Theme: The Vastness

he gatekeeper at the razor edge of capaciousness and triviality is choice. Lady choice stands guard over the fear, nervousness and drive we deliver into our movements. Do we think big? Do we stay in the fields of comfort? Do we expect the grand? Do we make room for the impossible? Can little movements make massive change? Can the boundaries be pushed and the rules still apply? The magnitude of our ideas can be limited by many things but let it not be limited by the courage our community supplies. We live in a community of endless courage. Courage is the jet fuel for exploration.

Let us all lift off into the vastness of our collective power. Let us all believe in the enormity of many small actions. Let us all dare to leap into the vastness of our collective courage and let us all look back at our community to say:

“Look at how far we have come and how much there is yet to see.”

Bend Senior High School
230 NE 6th St
Bend, Oregon, 97701
United States

Amy Watson

Amy is a consumer behavior researcher and explores how consumers use the marketplace to influence social interaction. She earned her PhD from the University of Arkansas and is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Oregon State University-Cascades. Between the ages of 8 and 20, she traveled the country singing as part of a sibling trio. The constant exposure to so many different subcultures, lifestyles, and beliefs during her formative years enabled her to learn how to connect with people very different from herself. These experiences are the inspiration for her research as she works to help others learn how to overcome ideological differences with civility.

Andrew Tolman

Andrew Tolman is a 29-year-old musician and ASL Interpreter currently living in Portland, OR on historically Clackamas Chinook and Molalla land. Inspired by their time working for the historic Philip J. Wolfe Portland City Council campaign, OCCUPY ICE PDX, Don’t Shoot Portland, and the Central American Refugee Caravan (among many others) as a Sign Language Interpreter, Andrew found himself joining the unbroken chain of resistance thousands of years old and invigorated by a new mission. Currently, Andrew finds himself working closely with both Hearing and Deaf activists and fighters to bring accessibility to the front lines. Through the founding of their group ‘FingersCrossedInterpreting.com’, Andrew hopes to continue to build bridges by making it easy for community-based Hearing activists to reach into Deaf and Hard of Hearing activist spaces and make meaningful connection, empowering both communities with resources and information to strengthen the fight for equality. The fact is that accessibility benefits everyone because everyone has a story to share. Andrew hopes to continue serving his community in solidarity for as long as possible and to inspire other interpreters and communities to proudly do the same.

Betsy Gaines Quammen

Betsy is an environmental historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University, writing her dissertation on the historical roots of the current armed public land conflicts occurring the American west. Wildlife protection is her passion and she has established conservation projects in Mongolia, Bhutan and the United Sates. Betsy worked for the East African Wildlife Society in Kenya, later moved to Montana to focus on grizzly bear conservation, ecosystem protection and grazing issues in the Northern Rockies. She earned her MS in Environmental Studies at University of Montana and has served on several boards, including the national Sierra Club. She is currently working on a book on public land ranching, the Bundy family and their religious influences. Betsy lives in Bozeman, Montana with her husband, writer David Quammen.

Carol Sternkopf

Carol lives in pictures, which makes it pretty much impossible to explain in words all the ways photography moves her. She would rather show you her images and hope they better explain her devotion. She love the honesty of photography. The story underneath the still. Nuances of light, color, and contrast. The thrill of an unexpected moment. She knows it’s incredibly hard work to document the world authentically, and to get out of the way enough to really capture something true. This passion started in her childhood. She sees now that she has been practicing looking at the world through a lens long before I ever had one. Unstructured and organic, her early years were spent lying on a dock watching fish, lazily wandering the Wisconsin woods, or sitting quietly watching wild animals go about their daily routines. she learned how to disappear into the Observer, to adventure into unknown territory, and to practice a kind of reverence for what was discovered. Those skills have been foundational to her art as a photographer. As for influences, artists need mentors and she is blessed to have had so many. Painters, sculptors, actors, writers, photographers – they’ve all generously shared the genius of their process as well as their results. She has also been deeply influenced by many who have achieved fame in the photography world – Williem Wegman, Keith Carter, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Mary Ellen Mark. When it comes to her own work, I follow my intuitive “YES” towards the people and projects that invite me to re-investigate the world and to share in the joy of those discoveries.

Chris Messina

"Chris Messina has spent over 15 years living on the edge of social technology. He has designed products and experiences for Google and Uber, founded startups, and changed the world by giving away many of his creations, including the hashtag. His skillset is broad, anchored in product and user experience design. He lead developer experience at Uber and co-founded Molly (YC W’18), a conversational social AI. Chris has created movements online and off, and acted as catalyst for change in large and small organizations. In 2004, he helped organize the grassroots movement that propelled Mozilla Firefox to its first 100 million downloads. In 2005, he co-organized the first BarCamp and then popularized the unconference event model to over 350 cities around the world. In 2006, he opened the first coworking spaces in the world, giving rise to a global movement. Then in 2007, he championed the idea of the hashtag, eventually changing social media forever and galvanizing popular social revolutions. He has spoken at conferences like TEDx, SXSW, Google I/O, and Microsoft’s Future Decoded, and is frequently quoted in media outlets like The New York Times, Business Week, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wired."

