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).

670 Albany St
Room 101B ALD Auditorium
Boston, Massachusetts, 02118
United States

Amy Gleason

US Digital Service and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Amy Gleason is a Digital Services Expert with the United States Digital Service at the White House and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). She began her career in nursing and quickly found that she loved technology. She has worked on several different electronic medical records applications, and after her daughter was diagnosed with a rare diseases, she discovered firsthand how difficult being a patient and caregiver is in the healthcare system. From this experience, she confounded CareSync, a care coordination company. She joined the US Digital Service for a tour of duty last November, and she is enjoying working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on data and interoperability projects.

Bill Walczak

Bill is most associated with the re-development of the Codman Square area of Boston, a multi-cultural community which foundered in the 1970s and became an area known for racial unrest and economic disintegration. Bill was founder and CEO of the Codman Square Health Center, a major factor in the regeneration of the community, is founding president of Codman Academy Charter School, and most recently was CEO of the South End Community Health Center in Boston. He has been President or CEO of health care organizations for 42 years. Bill is on the Advisory Board for WBUR Public Radio. He is chair of the Board of Trustees of Bunker Hill Community College, and chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. He was founding president of the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, a founder of the Edward Kennedy Health Careers Academy and founding president of Boston HealthNet. He is a past President of the UMass/Boston Alumni Association and is on its Board of Visitors. He serves on the boards of the Rappaport Center at Boston College Law School, Daily Table, HealthWorks at Codman, and The American City Coalition. Bill served on both Governors Deval Patrick’s and Charlie Baker’s Health Care Transition Committees. Bill has worked on community regeneration efforts in a number of countries around the world. He has received numerous awards for his work and ideas.

Bindu Kalesan

Director, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Community Health Science

Dr. Kalesan is a clinical epidemiologist and data scientist, with three interdisciplinary research pillars, within the umbrella of eliminating racial disparities and discrimination and promoting equity and social justice: 1) trauma and violence (firearm injury epidemiology), 2) cardiometabolic diseases 3) psychiatric and mental health conditions. She uses novel statistical methodology, supervised and unsupervised machine learning and emerging m-health technologies. Her most recent study in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that the average profile of an American using a gun for suicide is a married, white male over the age of 50 who is experiencing deteriorating health.

Carl Streed

Clinician-Investigator at Boston Medical Center Center for Transgender Medicine & Surgery

Carl Streed Jr. MD, MPH, is a physician by training and advocate in action focused on improving the status, health, and well-being of vulnerable communities. For over a decade, he has been dedicated to understanding and eliminating disparities among sexual and gender minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. He uses a decidedly health-focused perspective with emphasis placed on the intersection of identities. He has approached the issues facing LGBTQ individuals and communities through education reform, professional development, and systems redesign. With his experience advocating for institutional, state, and national level change, he has advised as a consultant the creation of new LGBTQ-focused symposia and resources for healthcare systems, non-profit organizations, and federal agencies.

David Silverstein

Founder & CEO at Amaze PBC

David Silverstein is a highly regarded strategist, innovator, author and public speaker who enjoys working with clients to tackle their toughest problems. David launched the Lean Methods Group and founded the non-profit, BrokenHealthcare.org in an effort to transform the US healthcare system. A frequent speaker and media source on topics related to innovation, strategy and economic and global trends, David is best known for his deep insights. He has been featured in or has written for The Washington Post, The Economist, Inc. Magazine, The Robb Report, CNBC, NPR, Fox News and many other media outlets. David has also published several books on innovation, business management and executive leadership, including the most recent book in his Connect the Dots series, Three Steps Ahead. He also co-authored The Innovator’s Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth and Insourcing Innovation: How to Achieve Competitive Excellence Using TRIZ.

George Murphy

Ph.D - Co-Director BMC Center for Regenerative Medicine

George J. Murphy is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, the Director of Research in the Division of Hematology-Oncology, and Co-Director of the Boston University and Boston Medical Center’s Center for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Murphy received his doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Oxford University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He did his post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School and the Children’s Hospital in Boston, as a Fellow in Molecular Medicine responsible for the design, development and implementation of stem cell and gene-based protocols aimed at combating hematopoietic, immunologic, and musculoskeletal disease. Dr. Murphy is the founding co-director of the Boston University and Boston Medical Center’s Center for Regenerative Medicine. He is an American Society of Hematology Scholar Award recipient and a National Blood Foundation Fellow.

Jennifer Tseng

Surgeon-in-Chief, Boston Medical Center

Jennifer F. Tseng, MD, MPH, is Utley Endowed Professor and Chair of the Deparment of Surgery at Boston University School of Medicine, and Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston Medical Center. She was formerly the founding Chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology and Clinical Co-Director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Tseng is a surgical oncologist and gastrointestinal surgeon. Her practice encompasses the upper GI tract, including hepato-pancreato-biliary, gastric and upper intestinal surgery. Dr. Tseng founded and directed Surgical Outcomes Analysis & Research, a clinical and outcomes research institute based at BIDMC. Her research group forms the center of the newly constituted Boston Surgical Outcomes Center at BUSM/BMC. Her research interests include developing models for cancer treatment sequencing strategies, cancer biomarkers, and healthcare disparities and outcomes research.

