TEDxYSE: Speaker Biographies

Everyone was thrilled to meet all the inspiring speakers and see them give the talk of their lives. The speakers all had wonderful stories, and brought a diverse array of experiences and backgrounds to the conference. Read below for more details.

*See TEDxYSE speeches here.

Honorary Speaker

James Cromwell – Actor

James Cromwell is a talented actor who has done extensive work in both film and theatre, and is well-known for his memorable performance as Farmer Hoggett in the smash-hit, “Babe,” for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar ® nomination. Born in Los Angeles, Cromwell grew up with parents in the acting world. He acted in the Free Southern Theater before he founded his own company, Stage West, and co-directed a short film shown at the London Film Festival. Cromwell’s recent motion picture work includes “L.A. Confidential,” “Space Cowboys,” Frank Darrabont’s critically acclaimed “The Green Mile,” “The General’s Daughter,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “The Bachelor,” “The Sum of All Fears”, DreamWorks SKG’s “Spirit: Stallion of The Cimarron,” Stephen Fears’ Oscar ® nominated film “The Queen,” and Oliver Stone’s “W.” He has earned Emmy nominations for his work on the HBO original series, “Six Feet Under,” the HBO movie, “RKO 281,” and the NBC drama, “ER.”

Cromwell has also performed in many revered plays, including “Hamlet,” “The Iceman Cometh,” “Devil’s Disciple,”  “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Beckett,” “Othello” and “The Invention of Love” in many of the country’s most distinguished theatres. In addition to his work with countless charities, and initiatives, Cromwell has served as a board member for both S.A.G. and A.F.T.R.A. and as Secretary Treasurer of S.A.G.

Emcee

Ameet Purohit- Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton

Teaching and coaching have defined Ameet Purohit’s service to his community. In high school, he served as a tutor to middle school students and his love of teaching continued through his post-college days at the Dover Adult Learning Center helping people earn their GEDs. Community service continued to be a theme while earning an MBA at the Daniels College of Business. There, Ameet led Graduates Involved in Volunteer Efforts (GIVE). GIVE hosted multiple community service projects including a Halloween party for underserved youth, starting a community farm, and providing volunteers for Denver’s Road Home – Denver’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness. He’s also served as keynote speaker at many different venues, most recently the University of Denver’s Student Employee of the Year Reception. Ameet’s relationship with Youth Venture began while serving as a coach of the Fall 2009 Dream It, Do It Challenge.  He is currently a Senior Consultant on Booz Allen Hamilton’s Organization & Strategy team.

Social Innovators

Nikhil Arora – Co-founder of Back to the Roots

A Phi Beta Kappa scholar, Nikhil is a May 2009 summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, from the Haas School of Business and Department of Political Science. Prior to founding Back to the Roots in 2009, Nikhil spent time in college involved in business development and operations advisory positions. He also spent nearly six months in 2007 studying and working at the University of Ghana, Legon to setup a campus-wide recycling program for the 30,000-person campus.  Since co-founding Back to the Roots, Nikhil has been named one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25, one of the Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs in America, and UCLA’s Opportunity Green Top 25 Green Company Leaders and 2010 Social Venture Network Social Innovation winners.  Nikhil also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Sage Mentorship Project.

Reba Elliot – Founder of Lifting Voices

Reba Elliott is the founder and executive director of Lifting Voices, a grassroots, nonprofit organization with a vision that the words of young people will heal, inspire, and instruct families, communities, and people in power.  Lifting Voices develops the capability for abstract thinking among young people in disadvantaged areas of Washington, and ensures their thinking is valued by creating markets for youth-produced projects in the community.

Ben Jervey- Journalist and Author at GOOD Magazine

Ben Jervey helps mainstream audiences understand climate and energy issues. He writes ‘The New Ideal’, a weekly column for GOOD Magazine and serves as Community Editor for OnEarth Magazine. Ben was named the Planet Ambassador to the Pepsi Refresh Project. His journalism and climate change work have taken him around the world, from New York to Greenland to Vietnam. As a bicycle enthusiast, Ben has also ridden across the United States and through much of Europe!

