TEDxABQ is about creating a New Mexico community built around fostering the spirit of TED. Our mission is to bring the most inspiring and important ideas in the Southwest to the TEDxABQ stage, and create conversations that continue to add value to the participants and New Mexico all year.

Albuquerque
United States

Maggie Macnab

Maggie Macnab traces the links of cultural iconography and pop/corporate symbolism back to their origins in the natural world to better understand how creative problem-solving correlates between human expression and nature’s process. Maggie’s work has been recognized by Communication Arts, Print, Step by Step, the American Ad Fed, The NY Art Directors Club, and the AIGA. She speaks for conferences and schools in the US and abroad, has owned Macnab Design since 1981, taught design theory at the University of New Mexico since 1997, and is author of Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication.

Estevan Rael-Galvez

Estevan Rael-Galvez is the current director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, former State Historian, writer and memory artist. He has been the recipient of numerous fellowships including The Ford Foundation Dissertation, The School of American Research, Yale University and The Smithsonian Institution.

Theresa Cardenas

Theresa Cardenas created Hybrid Housing Advisors LLC, a research and advocacy group advancing the development of communities that create meaningful and practical approaches to multi-family, senior housing and sustainable communities. She is the co-founder of TC Building & Reality Inc., a custom home building company that has won numerous awards for design innovation, including a 2009 Gold HBA award for Universal Design. Ms. Cardenas the founder and artistic director of a Spanish dance and theater company, creating productions that expand appreciation for Spanish history, culture, art and language. Cardenas co-authored Mujeres Valerosas, an oral history collection of New Mexico women leaders.

Jim Spadaccini

Jim Spadaccini is the Creative Director of Ideum, a design firm that specializes in the development of multitouch software and hardware. He founded Ideum after working as the Director of Interactive Media at the Exploratorium, the museum of art, science and human perception in San Francisco. He has been awarded a Smithsonian Computerworld Award and an Association of Science-Technology Center’s Award for Innovation. He currently teaches for the Cultural Resource Management Program at University of Victoria, British Columbia and the Technology-Enhanced Communication for Cultural Heritage (TEC-CH) program at the University of Lugano, Switzerland.

Carlan Tapp

Carlan Tapp is a photographer and educator dedicated to documenting the social and environmental issues that define our times, specifically social justice, environmental and health themes. He uses his camera to look at the world striving to tell stories of the twenty-first century. A sensitive eye and an intimate relationship to his subjects are the signatures of his work, which has been published, collected and recognized around the world. In 2005 he established a Federal (501c3) non-profit project Question of Power. The project tells human stories of individuals, families and communities—stories of unheard voices affected by the extraction, production, consumption and waste materials of coal in the creation of electricity for America.

Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller researches human nature, focusing on sexual selection, mate choice, intelligence, creativity, personality, behavior genetics, mental illness and consumer behavior. His paper “Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap-dancers” won the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics at Harvard. Miller has consulted on human nature for some of the world’s leading consumer goods companies and advertising agencies. He is the author of The Mating Mind, Mating Intelligence and Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior.

Michael Gelb & Deborah Domansk

Deborah Domanski is a world-renowned mezzo-soprano. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 as part of the Horne Foundation’s program "The Song Continues." Deborah maintains her passion for the art of song recital and presents concerts and education programs around the world. Recent engagements also include principal roles with Opera Southwest, The American Symphony Orchestra, The Austin Lyric Opera and the Hong Kong Opera. Deborah Domanski’s education includes a Bachelor of Music, Cum Laude, from Chapman University in California, a Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music, and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School – Juilliard Opera Center. Michael J. Gelb, is a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning, and innovative leadership. He is the author of 12 books on creativity and innovation including the international best seller How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day. In 1999, Michael Gelb won the Brain Trust Charity’s “Brain of the Year” award; others honorees include Prof. Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Garry Kasparov and Gene Rodenberry. A fourth degree black belt and former professional juggler who once performed with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, Gelb introduced the idea of teaching juggling as a means to promote accelerated learning and team-building.

Todd Eric Lovato

With a banjo in his hands, Todd Eric Lovato creates feet-stomping, award-winning roots music. Equal parts singer/songwriter, showman and music producer, Todd Eric has garnered a loyal musical following and critic accolades for his music, as evidenced by five New Mexico Music Awards, regular local radio airtime and regular sellout shows with his funk band, Felonious Groove Foundation. Todd Eric is also a writer, communications specialist, holds an M.B.A. in finance, and is a founder of Santa Fe-based record label Penguino Records, which houses the bands Felonious Groove Foundation, Skinnyfat and Fantastic Planet. During the day, Todd Eric works as director of media and public relations at Santa Fe Community College

Jonathan Wolfe

Dr. Jonathan Wolfe is the founder and Executive Director of the Fractal Foundation, a New Mexico nonprofit that uses the beauty of fractals to inspire interest and participation in science, math and art. An artist and scientist, his studies of the neurophysiology of the visual system were inspired by his love of color, form and motion, and now his knowledge of perceptual neuroscience informs his art. He is best known for his giant, fractal-inspired tie-dyed hot air balloons, crowd favorites in Albuquerque and around the world. Dr. Wolfe is also the New Mexico regional contact for the Burning Man project, a temporary interactive arts experiment and community dedicated to radical self-expression and civic responsibility. His love of fractals continues to spiral upward and outward, reaching ever larger audiences, through public art installations, school presentations, corporate trainings, and fulldome planetarium fractal shows. Since 2003, he has taught over 30,000 children and 25,000 adults the important and inspiring lessons of fractals, chaos and complexity. He is passionate about sharing the beauty of math and science, and he has enthralled audiences all over the world, from Rio Rancho to Rio de Janeiro.

Everett Hill

Everette W. Hill is the founding Executive Director of the New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community, and has changed the paradigm of youth development. The Forum has created a statewide network of youth, communities, nonprofits, schools, colleges, policy makers, and government workers, working together to help the youth of New Mexico by building on community assets. Hill has nearly 20 years experience in the non-profit sector developing and managing programs, developing grass-roots community-based public policy initiatives, and providing organizational development and technical assistance supports to individuals and organizations in the social sectors.

Rex Jung

Rex Jung, Ph.D., is a leading scientist in the emerging field of positive neuroscience – the study of what the brain does well. As an Assistant Professor at the UNM Health Sciences Center Department of Neurosurgery, his groundbreaking research led to the first model describing a network of brain regions critically linked together in service of intellectual pursuits. Over the last several years, he has turned his attention to the manifestation of creativity in the brain – a cognitive capacity perhaps critically dependent upon, yet distinctly different from intelligence. The author of over 40 scientific publications, his research has been widely featured in popular media outlets including CNN,BBC, Psychology Today, New Scientist, The New York Times, and Newsweek. His work is based on patients diagnosed with brain disease and disorder and is enhanced by a research perspective grounded in both neurological disorder and “what the brain does well.”