Kelli Bravo

Healthcare and Life Sciences Executive

Kelli Bravo is the Vice President, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Pegasystems where she leads the go-to-market strategy for their healthcare and life sciences engagement, services and digital automation solutions. She has over 15 years of customer-focused product, business development and marketing experience in high tech and healthcare companies. Kelli has previously held executive management positions at Microsoft, Epocrates and Athenahealth where she was responsible for evolving the marketing and operations, public relations, demand generation and product marketing strategies. She has an MBA and an MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Stanford University.

Kirk Brunson

Kirk Brunson is one of the premier bagpipers in the USA and has played with a number of pipe bands throughout his career. Most recently with the Triumph St Pipe Band of Vancouver he has performed at events throughout the US, Canada, Ireland, and Scotland. Currently, he plays locally to Boston and splits his time between music and a career in technology.

Mark Stibich

Chief Scientific Officer & Founder, Xenex Disinfection Services

Dr. Stibich is a founder and Chief Scientific Officer for Xenex Healthcare Services, a company that uses a patented pulsed xenon disinfection system to make patient care areas safer by reducing the microbial contamination (from “superbugs” such as MRSA, VRE and C. diff.). Xenex has been featured in Forbes, CNN and other media outlets as well as in peer-reviewed scientific publications. Dr. Stibich specializes in creating efficient solutions for public health problems. He received his doctoral training from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and has been involved in multiple international research and intervention projects. He is an inventor on over 80 granted patents and a principal investigator on an NIH grant. Specialties: infection control, protocol design, UV disinfection, area disinfection, disinfection of public spaces, public health, business development

Marty Makary

Johns Hopkins Professor and Author of "The Price We Pay."

Dr. Makary is an advocate for health care innovation. He has written extensively on organizational culture, the science of measuring quality in medicine, and health care reform. He is principle investigator of a Robert Wood Foundation Grant to lower health care costs in the U.S. by creating physician-endorsed measures of appropriate medical care and directs the national “Improving Wisely” project to reduce waste in medicine. He is also the director of The Center for Opioid Research and Education and founder of SolveTheCrisis.org. Dr. Makary is the author of two bestselling books: Mama Maggie and Unaccountable, a book about health care transparency. He is a frequent medical commentator on the health care cost crisis, the impact of new technology, and interpreting the latest medical research for everyday consumers. Dr. Makary is a surgical oncologist specializing in minimally-invasive surgery and teaches health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Morgan Gleason

Morgan Gleason is a senior at Auburn University. After being diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease at age 11, Gleason began making YouTube videos that went viral. She now advocates for patients across the country and shares her journey by speaking at conferences and writing a blog. She plans to work in patient experience after she graduates in May 2020.

Nir Bazilai

Professor & Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Dr. Nir Barzilai is the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. He is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics, and member of the Diabetes Research Center and of the Divisions of Endocrinology & Diabetes and Geriatrics. Dr. Barzilai’s research interests are in the biology and genetics of aging. He has received numerous grants, among them ones from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), American Federation for Aging Research, the Ellison Medical Foundation and The Glenn Medical foundation. Born in Israel, Dr. Barzilai served as chief medic and physician in the Israel Defense Forces.

Pooja Kumar

A physician by training, Pooja is currently a partner at McKinsey & Company where she works on health system performance transformations and growth strategies in markets experiencing payment reform. She has worked across public- and private-sector institutions and for both not-for-profit and for-profit health systems, as well as for leading non-profit foundations in global health. Pooja also leads McKinsey’s Healthcare COVID Response Team and Academic Medical Center service line. In the past, Pooja has worked extensively in refugee health with UNHCR (Congo-Zambia border), Save the Children (East Timor), UNICEF (India), International Rescue Committee (Azerbaijan), and Doctors without Borders. She sits on the board of Last Mile Health. Pooja received her MD from Harvard Medical School, MSc in economic & social history from Oxford University, and BA in health policy from Duke University.

Thea James

VP of Mission & Associate Chief Medical Officer at Boston Medical Center

Dr. Thea L. James is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Boston Medical Center/Boston University School of Medicine. She also serves as the Associate Chief Medical Officer, Vice President of Mission, and Director of the Violence Intervention Advocacy Program at Boston Medical Center. Dr. James has chaired and served on national committees within the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. She is a member of the Boston University School of Medicine Admissions Committee. She was appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, where she presently serves as Chair of the Licensing Committee. Dr. James is the 2008 awardee of the David H. Mulligan Award for public service. Dr. James’ passion is in Public Health both domestically and globally. She is a Supervising Medical Officer on the Boston Disaster Medical Assistance Team, under the Department of Health and Human Services, which has responded to several disasters in the United States and across the globe.

Vasan Ramachandran

Principal Investigator, RURAL Study at BU School of Medicine

Vasan S. Ramachandran, M.D., Principal Investigator and Director of the FHS, and Director of the FHS fellowship program in cardiovascular epidemiology for the last 25 years. Dr. Ramachandran is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at BUSM/BUSPH, and Chief, Section of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, BUSM. He is the Jay & Louis Coffman Professor of Vascular Medicine at BUSM. Dr. Ramachandran is a trained cardiologist with subspecialty training in echocardiography. He is a fellow of the AHA Councils on Epidemiology and Prevention and Functional Genomics and Translational Biology, and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). For the last 20 years, Dr. Ramachandran has focused his research on the genetic and non-genetic epidemiology of congestive heart failure, population-based vascular testing and echocardiography, genetic and non-genetic epidemiology of high blood pressure, and CVD risk estimation.