Talia Leman – Founder and CEO of RandomKid

Talia Leman (age 15) is the CEO and a founder of RandomKid, a non-profit organization that leverages the power of youth to solve real problems in the world. To date she has leveraged the power of 12 million youth from 20 countries to bring aid on four continents, ranking the giving power of youth with the top U.S. corporations.  Talia is the winner of numerous national and international awards for her philanthropic work, including World of Children’s “Founder Youth Award”, considered to be the Nobel prize for efforts that serve the world’s children, the “International Youth Talent Award” from the European Union, and was designated a “Champion  of Intercultural Innovation” by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.  Nicholas Kristof wrote of Talia in his column in The New York Times: “If your image of a philanthropist is a stout, gray geezer, then meet Talia Leman, an eighth grader in Iowa who loves soccer and swimming, and whose favorite subject is science. I’m supporting her for president in 2044.” Talia travels across the world speaking about “The Power of ANYone”.

Fiona Macaulay – Founder and President of Making Cents International

Fiona is the president and founder of Making Cents International, a social enterprise based in Washington, D.C. Fiona has fifteen years of experience in microenterprise development, experiential learning curriculum design, facilitation and organizational capacity building in more than 20 countries in North America, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Central Europe. Fiona’s work is dedicated to equipping youth and adults with the vision, confidence, and skills to find quality employment or to create and grow their own businesses. Fiona is a founding member of the International Development Effectiveness Alliance (IDEA) and a Board Member for the Campaign for Female Education USA Foundation (CAMFED). She has also been a member of the faculty at the annual Microenterprise Development Institute at Southern New Hampshire University. Fiona has won several awards and honors for her work as a leader in the women’s small business community and is active in these as well as youth development networks.  She is regularly invited to speak at conferences and other learning events worldwide.

Aleta Margolis – Ashoka Fellow, Founder of Center for Inspired Teaching

Aleta, Founder and Executive Director of Center for Inspired Teaching, is a former professor of education at American University, specializing in authentic assessment, science and math education, and curriculum reform. As a public school teacher, Aleta taught in both elementary and middle schools and designed and ran alternative educational programs for court-referred high school students. In 2001, Aleta became an Ashoka Fellow, in recognition of Inspired Teaching’s work training teachers to transform the way schoolchildren are taught. Ashoka recognizes and supports social entrepreneurs worldwide who have created innovative programs with the potential to make large scale change in society.

Alejandro Velez – Co-founder of Back to the Roots

In addition to founding a 1000+ member non-profit & largest student-run organization at CAL, The Sage Mentorship Project, Inc., being awarded the Chancellor’s 2009 Public Service Award and being named the 2009 UC Berkeley Alumni Association Undergraduate of the Year, Alejandro Velez has worked as a summer financial investment banking analyst at various financial services institutions and a telecom company including Citigroup, UBS, Morgan Stanley, and Qualcomm, Inc.  Alex is a May 2009 summa cum laude graduate of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business with a degree in business administration and a minor in education. Alex has also been named 2010 PODER Magazine’s 20 Influential Hispanics Under 40, one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs under 25, one of BusinessWeek’s Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs.

Dennis Whittle - Co-founder and CEO of GlobalGiving

Dennis Whittle is CEO of GlobalGiving, which he co-founded in late 2000 after a career in the official aid sector. GlobalGiving is the world’s leading marketplace for global philanthropy. At its retail website, GlobalGiving allows qualified community-based groups around the world to post projects, and anyone in the world to fund them. Projects provide updates quarterly, ensuring that donors know how their funds are being used. In addition to running globalgiving.org, GlobalGiving works with companies to power cause marketing and employee engagement campaigns, and facilitates global philanthropy.   Many leading Fortune 500 companies, along with over 110,000 individual donors have chosen to give through GlobalGiving, which has facilitated funding to 2,800 projects in 110 countries.  From 1997 to 2000, Dennis co-led the World Bank’s Corporate Strategy and Innovation units, including the team that created the Development Marketplace. From 1992 to 1997, he led a variety of initiatives in the Bank’s Russia program, including housing reform and energy efficiency projects. From 1987 to 1992, Dennis was an economist in the World Bank’s Jakarta office advising the Indonesian Ministries of Finance and National Development, and managing projects in the agriculture and forestry sectors. Before joining the World Bank in 1986, Dennis worked in the Philippines with the Asian Development Bank and with USAID. Dennis graduated with honors in religious studies from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar, and did his graduate work in development studies and economics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. Dennis also completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. (See the New York Times article mentioning Dennis.)

