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).

WonderWorld West End Studios
1545 West Trade St.
Charlotte, North Carolina, 28216
United States

Alan Rauch

Alan is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Born in Montréal, Rauch earned degrees in biology and zoology before receiving a doctorate in English Literature from Rutgers University. His most recent book, simply titled “Dolphin” is part of the Reaktion “Animal Series” and he is currently writing a book about sloths. He is also completing a book on Private Subscription Libraries in Manchester, Leeds, and Newcastle. Alan’s forthcoming article “The Sukotyro: On the Extinction of a Non-Existent Animal” will be published shortly in the journal Configurations. His courses range from Victorian Literature to The Graphic Novel and have worked, in his free time, as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Andrew Lee

With over a decade of experience in talent acquisition and human capital solutions, Andrew Lee is focused on how to attract, develop and retain talent. He is a native Charlottean who attended South Mecklenburg High School and graduated from Old Dominion University. Andrew lives in Charlotte with his wife Tiffany and their twin daughters Elizabeth and Isabelle.

Carla Carlisle

Carla Carlisle is a speaker, author, and mental health advocate. Carla became a foster parent in 2010 to a baby boy born two months prematurely. Her relentless quest for motherhood would lead her on an eight-year, unconventional journey to rescue the child she now calls her son. Carla’s calling is to minimize/eliminate Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their impact; focusing on family and children. She is an active Board Member of the Alexander Children’s Foundation (Alexander Youth Network), Storyteller with Mental Health America of the Central Carolinas, and volunteers with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (Charlotte Chapter). Carla works for a global financial services company in Charlotte, North Carolina. Carla earned her B.A. in sociology from Indiana University in Bloomington. She also earned an M.S. in human resources management from American University in Washington, D.C. and another in organizational development from Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. In addition, Carla has obtained a graduate certificate in change management from Johns Hopkins University. None of these degrees prepared her for loving and fighting for the life of the child of her heart. She is the proud mother of three boys and two dogs.

Jean Wright

Jean Wright is the Chief Innovation Officer for Atrium Health. Jean has been named a Top 30 Chief Innovation Officer and one of the 25 most powerful women in Health IT. Previous roles at Atrium Health include the Chief Medical Officer for CMC-Northeast and CMC-University, two of the system’s hospitals. Before coming to North Carolina, Jean was the Executive Director for the Backus Children’s Hospital and The Women’s Institute at Memorial Health in Savannah, GA. She served as the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics. After graduating from the University of Michigan Jean attended Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. She joined the faculty at Emory as a pediatric anesthesiologist and intensivist. She is board certified in Pediatrics, Anesthesia, and Critical Care. She received her MBA from Emory’s Goizuetta School of Business. She has post-graduate training from MIT in Entrepreneurship and Harvard Business School in Disruptive Innovation. She has served on the CDC’s Task Force on Fetal Alcohol Effects and Fogarty International Center of the NIH. She is a current board member for the COPD Foundation and a frequent speaker on the topic of COPD. She is frequently grant-funded, the largest being Principal Investigator for the Beacon Community Grant from HHS in 2010 – 2013. Awarded nearly 16 million dollars she ran 29 projects in Cabarrus, Rowan and Stanly county to deploy health care informatics. Dr. Wright has given testimony before the U.S. House and Senate, and has appeared on 20/20, the O’Reilly Factor, CNN, and published over 50 articles. In 2000 she won the American College of Physician Executive’s Physician of Excellence Award and awarded the Athena Award for Women in Leadership. Her greatest claim to fame is her 4 children adopted from China. She and her children travel to China each year to volunteer.

Katie Churchman

Inspired by a background in acting and writing, Katie is passionate about the power of storytelling and how we can use it in our everyday lives to consciously create the lives that we want to lead. Through her work with individuals, couples, and teams, Katie empowers people to take charge of their own life narrative both personally and professionally, individually and collectively. Katie is a coach and facilitator at 4D Human Being, an international communications skills and leadership development company, helping people to ‘consciously create the impact they choose.’ 4D combines the knowledge, expertise and talents of entrepreneurs, business leaders, psychologists and actors and looks at our development in all 4 of our dimensions: physical, emotional, intellectual and intentional. Katie works with leaders all over the world (in-person and virtually), leading and facilitating professional and personal development programs, experiential workshops and impactful speaking sessions, In addition, Katie is a Certified Organizational Relationship Systems Coach (ORSC) and host of The Relationship Matters Podcast, created in association with ORSC & CRR Global. The Relationship Systems Coaching approach creates sustainable and resilient teams, families, and partnerships by focusing on how we want to ‘be’ together in a relationship. Katie moved from London to Charlotte in the summer of 2018 with her husband Dan and has fallen in love with this vibrant, friendly city. She loves hiking Crowders Mountain, spending time at the Whitewater Centre, and is fortunate to live right by her favorite brewery: Wooden Robot! In addition, Katie is a coach and storytelling consultant for Foundation For Girls (FFG), a Charlotte-based Charity helping to nurture the leader in every girl.

Kaustavi Sarkar

Kaustavi Sarkar, Assistant Professor, is a dancer-choreographer-educator-scholar. Sarkar has been performing and teaching Odissi, an Indian classical dance form from eastern India, for over a decade. Currently, she is the Artistic Director of an India-based organization dedicated to feminist, queer, and transnational issues pertaining to Indian classical dance called Kaustavi Movement Center. She has taught at Kenyon College and at The Ohio State University (OSU) from where she also received her Ph.D. in Dance Studies with interdisciplinary research interests in digital humanities, cultural studies, practice-as-research, queer studies, and religious studies. Her work is interdisciplinary with collaborations with specialists in 3D animation, computer science, virtual reality, responsive architecture, and web-text design. Sarkar has performed in numerous dance festivals and presented her scholarly/ creative research in conferences namely World Dance Alliance, Dance Studies Association, South Asian Studies Conference, Triangle Digital Humanities Institute, and Game Developers Conference. Her research has been published or currently accepted by Choreographic Practices, Performance Research, Research in Dance Education, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, and Dance Research Journal. She employs entrepreneurial measures across her teaching, choreography, and writing instantiating and sustaining conversations across academe, performance, and business. She serves as the board member of the American College Dance Association. She has published an online workbook called Dancing Worlds (2018) with Great River Publishers. She is also working on her monograph Dance, Technology, Social Justice currently under review with McFarland Publishers. She also holds an MS in Economics with Minor in Finance, Texas A&M University (2006) and has work experience in the corporate sector for over a decade. Sarkar functions within the philosophy of Plavana meaning immersion, emerging from her South Asian training, of the dancing body in conversation with social, economic, religious, cultural, historical, technological, and political forces at play.

Olanike Ayomide-Mensah

Olanike is a strategist and executor rolled into one. She has applied her organizational development, change leadership, and leadership coaching skills in both the social impact and for-profit sectors, nationally and globally. She founded Mosaic Consulting www.mosaic4equity.com to offer equity-informed diversity training and consulting, and management and leadership coaching to facilitate transformation in the workplace. Olanike created the ‘Equity via Diversity and Inclusion’ (EvDI TM) framework, which enables organizations to achieve sustainable institutional change. Olanike activates her deep passion for equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and talent development through various boards, councils, and committees of non-profit organizations, schools, and corporations. She is obsessed with building equity in the world!

Roger Faulkner

I am an inventor primarily. I am also a chemical engineer, polymer scientist, and entrepreneur living with ALS. The Conformal Vest Ventilator (CVV) is something I invented because I need it. The CVV allows for natural breathing by substituting for my paralyzed diaphragm muscles. This is far more natural than having air blown into my lungs by a positive pressure ventilator. The CVV doesn’t require something sticking in my face, such as a breathing tube or a nasal pillow. I have spent a decade of my life working on the supergrid concept through my company Electric Pipeline Corporation. I obtained worldwide patents on two key supergrid enabling inventions: the elpipe and the Ballistic Breaker. I no longer control those patents which I assigned to a startup company in return for stock; They went bankrupt and my patents are now held by a Swiss company. Since I came down with ALS, I have put some effort into understanding the disease and developing theories about what to do for novel treatments. One of those innovations is the CVV, I am also trying to help others start living in a wheelchair through various internet platforms such as Twitch, Patreon, and YouTube under the handle “”livinginawheelchair.”

Shane Manier

Shane Manier is a Creative Coach, Artist, Poetry Mentor and National Spoken Word Poet based in the Charlotte Metro Region of NC. She is the founder of Guerilla Poets, a nonprofit outreach art collective with branches in the US and UK. As a poet and artist, she has been featured at many shows and venues all across the Southeast while completing many outreach programs as an activist. She is currently the Spoken Word and Arts Teaching Instructor for Behailu Arts Academy, The Harvey B. Gantt Center, Henderson High School, Playing for Others and Center for Faith in the Arts current Artist in Residence.

Terrell Huntley

Terrell Huntley is a passionate Life Coach and also a Culture and Community Curator. Terrell recently launched Enjoy the Ride Coaching, a life coaching company that helps people embark on life change! Terrell loves to create content that inspires people and maximize their full potential to reach their desired results. His greatest accomplishments are writing his first book called “Our Goodest” and launching two initiatives for Charlotte, Hill City- a place for young adults to find community and Civil Gatherings – an initiative to bring together churches, nonprofits, and neighbors of West Side Charlotte. Terrell is still the current director of these initiatives today. Supported by his loving wife, Kemi a therapist her own private practice, Terrell intends on leaving a legacy for their three-year-old son Roman simply by pushing people past themselves.

Valerie Albarda

Valerie Albarda was a shy, insecure child who used humor as her superpower. Now, as a fully-grown midlife woman, she lives out loud, still struggles from time to time with residual crumbs of insecurity, and has added moxie, intellect, and charm to her list of superpowers. By day, she’s a senior content writer at a large national home improvement retailer. However, where she really shines is when she steps out of her work shoes and into her role as a writer, author, and creator of Midlife-A-Go-Go – the website and the podcast – which focuses on topics related to midlife women including menopause, thriving in midlife, finding our voices and more. As a midlife woman and a former Women’s Empowerment and Transformation Coach, Valerie is on a mission to educate and inspire midlife women as they transition through life’s ‘second spring’ with confidence. She’s a firm believer that women can enjoy the midlife and skip the crisis. One of Valerie’s true passions in life is traveling. She’s crossed the globe and made pit stops in such places as Hawaii, Dubai, the Seychelles, Switzerland, Paris, Budapest, Italy, Greece and points in between. And she’s not done yet.

Yvette Miller

I am a native North Carolina girl. My interest has always been in medicine, which led me to attend nursing and medical school. I live a life seeking experiences that expand my self-awareness without being self-centered. In the last 8-9 years, I have been exploring my creative side, having done local theater and film extra work. I am appreciative of this opportunity to combine medicine and creativity.