Theme: Shaping the Future

TEDxBardCollege is a day-long conference featuring talks from students and faculty of Bard College as well as members of the wider community. Per our theme — Shaping the Future — this will be a forward-facing event, with a focus on how the advances of the modern age have shaped and will continue to shape human progress in the fields of technology, science, art, politics, and culture.

Bard College
35 Henderson Cir Dr
Annandale-On-Hudson, New York, 12504
United States

Ahed Festuk

Ahed Festuk is an activist from Aleppo, Syria, and is recognized as one of the pioneering women demonstrators. In the midst of the escalating war, Ahed fearlessly served as a paramedic on the frontlines, selflessly attending to the injured and providing critical medical assistance. Her unwavering commitment to her community led her to remain in Aleppo until late November 2015, working tirelessly to alleviate the suffering caused by the Syrian regime and its allies, Russia and Iran. Driven by her passion for humanitarianism, Ahed actively collaborated with local organizations, lending her support to their efforts in providing essential relief to those affected by the war. Additionally, Ahed undertook the vital responsibility of training responders in hostile environments and equipping them with first aid skills within Aleppo City. Her efforts empowered women to protect themselves and harness their own strength amidst challenging circumstances. In 2016, Ahed applied for asylum in the United States, and her dedication to aiding displaced individuals remained steadfast. She joined the Multifaith Alliance in 2018, where she played a crucial role in facilitating the delivery of aid to those in need, particularly the Syrian population. Simultaneously, Ahed embarked on a transformative educational journey, pursuing her bachelor's degree as an adult returning student at Bard College, majoring in sociology and politics. Her acceptance into the Bard Baccalaureate program attests to her intellectual prowess and commitment to academic excellence. Ahed's unusual life experiences and unyielding dedication to humanitarian causes have shaped her into an advocate for peace, justice, and social change. She encourages individuals to recognize their personal strengths and how to overcome challenging circumstances and transform the challenge to empower people to become fearless and active participants in making a difference.

Alejandro Crawford

Alejandro serves as co-founder and CEO of RebelBase, professor of entrepreneurship at Bard College’s #1-rated MBA in Sustainability, and global faculty chair for the Open Society University Network’s (OSUN) Certificate in Sustainability and Social Enterprise. His work focuses on democratizing access to innovation ecosystems and equipping people around the world to build solutions to local and global problems. He will host the upcoming podcast series “What if Instead” on ITSP Magazine. He holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business and a BA from Cornell University.

Aleksandar Demetriades

Aleksandar “Aleks” Demetriades is a junior studying politics and public health at Bard College. Originally from Miami Beach, Florida, Aleks currently serves as senior communications intern for the Open Society University Network’s (OSUN) Civic Engagement Initiative. Additionally, Aleks co-founded and currently runs Beyond 30 Campus Road, a Bard College initiative geared towards creating spaces for students to meet with peers and grapple with local and international sociopolitical issues. Aleks’ previous experience includes working as the program head for Election@Bard and serving as administrative aide for Miami-Dade County School Board member Lucia Baez-Geller. Aleks is excited to bring his backgrounds in student mobilization and community engagement to the forefront as he speaks about the value of student labor organizing and Gen Z’s mobilization efforts.

Anastasia Dzutstsati

Anastasia Dzutstsati is a journalist, filmmaker, human rights activist, and a TSI Fellow through the Open Society University Network (OSUN) pursuing an MA in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College. Born in Moscow, Russia, Anastasia worked as a multimedia journalist at Current Time TV (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty). They fled Russia in the summer of 2021 due to death threats and increasing risks linked to their work. Anastasia’s research interests focus on the nature of Russian autocracy, the state of independent journalism, LGBTQ+ rights, drug policy in Russia, and the war in Ukraine. They graduated with a BA in journalism from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom and were a scholar of the New York Film Academy and Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom.

