Theme: Exigent: If Not Now When?

In 2022, TEDxEmory challenges you to stop the “pause” from whatever is holding you back from becoming a voice, a leader, and a change-maker in your community. We ask you to reflect on the exigent or demanding issues in your life and take responsibility to create meaningful differences. Today we invite you to listen to professionals and students alike as they passionately share their ideas capable of challenging previous ways of thought, like no other. TEDxEmory proudly presents our newest conference, Exigent: If Not Now, When?

Emory University
201 Dowman Drive
Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
United States

Alex Speak

Alex Speak is a fourth-year medical student at the Emory University School of Medicine. She was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, and completed her B.A. at Union College, a liberal arts school in upstate New York, where she studied health economics. In medical school, Alex produces the WISER (Women in Surgery at the Emory Residencies) podcast along with a team of residents and other students. WISER highlights the lessons and accomplishments of women in surgery, pushing the conversational needle forward about important topics in the field. Alex is excited to bring such conversations to the TEDxEmory stage. She is passionate about equity in surgery, global surgery, and storytelling both in medicine and beyond. In her free time, you can find her playing basketball, attending dance classes, or debating a good book or TV show with friends.

Chenae Bullock

Chenae Bullock is an enrolled Shinnecock Nation Tribal citizen and descendant of the Montauk people in Long Island New York. York. Chenae is a water protector, Indigenous perspective historian, and humanitarian. Following her ancestors footsteps as whalers and business leaders, the foundation of her work has been based on the resurgence of the traditional canoe culture of the northeast coastal Algonquin communities. She has organized historically sacred paddles in the ancient waterways of the northeastern seaboard. As a successful business pioneer, she is the Founder & CEO of Moskehtu Consulting which is a Cultural & Heritage Preservation firm. She is also the Managing Director of Little Beach Harvest, a wholly owned cannabis business by the Shinnecock Nation. She is a published author of a book titled “50 Plant Medicines: Indigenous Oral History & Perspective”. She uses her Indigenous oral history to help people on their journey to learn more about the plant medicines that have been used for thousands of years.

Elisabet Ortiz

Hello! My name is Elisabet Ortiz. I’m a computer science and finance double major at Emory University. I am involved with several organizations on and off campus. I’ve previously worked for nonprofits such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Girls Who Code and have also worked for congressional campaigns. My biggest passion project is being the founder of Students for Students–a nonprofit focused on making college campuses more equitable for minority and low-income students through community and solidarity. Students for Students was inspired by my own experiences as a low-income student and how my community helped me. We have grown to multiple college campuses, have distributed thousands of dollars in immediate aid, and have built a network of thousands of students. I am happiest when working on making education and tools for community building more equitable for underrepresented groups. I am so excited to share my story with you!

Isaac Boruchowicz

Isaac Boruchowicz was born in San José, Costa Rica. He is currently a Senior at Emory University in the Goizueta Business School, concentrating in Marketing and Consulting with a double major in Economics. Isaac's passion lies in storytelling and helping companies communicate their stories. This passion has developed through two summer internship programs at Ogilvy where he learned firsthand about the importance of great communication. He also gained great experience working with Joey Reiman, the founder of BCG Brighthouse and Godfather of corporate purpose, to teach his Ideation class at Emory.

Jae Nichelle

Jae Nichelle is a Tulane University graduate, a lover of sweet potatoes, and a storyteller on the page and the stage. She is the author of the poetry chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary); the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association; and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. Her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry. Additionally, her viral piece about anxiety titled "Friends With Benefits" has amassed millions of views online. Jae has a passion for language, linguistics, and mental health, and she has published articles in AFROPUNK, An Injustice, and Black Youth Project on these subjects. Jae writes for her younger self, who never dared to dream her voice was worthy of being heard.

Jinho Choi

Dr. Choi has been active in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). He has presented many state-of-the-art NLP models that automatically derive various linguistic structures from plain text. These models are publicly available in the NLP Toolkit called ELIT. He has also led the Character Mining project and introduced novel machine comprehension tasks for explicit and implicit understanding in multiparty dialogue. For the application side, Dr. Choi has developed innovative Biomedical NLP models by collaborating with several medical fields such as radiology, neurology, transplant, and nursing. His latest research focuses on building the conversational AI-based chatbot called Emora that aims to be a daily companion of everyone's life. With Emora, Dr. Choi's team won the 1st-place at the Alexa Prize Socialbot Grand Challenge 3 that came with $500,000 cash award.

Kristina Newton

Kristina Newton has worked for over 15 years in the technology and social impact sectors. It’s this experience and developed skillset, partnered with a deep passion, that has led to her successful entry into the roles of Nonprofit Organization Founder and Executive Director of Hope for Youth, Inc - more fondly referred to as HYPE. HYPE is a nonprofit organization that empowers historically underrepresented girls with technology skills and prepares them to become future leaders in tech careers, cultivating a pipeline of diverse talent for the tech industry. Kristina is a highly respected and regarded leader in the non-profit and social impact ecosystems, garnering rewards and recognition from organizations nationwide.