Chris Thomas

"Chris Thomas is a composer for film, theme parks, and the concert hall. Chris has written music for many award-winning films, including Woman Rebel, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. In television, he works as a composer, orchestrator, and conductor networks such as ABC, FOX, CBS and HBO. Chris’s work can be heard in theme parks all over the world. He has written music for the Evermore Adventure Park, Knott's Berry Farm, Queen Mary Chill, Dreamland Theme Park (UK), Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, and many more. Chris’s works for the concert hall have been performed form Carnegie Hall, to the Sydney Opera House, and the Hollywood Bowl. Recently, Chris completed his first full-length symphony (the Malheur Symphony). His works are published with The FJH Music Company and Wingert-Jones Publications. "

Dean Newlund

As CEO of Mission Facilitators International, a 26-year-old boutique training and development company, Dean works to help individual leaders and their teams understand, use and perfect the intuitive side of leadership and the creative side of leading teams and companies.

Dean Newlund

As CEO of Mission Facilitators International, a 26-year-old boutique training and development company, Dean works to help individual leaders and their teams understand, use and perfect the intuitive side of leadership and the creative side of leading teams and companies.

Fiann Paul

Fiann Paul is one of the world's most record breaking explorers, and one of the most record breaking athletes. His careers in sports, art, and psychology, embody the antique, Greek concept of Arete, multipotential development. He is also an accomplished photographer, and a postgraduate student of Depth Psychology, his main focus being the research of the psychological background of explorers, adventurers, and ultra-endurance athletes.

Imani Woomera

Imani is a multidisciplinary artist born in Hawai’i and raised in Kenya. Her poetic workshops and performances have been featured around the world at theaters, schools, festivals and United Nations forums. She has mentored hundreds of young poets, and has produced a number of theatrical performances for the stage. In 2008 Woomera co-founded The Slam Africa Movement in Kenya which continues to provide mentorship and performance opportunities for spoken word artists in East Africa.

Jason/MOsley Graham/WOtta

Chicago born, Oregon grown Jason McNeal Graham known on stage as MOsley WOtta or MOWO is a critically acclaimed MULTIMEDIA MULTIETHNIC MULTIVITAMIN ARTIST, PERFORMER, SPEAKER. His work as an “Art Ambassador” for Rise up International in association with the US Embassy has taken him around the world to lead workshops showcase his talents and mitigate his sprawling ego. His work is featured on TED X, OPB/PBS, Street Con Dubai, Soul Pancake, SOFAR Sounds. He is an Oregon Humanities conversation project leader and first elected Creative Laureate of Bend Oregon.His latest full length album, “WHAT COMES AFTER” was just released. His next project “Bad Lands Music” in collaboration with the High Desert Museum’s “Desert Reflections” installation, is slated for release later this year.

Jean Kilbourne

Jean Kilbourne is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. She is the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids. The prize-winning films based on her lectures include Killing Us Softly, Spin the Bottle, and Slim Hopes. She holds an honorary position as Senior Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women and was recently inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Lauren Tolo

Lauren began working in the classroom at the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind as an Intervener, working one-on-one with DeafBlind students providing information that the individual is unable to gather on their own. She was inspired to dedicate her professional life to facilitating communication and bridging the gap between the Deaf and hearing worlds. Out of this experience emerged her career as an educational interpreter. Now, living in Central Oregon, she interprets for a Deaf student in a general education classroom. Lauren is committed to providing full inclusion, and strives to always empower Deaf and Hearing children, regardless of their identity otherwise, with the knowledge to advocate for themselves, discover themselves, broaden their horizons, and accomplish their dreams.

Miriah O'Dair

My goal is to weave the fabric of space with yarn spun by those who live there. I plan to take the fibrous elements of design and create meaningful shelter. My purpose is to follow the thread of life that connects inhabitants, landscapes, and nations within the world. I use my MFA in Interior Architecture and Design to guide the common thread of humanity’s need for shelter and connect people to the natural resources we use to inhabit our planet. I pursue balance that is born of diversity. Ultimately, I want to be part of the think tank that will address global spatial issues. Although the art of design is used to tell the infinitely different stories of people, shelter is a common thread. Everything on this spinning sphere shares the needs of air, water, food, and shelter. We will need to use these common threads to artfully and responsibly design the interior of this architecture named Earth. Everything in Earth, from it and about, is an entangled meaningful shelter.

Nicole Bassett

Nicole Bassett is the co-founder of The Renewal Workshop, a circular business that is leading the apparel and textile industry towards circular business models restoring value and reducing waste. Prior, Nicole has applied her passion for environmental responsibility and human rights in consumer products. She has served as Director of Sustainability for prAna, Social Responsibility at Patagonia and Head of Human Rights at Specialized Bicycles. Nicole received her Master’s in Environmental Studies with a focus on Business Strategy and Sustainability from York University in Toronto, Canada.

Rachel Cargle

Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an Ohio born writer and lecturer. Her activist and academic work are rooted in providing intellectual discourse, tools, and resources that explore the intersection of race and womanhood. She spearheads the online learning platform Loveland Hall and she is a monthly columnist at HarpersBaaar.com. Rachel is currently a student at Columbia University studying anthropology and a research fellow at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University.

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Vip Sitaraman is the creator of digital products & platforms which have reached over 50 million users online and the youngest American to raise venture capital. He is a creative consultant to organizations ranging from leading Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 500 & Inc. 1000 companies.

Wyatt Hernandez

Wyatt Hernandez is a student at Sisters High School, where he serves as Student Body President and loves his family, friends, animals, and community. He is active in sports from golf to swimming, but football is above all. Once graduating high school Wyatt will be attending Willamette University and hopes to achieve a future career in law enforcement. During his free time Wyatt also strives to begin an outreach program that helps students of Central Oregon that have been affected by concussions.