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).

William Pitt Union
3959 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15213
United States

AJ Edelman

AJ Edelman is an Israeli bobsled and skeleton athlete. A lifelong athlete, he is Israel's first sliding sport Olympian and most decorated sliding athlete, having competed in skeleton. Skeleton is head-first bobsled, where an athlete slides head-first at 90mph, chin an inch from the ice. Originally told that making the Olympics in skeleton would be impossible due to physical limitations, Edelman self-funded and self-coached himself to Olympic success in 4 short years. He is the first Orthodox Jewish winter Olympian. After the PyeongChang Olympic Games Edelman transitioned to head of development of Bobsled/Skeleton Israel and learned to drive bobsleds, with an eye on 2022.

CB Bhattacharya

CB Bhattacharya is the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. He is a world renowned expert in business strategy innovation aimed at increasing both business and social value. His research and teaching focuses specifically on how companies can use underleveraged “intangible assets” such as corporate identity, reputation,corporate social responsibility and sustainability to strengthen stakeholder relationships and drive firm market value. Prof. Bhattacharya has published over 100 articles and has over 25,000 citations per Google Scholar. He is co-author of the book Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value and co-editor of the book Global Challenges in Responsible Business, both published by Cambridge University Press. He has served on the Editorial Review Boards and served as Editor of special issues of many leading international publications. Prof. Bhattacharya is the founder of the Center for Sustainable Business as well as the ESMT Sustainable Business Roundtable, a forum with more than 25 multinational members, aimed at discussing opportunities and challenges in mainstreaming sustainability practices within organizations. In 2007 he started the Stakeholder Marketing Consortium with support from the Aspen Institute. Prof. Bhattacharya is part of a select group of faculty that has been named twice to Business Week’s Outstanding Faculty list. He has been recognized by both Thomson Reuters and Google Scholar as one of the top cited scholars in his field. He has won several best paper awards, teaching awards and research prizes. He was also a finalist for the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award in 2007. In addition, he received the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995, the highest teaching award at Emory University. He received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984 and his Bachelors (with Honors in Economics) from St. Stephens College, Delhi in 1982. Before joining ESMT in 2009, he was the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. Before joining Boston University, he was on the faculty at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University. Prior to his PhD, he worked for three years as a Product Manager in Reckitt Benckiser plc. Prof. Bhattacharya has conducted research and consulted for many organizations such as Allianz, AT&T, Bosch, Eli Lilly, E.ON, General Mills, Green Mountain Coffee, High Museum of Art, Hitachi Corporation, Procter & Gamble Company, Prudential Bank, Timberland and Unilever. As an expert in corporate responsibility and sustainability, he is often interviewed and quoted in publications such as Business Week, BBC, Forbes, Financial Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and The Economist and on TV stations such as Times Now, CBS and PBS. He frequently delivers keynote speeches or brings in his insights as a panelist at company, industry, and academic conferences and conventions.

Judy Bannon

Judy Bannon began her career in infant health and safety with SIDS of Pennsylvania in 1989, taking the organization from a regional to a statewide presence by 1992. With the success of the national Back to Sleep Campaign, Bannon, as a member of the Allegheny County Child Death Review Team recognized that 90% of babies that continued to die of ‘SIDS’ were perishing in unsafe sleeping environments. In 1998 she founded Cribs for Kids with the intention of providing a safe sleep space to as many families as possible. Cribs for Kids has expanded into a National organization that is saving the lives of infants and helping every baby sleep safer through innovative programs that focus on prevention and education. Over 1,450 organizations nationwide have signed licenses with Cribs for Kids with new partners signing on every week. These partners consist of community-based organizations, state and local health departments, churches, Child Death Review Teams, hospitals, and government agencies. To date, this program has placed over 600,000 infants into a safe sleep environment and has provided safe-sleep education to millions of families. In 2017 Cribs for Kids unveiled their line of safety products for infants including their safe sleep environment, the Cribette. In addition to funding Cribs for Kids programs, the profits from the sale of every Cribette funds vital SIDS research through the Aaron Matthew Research Foundation of Cribs for Kids. Through Bannon’s tireless advocacy, Pennsylvania Act 73 of 2010, mandating that every mother giving birth in a Pennsylvania hospital or birthing center be given infant safe sleep education and a crib, if needed, was signed into law by Governor Edward Rendell in October 2010. She has chaired six national Cribs for Kids® Conferences held in Pittsburgh, the location of Cribs for Kids Headquarters. In addition to the top SIDS/SUID researchers in the world, these conferences bring partners and advocates together to share best practices and further the Commission of Cribs for Kids. Mrs. Bannon has been recognized nationally by the National Center for Child Death Review with the ‘Making the Difference’ Award in 2009 and is a proud recipient of the 2012 Circle of Commendation Award from the Consumer Products Safety Commission which was bestowed upon her by Chairman Inez M. Tenenbaum. In 2014 she received the Distinguished Educator Award at the International SIDS/Stillbirth Conference in Amsterdam for her contributions to parental support, professional education, and prevention of sudden infant deaths. In 2015 she was named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalist. April 26, 2017 was designated Judy Bannon Day in Pittsburgh by Pittsburgh City Council to recognize her contribution to the city. Judy and her daughter, Jennifer, have chronicled the story of the Cribs for Kids movement from humble beginnings to a multi-million dollar national non-profit in their book, Five Ladies and a Forklift.

Nesra Yannier

Dr. Nesra Yannier is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and Founder and CEO of NoRILLA: an award-winning patented mixed-reality platform bridging physical and virtual worlds to improve children’s inquiry based STEM learning. Yannier has received her PhD in Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She has been awarded Mister Rogers Scholarship (Emmy’s College Television Awards in New Media for Children) as well as National Science Foundation grants to take her PhD project forward. She has also received the Innovation Fellowship from the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University to help commercialize her PhD research to benefit society. She has BS degrees in Physics and Computer Engineering, an MS in Computational Sciences and Engineering from Koc University, Istanbul and an MA in Learning, Design and Technology from Stanford University. She has experience working at Disney Research, NASA Ames Research Center and start-up companies, designing and building new educational technologies to be used in real world settings. She has also started and led an organization at Koc University to coach children from underserved communities to participate in the FIRST Lego Robotics Competition. She is passionate about creating novel technologies to have a positive impact on children’s lives.