Theme: Impact

What does it mean to 'create impact' and 'have impact'? What does 'good' impact for the future look like, and what guides it? How should we balance the ambition to create impact with other ingredients of a happy, meaningful life?

Our TEDxCanberra audience knows that change comes in excruciating increments for those who believe in it. But once again, we are confronted by a reality that deserves a greater sense of urgency. It is hardly time for small minds, a lagging status quo and petty indifferences.

Since 2010, TEDxCanberra has brought together thousands of Canberrans to celebrate great ideas on science, technology, arts, culture and the humanities.

In 2022, we will build on this incredible history by inviting speakers and performers to explore how we might grow and learn to give voice, through stories of impact, to change that emerges now.

Join us on Sunday 16 October for a day of ‘ideas worth spreading’ at the Cultural Centre Kambri at ANU, where we present a series of brilliant ideas and the people behind them. They are out to change the world - through their impactful stories.

Kambri at ANU
Kambri Precinct
Australian National University
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2601
Australia

Andrew Pfeiffer

Neurodiversity advocate

Andrew is an enthusiastic data leader and a proud advocate for neurodiversity inclusion. In 2019, Andrew unexpectedly discovered that he is autistic. This revelation transformed Andrew's life by profoundly increasing his self-awareness of his strengths and areas of development. Andrew passionately advocates for the inclusion of neurodivergent staff in the workplace. He cultivates employee resource groups and regularly delivers presentations about neurodiversity to various audiences, including senior executives. He wants everyone to know that organisations will have a competitive advantage if they harness neurodivergent talent through inclusive recruitment practices and workplace culture.

Burnish

Burnish is a local Canberra band taking the city by storm.

Christina Ryan

In 2016 Christina Ryan took one of the most radical steps in her long career of activism and change making: she put the two words disability and leadership into the same sentence. Her next step was founding the Disability Leadership Institute. Now governments and major corporations use the term “disability leadership” and Christina shares her experience and leadership knowledge with disability leaders all over the planet. The Disability Leadership Institute has become a global community of disability leaders, supporting each other through a community of practice and member groups. As a specialist leadership coach, Christina now uses her decades of expertise built through frontline disability rights activism, community sector management, systemic advocacy, working at the United Nations, and mentoring to build more disability leaders.

Dan Sultan

Dan Sultan is a multifaceted, multi award-winning musician, writer, performer and artist. Along with many records spanning an abundance of different genres and styles, he’s also an accomplished author as well as trying his hand at acting. Receiving a total of six ARIA Awards to date, including Best Artist, he also boasts an array of many other accolades over a timespan of more than a decade that showcase his diverse and ever evolving career.

Elliot Lester

Elliot Lester graduated from college in the ACT last year. She has founded and progressed initiatives aimed at sexual violence prevention within both her school community and at a state level. She has collaborated on these projects with the ACT Education Directorate, a senior ACT DPP barrister in the field, University of California executives and other sexual violence prevention NGOs. She is now studying a Bachelor of Law and Public Policy at ANU, in the hope of working in the public sector to prevent sexual violence. In her spare time, she helps organise The Girls Leadership Network in Canberra. She is passionate about the safety and support of women, especially in schools, and believes in respect, empowerment and diversity as crucial values of the workplace, schools and everyday life.

Hanna Suominen

A Professor of Computer Science (CS) in the Australian National University (ANU), Hanna Suominen is at the forefront of accelerating health impact from personalised medicine technology through Machine Learning. She is the Associate Director (Engagement & Impact) of the ANU School of Computing and an Executive in Our Health in Our Hands, the inaugural ANU Grand Challenge Program, leading its computing and engineering activities. She previously worked for Data61 of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the National Information and Communications Technology Australia as the Team Leader of the Theory and Applications in Multimodal Pattern Analysis and Natural Language Processing, respectively. Her MSc (Applied Math, 2005), PhD (CS), 2009, and Docent (a.k.a. adjunct professor, CS, 2013) were obtained from the University of Turku, Finland, followed by her Senior Fellowship of Higher Education Association (2019) from the ANU and MEdL (Curriculum & Pedagogy, 2020) from Monash University.

Harry Hattch

Harry Hattch is a magician and musician born and raised in Canberra, and has been following his passion for the performing arts for over a decade. From a young age, Harry developed a fascination with sleight of hand and misdirection. Fast forward to 2022, he now professionally performs across Canberra and surrounding regions showcasing his magic. What Harry loves most about magic is its ability to capture and mystify an audience, enthralling child-like curiosity and laughter.

Muesli

Muesli is a local Canberra band who pride themselves on exhilarating performances and unapologetically positive tunes can only be described as ‘irresistible fun’.

Nazia Ahmed

Nazia Ahmed is an economist, entrepreneur and social innovator. She specialises in evaluating and designing initiatives that improve social outcomes. She is the CEO and founder of social impact consulting firm The Social Outcomes Lab and founder of a number of social initiatives, most recently Her Kitchen Table. Nazia was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi born parents. From a young age, she had an interest in wealth disparity and was perplexed by how a person’s whole life could be altered from a lack of wealth and income. This led her to study economics and particularly the issues that mattered to disadvantaged population groups. Before starting The Social Outcomes Lab in 2015, Nazia was chief economist in NSW Government’s human services portfolio where she developed the framework for measuring outcomes for people in the child protection, social housing and disability service system. She was also a strategy consultant for a big four consulting firm.

Passion & Purpose Academy

Based in Gungahlin, Passion & Purpose Academy is Canberra’s largest multicultural performance school for young people. They specialise in Afro, cultural and hip hop dance styles as well as performance based programs. The school promotes multiculturalism, inclusion and diversity, a space where all students can feel at home.

Shyam Barr

Dr Shyam Barr has worked in education for over 15 years. He has fulfilled roles as a secondary school teacher an educational leader, an education consultant and as an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences (Design and Pedagogy) at the University of Canberra. Throughout his professional career, he has witnessed a disconnect between schools’ aspirations for developing self-regulated learners and the reality of the classroom. To better understand this observation, Shyam completed two Masters degrees - one in educational leadership and the other in cognitive psychology – and most recently a PhD exploring approaches that support teachers’ thinking and practice about self-regulated learning.

Thea O'Connor

Thea O’Connor is a senior advisor on workplace wellbeing and productivity, helping leaders, teams and individuals improve their workplace engagement and effectiveness through body intelligence and better health. She draws on over 25 year’s experience in health promotion including in the fields of nutrition (as a dietitian), body image, sleep science and workplace health. She has worked with a diverse range of organisations, helping them normalise conversations about menopause at work so that menopausal women feel safe to ask for support when they need it.

Tim Hollo

A highly regarded environmentalist, community builder and musician, Tim Hollo is Executive Director of the Green Institute and author of Living Democracy: an ecological manifesto for the end of the world as we know it.