through a license provided by TED, the idea-generating nonprofit organization. Now in its fourth year, the DePaul event unites our community for a half-day of idea-driven programming and promotes our faculty, staff, student and alumni thought leaders through the world-famous TEDx platform. Through the theme “Fast Forward” our speakers from across the DePaul community will aim to challenge thoughts and inspire ideas through a series of engaging talks and presentations.

Holtschneider Performance Center
2330 North Halsted St.
Chicago, Illinois, 60614
United States

Amanda MacDonald

Speaker, consultant and educator

MacDonald has spent her career studying and teaching about the connections between movement and the brain. She explores why we behave the way we do and how we can consciously choose our direction in life in a variety of areas, including developmental movement, thinking in movement and the relationship of movement to decision making. MacDonald is an adjunct faculty member in The Theatre School and an AmSAT certified Alexander Technique Teacher, as well as a registered Movement Pattern Analyst. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and a bachelor’s degree from Sewanee: The University of the South.

Bushra Amiwala

Chicago native, activist and student

Amiwala is a Chicago native, activist and a junior in the Driehaus College of Business. At the age of 19, she announced her candidacy for the Cook County Board of Commissioners to serve as a voice for her generation and marginalized communities. She was the youngest person and first Muslim woman to ever run for the seat. Although she ultimately lost the election, her campaign saw historical voter turnout and was covered nationally. She was recently named Glamour Magazine’s College Woman of the Year for 2018 and Seventeen Magazine’s Voice of the Year.

Ellis Confer

Imagineer, business leader and educator

Confer is an entrepreneur, business leader and consultant possessing more than 30 years of experience in delivering strategy, enterprise architecture and security advisory services to clients in healthcare, financial services, film and entertainment, and manufacturing. He is a versatile and experienced ‘imagineer’ with a track record of success building organizational consensus and facilitating strategic change. Confer is the founder of Outrageous Innovation Inc. and an adjunct faculty member in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media.

Emad Mahou

Human rights activist

In 2011, Mahou was a human rights activist and a key leader in the civil uprising against Syria’s brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Because of his beliefs, in June of that same year, Mahou was detained and tortured for three months. When he was released, he fled Syria and found asylum in Chicago in 2012. Today, Mahou is a staff member at DePaul and a proud American citizen. As a result of his experiences, and passion for democracy and freedom, he finds himself even more grateful to participate in everything the American democracy has to offer, including the recent U.S. midterm election, which sparked the idea for his talk.

Enid Montague

Mental healthcare advocate and educator

Montague is an associate professor of human computer interaction, bioinformatics and collaborative technologies in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. She also is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Wellness and Health Enhancement Engineering Laboratory. Her research uses human factors and human-computer interaction methodologies, design principles and theories to understand healthcare systems to promote safety and patient-centered care. Currently, Montague is exploring the role of trust between people and technology in healthcare work systems and designing new and effective health-related technologies. Montague received master’s degree and doctorate in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia Tech.

Josh Fort

Founder of Zeal Inspirational Philanthropy and graduate student

Fort graduated in 2016 from Wheaton College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in integrative philosophy communication. Following graduation, Fort spent two years at Brandtrust using applied social sciences to solve business challenges. Now, he is a graduate student studying computer science in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media and tackling social issues via nonprofits, including his own social enterprise Zeal Inspirational Philanthropy (ZIP). When he’s not working, Fort can be found exploring Chicago with friends, spending time with family, and diving into the latest superhero series.

Lindsay Fredrickson

Executive director of the Chicago Arts and Music Project

Fredrickson is a DePaul School of Music alumna (‘13) and the executive director of Chicago Arts and Music Project (CAMP), an El Sistema orchestra program serving the Garfield Park area. She founded CAMP in 2017, aspiring to foster musical excellence and social activism. Her career in El Sistema, which seeks to provide free classical music education to underserved communities, began when she was an intern at ROCmusic in Rochester, New York, before moving to Chicago and working for Sistema Ravinia. She completed a fellowship with the Global Leaders Program in 2018 in Honduras, where she studied with leaders in the field.

Meredith Ferrill

Assistant director of graduate programs and department operations in DePaul’s Department of English

In 2015, Ferrill challenged herself to give up plastic over concern about how the material harms our environment. Any piece of plastic that she could not avoid, she would keep. For a year, as she struggled to live plastic free, she documented her experiences in a blog called dumpingplastic.com. The idea was sparked during a first-year writing class she taught at DePaul. Today, Ferrill is the assistant director of graduate programs and department operations in DePaul’s Department of English. Previously, she worked as a grant writer in Chicago and for a nonprofit in Honduras.

Tyree Taylor

Influencer, educator and youth mentor

Taylor is a self-described influencer, educator, youth mentor and friend. He received his bachelor’s degree in mass communication from Tennessee State University in 2015 and received his barber certificate from Larry’s Barber College in 2017. In 2018, Taylor enrolled in DePaul’s graduate program and he is currently seeking his master’s degree in nonprofit management. Taylor strives to utilize his multifaceted education, involvement in radio and his experience as a youth mentor to create opportunities for generations to come.