Performers

Adam and the Couch Potatoes – Musicians

Adam and the Couch Potatoes is a Nashville-based community of musicians who write, record, and perform original rock and roll for the young at heart. Throughout their music, Adam + t.c.p. encourage kids, families, and communities to live a ‘Potato Lifestyle’ of playfulness, gratitude, enthusiasm, and contribution. The bands debut album, ‘One Size Fits All…!’ received widespread critical acclaim and has led to numerous performance and recording opportunities. Adam and the Couch Potatoes assume the persona of the “coolest big kids around,” with colorful instrumentation, catchy hooks and rich harmonies. Their eclectic music is embraced by college students, grandparents and fanatic toddlers alike. Music, videos, pictures, and more are available in Potatoland.

Jourdan Urbach – Musician, Philanthropist, Yale Sophomore

At 18, Juilliard Pre-College violin virtuoso and Yale University sophomore Jourdan Urbach has received international acclaim for his musical artistry and philanthropic endeavors as founder and director of Children Helping Children, a musical charity that has raised $4.7 million through Concerts for a Cure for neurological research and groundbreaking hospital pediatric programs.
Compared by NY critics to a “Young Paganini,” Urbach’s concert career has included four sold-out performances at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and world premiers of works by Emmy nominated composers. Urbach was featured on Steve Martin’s Grammy Winning Blue Grass album, and his original film scores have debuted at the Tribeca and Cannes Film Festivals. He is the prestigious “2009 Artist Ascending Winner” (past winners: Perlman & Shaham) and Artist-in-Residence for the UN (WAFUNIF) Council of Arts for Peace. Jourdan Urbach is the 2010 recipient of the World of Children Jr. Nobel Prize for Global Child Advocacy. Learn about his latest social entrepreneurial endeavor, the International Coalition of College Philanthropists, here.

Youth Social Entrepreneurs: Winners of the Staples-Ashoka 2010 Competition

Mohammed Barry – Founder of Aid for Smiles, The Gambia

Mohammed Barry, 19, of the Republic of the Gambia, has a truly inspiring story of leadership and perseverance. Mohammed lost his father and contracted HIV at age 7 and faced enormous social stigma and discrimination in his community. He is the founder of Aid for Smiles, a coalition of global social activists who work toward empowering and mainstreaming marginalized and socially disadvantaged young people. He also leads Speak AIDS, a campaign that confronts the misunderstanding and stigma associated with HIV-positive youth. Mohammed was recently nominated for the World Children Peace Prize. Learn more about Mohammed’s work here.

Shiv Dravid – Founder of the Viewspaper, India

Shiv Dravid, 24, is the founder and creator of The Viewspaper, a youth journalism website for young people in India. Shiv was inspired to take action when he realized that his own daily experiences were quite different from the observations and discussions amongst media elites. The Viewspaper is seen by more than 150,000 readers a month and publishes daily articles written by youth staff writers. Over the last three years they have engaged close to 4,000 young people in sharing their views and opinions and have emerged as India’s largest youth paper. Shiv has ambitious plans to scale his work and hopes to branch out to 50 sites within the next year. Learn more about Shiv’s work here.

Rocco Falconer – Founder of Planting Promise, United Kingdom

Rocco Falconer, 22, is the founder of Planting Promise, a community based organization in Sierra Leone that develops the prospects of the world’s poorest country by giving local people the opportunity to create sustainable business and pursue their education. Planting Promise’s innovative model not only creates meaningful jobs with high social value, but also creates a financially stable model for education. His travels in eastern and southern Africa made him think about how to deliver lasting, sustainable change for the poorest people in the world. To successfully escape the poverty trap, Rocco says, efforts must focus on giving people the capacity to change their own lives and the inspiration to do it. “When we talk about poverty, we need to also talk about the poverty of aspiration,” he says. Rocco’s firm belief is that we need to invest in people, and help them realize anything is possible. Learn more about Rocco’s work here.

