@tedxgeorgetown
@tedxgeorgetown
Session I Speakers
Sub-Theme 1
Sculpting Innovation
Christopher Bradshaw
"On the Precipice of Racial Repair, or a New Nadir"
Christopher Bradshaw is an African American social justice entrepreneur whose expertise is using social innovation through the food system to grow meaningful community economic development within marginalized communities. Bradshaw has been named a 2015 Ashoka-American Express Emerging Innovator, one of Food Trust’s 20 Leaders Under 40, and the longest-serving member of the DC Food Policy Council where he co-chairs the Urban Agriculture working group. Under his leadership, Dreaming Out Loud has grown to a $600,000 social enterprise with 6 full-time staff members, and 4 seasonal farm and food hub assistants. He is a frequent speaker on the intersections of racial justice, class, gender, and food sovereignty — his appearances include the Atlantic Ideas Festival, Bloomberg American Health Summit; and both regional and national gatherings for farmers and food activists.
Kearney Capuano
"What if we all learned how to best help the world?: Lessons from Effective Altruism"
Kearney Capuano is a sophomore in the NHS studying Global Health, Psychology, and Philosophy. She is the founder and president of Georgetown's chapter of Effective Altruism, a philosophical and intellectual movement asking the question "How can we do the most good with the resources we have?" She runs an Effective Altruism Fellowship for students introducing cost-effective and intellectual solutions to solving some of the world's most pressing problems in cause areas such as global health, animal welfare, climate change, and bio risks. She also manages Georgetown Effective Altruism's Policy and Artificial Intelligence Reading groups. Kearney spent the past year researching in Georgetown's Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience and spent the summer researching for Yale's Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Lab. She is also the student lead on a Charity Elections Project, a school-wide event in which high schoolers vote among three high-impact charity organizations to donate to. In her free time, Kearney is the captain of Georgetown's Irish Dance Team.
Taylor Cassidy
"TikTok Fame Doesn’t Always Mean Impact"
Spearheading social media, Taylor Cassidy is a social media content creator teaching her audience of millions of unsung Black history figures accompanied by her quick wit and strong passion. Seen in her series “Fast Black History” and “Black Girl Magic Minute” she uses her platform to advocate for inclusion, representation, and love for one’s culture. She’s earned a Streamy Creator Honor from Liza Koshy and is a creator host for Sirius XM's new TikTok Radio Channel. She’s also been featured in TikTok’s 2020 Top 100 list under Voices of Change: Most impactful creators and Teen Vogue’s 2021 21 under 21 list. Generous with sharing motivation and finding her creative voice, she is passionate about encouraging others to dream bigger for themselves.
Christopher Wade
"Pondering Pandemic Pastimes"
Christopher Wade is a sophomore in the College with majors in Government & Computer Science and a minor in Spanish. He loves getting people excited about their passions, and as someone who became obsessed with niche hobby culture over quarantine, finds that there is great use in "Pondering Pandemic Pastimes" to explore the implications that a newfound love for personal interests may have for our futures.
Session II Speakers
Sub-Theme 2
"Writing" Wrongs
Chi Ossé
"Daily Democracy"
Chi Ossé is the Council Member for New York City’s 36th District representing Bedford-Stuyvesant and North Crown Heights. He is a community organizer and prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement. At 23 years old, Chi was elected in 2021 as the youngest member of this Council and the first Gen-Z elected of New York City.
Keely O'Keefe
"Tough Enough"
Keely is a Junior in the SFS majoring in Global Business. She is a transfer student from Brown University, where she was recruited to play D1 field hockey. She is passionate about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as well as tech, entrepreneurship and consulting. While at Brown she was nominated as Brown University's representative at the 2019 NCAA Diversity Equity and Inclusion Conference in Atlanta. Her freshman year she survived a car accident and a sexual assault, the combination of which left her with a severe traumatic brain injury and PTSD. She has spent the last 3 years recovering from both of these and hopes to shed light on how trauma responses impact our ability to heal. While recovering, she also interned at an ed-tech start-up which was later acquired. This sparked a passion for tech and entrepreneurship which she carried on to co-found her own start-up, Clade. Her team secured venture funding in Fall 2020 and was accepted to Harvard Innovation Labs Spring Accelerator. After taking their product to market, she returned to Georgetown to finish her undergraduate degree. In her time at Georgetown she has continued her passion for solving business problems by exploring consulting. She currently works at Hilltop Consultants and is an incoming Associate Consultant Intern at Bain and Company.
Olivia Henry
"Rewriting the Wrongs of Racial Illusions"
Olivia Henry is a sophomore in the College studying Women and Gender Studies along with Government. She is part of the inaugural Black Interfaith Fellowship at Georgetown’s Campus Ministry, where she is working to increase representation and resources in non-Christian spiritual practices for her fellow Black-identifying peers. With an emphasis on marginalized communities, particularly in her queer and Black identities, she is interested in finding ways to go about healing racial trauma. In addition to her passion of leveraging collective organizing to heal, through her minor in Education, Inquiry, and Justice, she is exploring the ways in which education can evolve to allow for generational uplift. In combination with her experience tutoring with D.C. Schools and volunteering at her local Boys and Girls Club, she has a soft spot for teaching and youth development.
Session III Speakers
Sub-Theme 3
Painting a New Picture
Nick Cruz Velleman
"Paint and Prejudice"
Nick Cruz Velleman is an American artist of Peruvian/Filipino descent born and raised in Washington, D.C. While living there he taught in the studio art department at Georgetown Day School, worked as a manager and director for the 9:30 Club, and performed locally and regionally as a musician with various groups. He has also spent much of his life in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he studied painting and drawing on-and-off since 2009, and earned his M.F.A. degree from the Marchutz School of Fine Arts in 2020. Nick aspires to a career of teaching art, creativity, and the mental health benefits that come with it… while traveling the world and painting, of course.
Trip Gorman
"The Economics of Quitting"
Trip Gorman is a Sophomore at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service studying Global Business. Trip is a Microeconomics Teaching Assistant interested in both venture capital and management consulting. He is currently interning as a China Research Intern for the U.S. Department of State and interned over the winter as a Venture Capital Investment Analyst Intern for a Shanghai based VC fund, SOSV. Last summer Trip interned in-person for both SOMOS Internet, a Y-Combinator backed telecommunications start-up in Medellín, Colombia as well as California Senator Dianne Feinstein in her Capitol Hill office.
Anna Marie Tendler
"Rooms in the First House"
Anna is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, textiles, drawing, painting and interior design. She holds an M.A. in Costume Studies from NYU where her master’s thesis, titled The Lip Filler Phenomenon: Modern Medicine, Kylie Jenner, and Postfeminist Female Sexuality, explored the recent history of lip filler and the sociocultural politics of female aesthetics as analyzed through medical texts and popular cultural discourses. Anna likes to think of her life as an ever-evolving art piece.
Omar Alshogre
"How Did Being Tortured Save My Life?"
© 2022