Eban Goodstein

Eban Goodstein is vice president for environmental and social leadership at Bard College, where he directs the Graduate Programs in Sustainability (GPS). Degree options at GPS include the MBA in sustainability based in NYC, ranked the number one green MBA and among the top 10 MBAs in the US for nonprofit management for 2021–23 by the Princeton Review; MS degrees in environmental policy and in climate science and policy; and an MEd in environmental education. Goodstein works to help young people build careers as change agents in these three key fields: changing minds (education); changing the rules (policy); and changing the game (sustainable business). Goodstein writes and speaks frequently about just solutions to climate change, arguing that regardless of our pathway, we all need to become “climate repair people”—some of us full-time, everyone part-time. Professor Goodstein holds a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan, and a BA in geology from Williams College. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Economics and the Environment, now in its ninth edition; Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming, and The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment. He serves on the editorial board of Sustainability: The Journal of Record, and was a member of the board of directors of the Follett Corporation. Goodstein has also coordinated global educational events and trainings around climate change, engaging thousands of colleges, universities, and K–12 schools in solutions-based dialogue. The most recent case: the WorldWide Climate and Justice Education Week set for April 2024. At Bard he also directs C2C Fellows, a network of young people who aspire to sustainability leadership in business, NGOs, and government.

Hannah Park-Kaufmann

Hannah Park-Kaufmann is a senior studying mathematics and piano at Bard College and Conservatory, where she is also president of Bard's Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) chapter. She is passionate about exploring the intersection of music and mathematics, striving to understand the physiological patterns that underlie peak human performance through what may at first glance appear an unlikely subject for mathematical analysis. Originally hailing from Austria and South Korea, Hannah came to the US driven by a deep curiosity and a desire to foster positive change in musician education and health. Drawing upon her own experiences and struggles through the career-crippling posture/movement problems she experienced in piano as a child, she dedicated her college years to exploring innovative pathways for harnessing technology in the study of artistic human motion. Hannah has had the privilege of working with a leading human movement research laboratory at MIT to conduct a study that uses state-of-the-art technology to generate the most precise and extensive rendering of piano playing in history. Her study broadly integrates methods from AI, physics, medical sciences, and mathematics with the traditional schools of pianist education. She is hoping to shed light on the importance of studying motion and patterns at the human scale, and—through harnessing powerful new technology—to delve into its transformative potential to drive meaningful change in a wide array of fields. Through her experiences, she has gained some insights into the hurdles, ethical questions, and opportunities that arise on the path of mixing analytical sciences with something so subjective as artistry.

Joan Tower

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 60 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as a composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Alisa Weilerstein, Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, Albany, and Washington DC among others. Her 2021 commissioned premieres included the cello concerto A New Day and the orchestral work 1920/2019. In 2020, Chamber Music America honored her with its Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award; Musical America chose her to be its 2020 Composer of the Year; in 2019 the League of American Orchestras awarded her its highest honor, the Gold Baton. Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded Made in America in 2006 (along with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra). In 2008 the album collected three Grammy awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance. Nashville’s latest all-Tower recording includes Stroke, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. In 1990 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders, a piece she wrote for the St. Louis Symphony where she was composer in residence from 1985–88. Other residencies with orchestras include a 10-year residency with the Orchestra of St. Luke's (1997–2007) and the Pittsburgh Symphony (2010–11). She was the Albany Symphony’s Mentor Composer partner in the 2013–14 season. Tower was cofounder and pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players from 1970–85. She has received honorary doctorates from Smith College, the New England Conservatory, and Illinois State University. She is Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

Lauren E. Graham

Lauren E. Graham is a social entrepreneur, environmentalist, and educator with an eclectic background in environment and sustainability, social innovation and entrepreneurship, and creative media (documentary film, music, games, and virtual reality) for public engagement. Graham is currently the chief of staff at Hunger Free America, a NYC-based national antihunger advocacy and direct service nonprofit working to end domestic hunger. In this role, she supports the CEO with managing all aspects of the organization, providing leadership for daily operations, managing strategic planning and staff professional development, and overseeing hiring. She is also the CEO of Velvet Frame, a social impact strategy and communications consultancy, founded in 2015. She works with nonprofits, startups, and other mission-driven organizations across the environmental-social impact spectrum on their capacity-building and change management challenges using an ecosystems approach. Graham is a part-time adjunct professor teaching a rotation of undergraduate and graduate courses on nonprofit management, leadership, sustainability, and entrepreneurship at Bard College MBA in Sustainability, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, Baruch College-Zicklin School of Business at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and the Carbonauts. Graham holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s in sociology from Stanford University, a master’s in environmental management from Yale School of the Environment, and a master’s in nonprofit leadership from the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice.

Michael Sadowski

Michael Sadowski is an associate dean of the college at Bard College, where he teaches courses in youth identity development and LGBTQ+ issues in education. In addition to Bard, Michael has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he completed his doctorate, and was a visiting professor at Stanford University in 2016–17. Michael has published extensively on the issues affecting LGBTQ+ students, immigrant students, and adolescents more broadly. His 2016 book Safe Is Not Enough was featured by NPR and was cited by GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings as “the most important book written on LGBTQ issues in education in my lifetime.” In his TEDx talk, “Safe Is Still Not Enough,” Michael will discuss how educators, families, and communities can help LGBTQ+ youth thrive even amid the recent wave of oppressive state laws that threaten their education, their well-being, and their very identities. Michael’s other books include In a Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood (Temple University Press, 2013), based on a seven-year longitudinal interview study, Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students (Harvard Education Press, 2013), and the edited volume Adolescents at School (Harvard Education Press, 2020), now in its third edition and used in teacher education programs around the country and abroad. In the early 2000s, Michael was editor of the Harvard Education Letter, for which he won a National Press Club Award. He is also a creative nonfiction writer. Michael’s memoir, Men I’ve Never Been, was shortlisted for the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the 30 Best Gay and Lesbian Books of All Time by Book Authority.

Stacy Burnett

Stacy Burnett is a graduate from the Bard Graduate Center, Class of 2023, with an MBA in sustainability and nonprofit management. She manages JSTOR Access in Prison in North America and Australia, is a nationally recognized expert on prison technology and correctional food systems, and contributes to national policy decisions about the student debt of incarcerated borrowers. She began her education at Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), was a BPI Public Health Fellow ’21, and was responsible for the NYC multi agency task force overseeing the COVID-19 response in the public school system during the pandemic.

Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz

Soto Zen Priest, Buddhist Chaplain, and Visiting Assistant Professor for Humanities, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies

Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz is an ordained Zen priest and professor for spiritual art at Bard College. Originally from Munich (Bavaria, Germany) she has been at Bard for 26 years. While at Bard, she founded the Bard Meditation Group in 2001, she has since given an introduction to meditation to thousands of students. Throughout her studies, she found herself in various programs such as German, religious studies, and environmental sciences, before finding a home for her interdisciplinary courses in studio arts. Her BA is in French literature on Charles Beaudelaire, her MA in curatorial studies and contemporary culture (CCS alumna, Class of 1999), and her PhD in comparative literature. She is also an interdisciplinary artist in the fields of singing, drawing, crafts, and Japanese tea ceremony. Being on a spiritual quest, she has traveled extensively alone through countries such as Mongolia, Namibia, and the Amazon, seeking authenticity and oneness.

Thrift 2 Fight

Jillian Reed is a musician, community organizer, and co-founder of Thrift 2 Fight. She is passionate about thrifting and the way it represents everyday resource redistribution, and shows that self expression and personal style don’t have to (and should never) come at the expense of the environment. When she’s not running Thrift 2 Fight, Jillian performs flute and piccolo regularly with The Orchestra Now, and maintains a vibrant studio of flute students. She completed degrees in both Flute Performance and Human Rights at the Bard College & Conservatory, which culminated in her research about health and institutional ableism in the music world that was published in Flutist Quarterly. Jillian is a disability justice advocate, and believes it is firmly interconnected with racial justice and queer liberation. Masha Zabara grew up in Minsk, Belarus, playing cello, acting, writing, and occasionally skipping classes to attend protests against dictatorial oppression (where they would be caught repeatedly by their own father). After moving to the United States, they studied at the Bard College Conservatory, pursuing a double-degree in cello and filmmaking. Before co-founding Thrift 2 Fight, Masha led a worldwide internship on climate justice in social media at the Bard MBA in Sustainability. Masha is passionate about finding ways to challenge oppressive systems through innovation & sustainable action. With Thrift 2 Fight, they aim to support the global movement for mutual aid, community resilience, and abolition of police & prisons. Ideally, Masha would also like to contribute to toppling any and all dictatorships in (and around) their home country.