Rebecca Kantar – Founding member of Minga, USA

Rebecca Kantar, 18, is a founding member of Minga, a youth-run civic organization dedicated to ending the global child sex trade through educating teens worldwide. Rebecca first became aware of child trafficking in her early teens, the same age of many sex-trafficked American girls. Shocked to consider that youth just like her were being exploited, she was galvanized to take action. To date, Minga has raised $85,000 to support a rehabilitation center in the Phillipines while also directly engaging and educating over 10,000 youth. Rebecca directs Minga’s publicity and outreach efforts, and she’ll soon launch a high-profile national PSA campaign to raise broader awareness of sex trafficking. She has been named as one of TIME Magazine’s Tomorrow25 and will be attending Harvard University as a freshman in September. Learn more about Rebecca’s work here.

Ben Lyon – Founder of FrontLineSMS:Credit, USA

Ben Lyon, 23, was inspired to create FrontLineSMS:Credit while traveling abroad in Uganda and East Timor. During his travels, Ben witnessed how communities and families in these countries were devastated by natural disasters like hurricanes, and how soldiers did not receive the support they needed when returning home from war. Today, Ben is pioneering technology that is connecting microfinance institutions to their borrowers via cell phones in Sierra Leone. Ben is using his knowledge in economics and international studies to help empower people to support their families and communities. Ben has been selected an “Unreasonable Fellow” by the Unreasonable Institute, a highly selective honor given to up to 25 high-impact, young social entrepreneurs from across the globe who gather for a 10 week fellowship. Learn more about Ben’s work here.

Lamia Oezal – Founder of DeuKishche Generation, Germany

Lamia Oezal, 21, is the founder of DeuKische Generation, an organization that focuses on improving the integration of Turkish youth in Germany. Germany struggles with integration policy and discrimination, leading to isolated youth and social tension. DeuKische Generation challenges these cultural misperceptions by improving the image of German adolescents of Turkish descent, particularly in their portrayal by the popular media. The team has over 60 youth members, and works on both the community and national political levels to leverage awareness and influence the public. “It’s not important if we are Turkish or Arabic; we are German, too, and we don’t have to choose. We can build our own identity,” stresses Lamia Oezal. Her program engages in a variety of projects, and has seen success in promoting multicultural understanding. Lamia continues to lead DeuKische, and is now a law student with aspirations of adding a legal dimension to this issue. Learn more about Lamia’s work on her website and on facebook.

Seaon Shin – Founder of Global Youth Empowering Movement, United Arab Emirates

Seaon Shin, 19, is the founder of Global Youth Empowering Movement, which links youth together globally to collaborate on service projects for the betterment of humanity. A Korean-American living in Dubai, Seaon discovered that changemaking gave her a sense of belonging and self-purpose. Seaon realized many teens wanted to engage in social change but didn’t know how, so she created an online support network for youth to collaborate and learn from each other. She is also working on a local level, organizing a youth center in Dubai to foster community and mobilize youth to learn, investigate, and act on social problems. “Youth have so much potential to do amazing things,” she says. “All they need is to be connected together to make a positive impact.” Learn more about Seaon’s work here.

Heather Wilder – Advocate for foster children, USA

Heather Wilder, 17, of Las Vegas, is a passionate advocate for the rights of foster care children in the United States.  She speaks with a conviction and clarity that can only come from having lived the experience herself.  Heather was removed from an abusive situation as a young child.  After several years in the foster care system, she was adopted into a loving and supportive family at age 12. To help foster kids still in the system, Heather wrote a series of booklets that address issues faced by foster children on a daily basis – like moving homes frequently, not being adopted, or dealing with previous and sometimes ongoing abusive situations.  Social workers give her booklets to children as they come into the foster care system. She acknowledges that it can be difficult to speak up about the abuse she endured, but she’s driven by her determination to be a voice for other children who haven’t left the system: “Being brave helps me feel better, because I pretend that I am being brave for someone else who can’t share their stories yet.”