Lisa Morgan

Lisa Morgan is a self-advocate and consultant in crisis support and suicide prevention for autistic people. Lisa is founder and co-chair of the Autism and Suicide committee of the American Association of Suicidology. She is a community council member of AASET (Autistic Adults and other Stakeholders Engaged Together) a group of autistic adults informing autism research priorities. Lisa has a master’s degree in the Art of Teaching and is a board-certified autism specialist. She is a peer reviewer of the online journal, Autism in Adulthood, feature writer of the online magazine, Spectrum Women, and the author of several books about crisis supports for autistic people. Lisa owns Lisa Morgan Consulting LLC at www.autismcrisissupport.com, where she mentors autistic adults pursuing a better quality of life and develops workshops for professionals and staff to communicate with and understand autistic people better.

Maneesha Gupta

Maneesha Gupta is a Bay Street trained lawyer, entrepreneur and speaker. She was named as one of Canada's Top 30 Under 30 Changemakers of 2021 by York University and Canada's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers by Canadian Lawyer Magazine. Maneesha practices intellectual property, advertising and technology law. She is the Founder of Mindful Lawyer Canada, a peer-to-peer mindfulness solution for legal professionals. Her mission is to raise potential by designing experiences that build emotional resilience, self-empowerment, and mindfulness. She works as Counsel at TD Bank. Maneesha is a distinguished public speaker on resilience, mindfulness, and diversity at universities and colleges across Canada. She serves as a Board Director with the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers and the South Asian Bar Association. She advocates for the advancement of women, inclusion, and access to justice. Maneesha is an Ontario Bar Association Council Member, an organization serving 16,000 lawyers, judges and members.

Maneesha Maneesha Gupta

Maneesha Gupta is a Bay Street trained lawyer, entrepreneur and speaker. She was named as one of Canada's Top 30 Under 30 Changemakers of 2021 by York University and Canada's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers by Canadian Lawyer Magazine. Maneesha practices intellectual property, advertising and technology law. She is the Founder of Mindful Lawyer Canada, a peer-to-peer mindfulness solution for legal professionals. Her mission is to raise potential by designing experiences that build emotional resilience, self-empowerment, and mindfulness. She works as Counsel at TD Bank. Maneesha is a distinguished public speaker on resilience, mindfulness, and diversity at universities and colleges across Canada. She serves as a Board Director with the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers and the South Asian Bar Association. She advocates for the advancement of women, inclusion, and access to justice. Maneesha is an Ontario Bar Association Council Member, an organization serving 16,000 lawyers, judges and members.

Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson, previously known as the Air Force veteran - rose to national stardom appearing on ABC’s hit series “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise”. He quickly emerged as an authentic, refreshing voice as audiences fell in love with his kind heart, joyous demeanor, charm, and vulnerability. Once leaving reality television, Johnson embraced his newfound audience and turned his attention to philanthropic work, national speaking engagements, his podcast, “Talking It Out” and writing his debut book, “Making the Love You Want”. Today, Johnson continues to transform audiences by showcasing his global influence through brave storytelling and breaking ground on conversations within sexology.

Savannah Hauk

Detroit-born Savannah Hauk is an author, podcaster, advocate and TEDx Speaker, living a confident, visible and successful male-to-female crossdressing life. Through a lifetime of experience and research, Savannah understands the many reasons men crossdress, the struggles and fears they face, and the weight of the crossdressing labels they accept but may not truly understand. Her eLit award-winning "Living with Crossdressing" book series is written to demystify and destigmatize the dual gender experience for both crossdressing men and their loved ones. Savannah also co-hosts the weekly The Fox and the Phoenix Podcast, reinforcing the same positive and inclusive message of gender identity and expression. When Savannah isn’t working or advocating, she loves the MCU, rebuilding LEGO sets from bulk bricks, and spending time with her girlfriend and two fur babies.

Vivian Singletary

Vivian Singletary, MBA, JM, is the executive director of the Public Health Informatics Institute. As a seasoned informatics expert and global public health leader, she brings modern systems thinking, innovation and creativity to her oversight of PHII. Vivian’s leadership is driven by an inherent desire to transform public health information systems to protect health. Her experience combines nearly 30 years in systems development and in public health, including leadership positions in supply chain management and information systems implementation for the private sector. She is skilled in leading large-scale visionary informatics strategies, and has extensive experience conducting global informatics initiatives in countries that include Ethiopia, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, India, Singapore and Thailand. Vivian has been recognized as one of the Most Powerful Women in IT by Health Data Management and has been honored during Women’s History Month for her contributions toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic.