Theme: Currents

We are all connected – within our communities, within nature, within families both chosen and given. Our need for connection draws us to concepts bigger than ourselves. In our second year, TEDxMcMinnville highlights big ideas that flow between us to ignite our imaginations, celebrate collaboration, and inspire change.

Linfield College
900 SE Baker St.
Ice Auditorium
McMinnville, Oregon, 97128
United States

Christine Bader

Christine Bader is co-founder of The Life I Want, a storytelling project with Eva Dienel reimagining a future of work that works for all. She is a coach, facilitator, writer, consultant, and speaker focused on the messy intersection of business and society. Christine is the author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (2014), and from 2015-17 was Amazon's first director of social responsibility. She spent last year in Indonesian with her husband and their young twins; and are now continuing their adventure in McMinnville, Oregon.

Cinthia Manuel

Cinthia Manuel is the CEO and Founder of Autentica Consulting, LLC. She specializes in equity, diversity and inclusion, mentoring, and multicultural marketing. She is the proud daughter of immigrants and a first-generation Latina. She was named one of the 23 Business People to Watch in 2019 by the Portland Business Journal for her work contributing to communities of color through professional development, mentorship, and entrepreneurship. She is passionate about education and has worked with the Gates Millennium Scholarship Alumni Associations, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the United Negro College Fund. She deeply believes that building strong communities is key to creating a powerful voice that drives change.

Diego Martinez

Diego Martinez started as a public school teacher in rural Colorado and is now the Science Mastery Specialist at Delphian School outside of McMinnville, Oregon. Diego likens Delphian to SpaceX, for its dedication to isolating the first principles of education and leveraging them to build the strongest possible curriculum. Flight simulators, moon rocks, rocket launches and more, students who work with Diego are never without a reason to be engaged in their own education. His tireless work as a STEM teacher for more than a decade earned him the 2018 Alan Shepard Technology in Education Award given by NASA, and he's just getting started.

Dr. David Farrell

David Farrell is a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University. He is passionate about bringing scientific discoveries from the lab bench to the patient's bedside. His research interests involve the mechanisms of blood clotting and how this leads to heart attacks and strokes. He has four decades of biomedical research experience. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Heart Association for his research contributions. He is also training the next generation of physicians and scientists as a course director in the Foundations of Medicine curriculum for first-year medical students at the Oregon Health & Science University.

Dr. Karen Adams

Dr. Karen Adams has spent more than 30 years taking good care of women - and teaching others to do the same. She is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, where she also serves as Vice Chair for Education. She is recognized as a national leader in OB/GYN education, and she founded and directs Menopause and Sexual Medicine Program in the OHSU Center for Women's Health. She is passionate about getting solid information into the hands of women and the people who love them. To accomplish that, she hosts an annual series of evening workshops for women called "A Toast to Midlife." Her podcast "Midlife Life with Dr. Karen" launched in 2020.

Dr. Leonard Finkelman

Leonard Finkelman is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the City University of New York Graduate Center. Since then he has come to specialize in the emerging field of Philosophy of Paleontology, working on conceptual issues in extinction and the metaphysical background of dinosaur research. He earned a Master of Science degree in Earth Sciences with a specialization in Vertebrate Paleontology from the University of Oregon. In addition to this research, Leonard has written a number of outreach essays on a variety of topics including ethics, possible-world semantics, and human nature. Leonard's favorite dinosaur is Tyrannosaurus rex. He acknowledges that this is an uninteresting choice. Please pretend that he said Yutyrannus huali instead.

Liz Knapp

Liz Knapp has 18 years experience as a public school educator and has taught students from every continent (except Antartica). Liz started her career as a psychology major with aspirations of working with children with trauma. When she realized her clientele would be limited to certain socio-economic groups, she decided to go into education to work with the most at-risk students. An educator in the McMinnville School District in McMinnville, Oregon since 2008, Liz teaches students to problem solve through collaboration, positive communication strategies, active listening, and future goal setting.

Matt Brisbin

Matt Brisbin has worked for the last fourteen years as an English teacher at McMinnville High School in McMinnville, Oregon. He has also worked for the College Board for the past three years scoring student essays as a reader for the AP Literature and Composition Exam. He is a regular contributor to the APLitHelp and #teachlivingpoets blogs. He was also a co-author of the Instructor's Guide to the high school edition of the 2019 Norton Literature Anthology. Matt has implemented a "gradeless" system in his classes for the past two years and hopes to continue encouraging more teachers to do the same.

Natalie Bowker

Natalie Bowker is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Her 20 year long career has traversed many unique work environments, including: counseling in schools, wilderness therapy, grief counseling, consulting for Optum Global Health, and behavioral health consulting in a local OB/GYN. For the past 10 years, she has enjoyed teaching graduate students at various universities in Minneapolis and Portland. The lesser known topic of Ambiguous Loss is on she knows quite intimately, and has a clinical focus on this topic. Natalie is also a yoga instructor and mother of two girls.

Patrick Galvin

Patrick is the chief galvanizer of The Galvanizing Group, a speaking and coaching company in Portland, Oregon that helps high-performance organizations and teams galvanize repeat and referred business through better relationships. Patrick is the author of The Connector's Way: A Story About Building Business One Relationship at a Time, a parable about how great relationships are the difference between success and failure in business. Patrick is the president of the Portland Rotary Charitable Trust which funds community service projects in Oregon and abroad. Patrick served as president of the Oregon Chapter of the National Speakers Association and has spoken throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe.