TEDxSomerville » Speakers » TEDxSomerville

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Dan Rothstein

Co-Founder of Somerville-born The Right Question Institute, Dan has spent decades learning from people struggling to help themselves, their families and their communities. He’s seen how effective self-advocacy, learning, discovery, creativity and a healthy democracy emerge from asking good questions. He and co-author Luz Santana share a simple and powerful strategy for transforming education in their book Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions.

Aatish Salvi

Aatish is an entrepreneur with a passion for startups that take novel approaches to the war on poverty. He currently sits on the boards of three non-profits and has over 15 years of experience working with low-income families in cities across the country on issues ranging from education and literacy to homelessness. Currently his non-profit, Compass Working Capital, focuses on fighting the perverse disincentives to exit poverty that many social programs create and replacing them with programs that fundamentally invest in the capability, dignity and aspirations of low-income families

Ray Matsumiya

Ray is the Executive Director of the University of the Middle East Project (UME), a non-profit organization with offices in Somerville. With a mother from Hiroshima, Ray is a deeply committed to promoting mutual understanding between peoples and cultures in order to contribute to a more peaceful world. To this end, UME has implemented 37 educational and cross cultural programs including a Sister Cities partnership between Somerville and Tiznit, Morocco that has impacted hundreds of people in both communities through visiting delegations, professional collaborations, student projects and artistic exchanges.

Seth Itzkan

Seth is President of Planet-TECH Associates, a consultancy that investigates innovations for a regenerative future. He has consulted on trends and innovations for The Boston Foundation, The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and The US Census Bureau. Seth is a graduate of Tufts University College of Engineering and the University of Houston-Clear Lake Masters Program in Studies of Future. He works in Somerville, and recently spent six weeks at the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe.

Ezra Haber Glenn

Ezra is President of the Somerville Community Corporation, a member-based organization that works to sustain and develop Somerville as a vibrant, diverse, and tolerant community. By day he works as a Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. As a planning practitioner he has written dozens of plans (including past Open Space and Community Development Plans for the City of Somerville); as an academic he has written a number of articles on the practice of local planning and community development, and is the author of "Shape Your Neighborhood, Plan Your City: Participatory Tools for Urban Planning", to be published by O'Reilly Media this year.

Ruth Allen

A Somerville resident since 2003, Ruth learned the power of local political transformation at the age of 19 as an observer of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is now the Director of Governance and Local Partnerships at Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organization working in over 40 countries. Ruth received her MA from Clark University where she is a guest teacher. She also consults with area organizations on local linkages with global rights and governance issues.

Clarence Smith, Jr.

Clarence is a writer and storyteller. He draws inspiration from the lives of people like Muhammad Ali, Ernest Shackleton, Marshall "Major" Taylor, and you. Clarence is the editor-in-chief of the new online publication BOLD Edition, which is a narrative, journalistic exploration of the extraordinary within the commonplace. A former resident of Somerville, he now lives in country-club suburbia with his wife and son.

Wig Zamore

Wig Zamore is a graduate of MIT’s DUSP who focuses much of his personal time around urban economic development, regional transportation, environmental quality and local public health. In Somerville MA, he has been an advocate for dense transit-oriented development and a leader in successful campaigns for a new Orange Line subway stop and two new Green Line light rail branches. Wig currently sits on the MBTA Rider Oversight Committee and the Logan Citizens Advisory Committee.

Brian Whitman

Brian teaches computers to listen to music. He was a frustrated electronic musician before packing it in for grad school at Columbia and the MIT Media Lab in natural language processing and machine learning to figure out what people talk about when they talk about music. Since then, he's co-founded Somerville's The Echo Nest, which powers discovery and the future of music for people like Spotify, Twitter, MTV, Clear Channel, major labels, and thousands of independent developers.

Daniel Hadley

Daniel began working for the City of Somerville the day after graduating from Harvard University, where he earned a masters degree in both urban planning and theology. His eclectic interests seemed to come together for the first time while working on Somerville’s happiness survey. He is currently an analyst in the SomerStat department, an initiative of Mayor Curtatone that incorporates data of all kinds into the city’s policy decisions.

Marcus Santos

Marcus is a native of Bahia, Brazil. He commits his life to the study, teaching and performance of his hometown's Afro-Brazilian music and heritage. Marcus received a scholarship and completed his studies with honors at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Santos has performed internationally; and has shared the stage with artists such as Paquito D'Rivera (9 Grammy wins), The Brand New Heavies, Orchestra La Passion (Osvaldo Golijov) and the Gipsy Kings.

Lenni Armstrong

Lenni grew up swinging on grapevines in the Ohio forests. With this deep connection to natural beauty, she wove a zigzag career path between art and science. After graduating from Simmons College, she established her own company, informmotion, creating educational animation and interactive design. She now feels a growing sense of urgency about humanity's impact on Earth systems, and seeks to create positive change in neighborhood ecosystems.

Jessie Banhazl

After becoming frustrated with lack of access to fresh produce and green space in her Brooklyn neighborhood, Jessie Banhazl left a career in reality television, and moved to Boston. Jessie's interests and experiences lie in communications, marketing, social entrepreneurship, and organic vegetable production. She has lectured for the American Heart Association and Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare about the current state of our food system and how to make healthy eating choices.

Georgy Cohen

Georgy Cohen is a frequent speaker, writer and consultant on topics relating to web content and digital communications. She is the manager of web content and strategy at Tufts University and co-founder of Meet Content. Georgy graduated from Boston University in 2001 with a degree in journalism and used to work in the online newsroom of The Boston Globe. She has lived in Somerville with her husband since 2003, and they recently bought a home in Winter Hill.

Kelly Creedon

Kelly believes in the power of image and sound to create change on social justice issues. As a documentary photographer and multimedia producer, she created the on-going project We Shall Not Be Moved that documents the growing grassroots struggle against foreclosure and displacement in Massachusetts. She has worked in education and community media in both Boston and El Salvador.

Brendan Shea

Brendan is a LEED accredited professional, having worked on numerous LEED projects and has extensive experience with project management and design/build implementation. He has over ten years of experience working for Clivus Multrum, specializing in onsite wastewater engineering. His current rooftop agriculture work returns full-circle to his early experience in his parents’ animal barns as well as his first job working at a local farm in Essex County.

Joe Grafton

Joe has a varied professional history that saw him rise quickly and then check out of Corporate America to use his skills for community and economy building. As Executive Director of Somerville Local First, he has played a key role in the advancement of the local movement in Somerville, New England and beyond. Joe's varied interests have lead him to start electronic music festivals, launch national campaigns, and produce documentary roadtrips, all in pursuit of building an economy that is local, green and fair.

Ross Lohr

A current resident of Somerville, Ross grew up in Newton and received a BA in economics and psychology from Boston University. At age 21, Ross started his first non-profit, NTC, connecting students in the US and Tanzania through cultural exchange and improving educational opportunities for children in Tanzania. Amazed by the millions of cast-away American t-shirts that get dumped on lower income countries, Ross co-founded a second non-profit: Project Repat.

Michael I. Norton

Michael I. Norton is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit and Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School. His research can be grouped into two broad areas. First, he explores the effects of social norms on people’s attitudes and behavior, addressing the key role that social factors play in shaping the preferences of individuals. Second, he investigates how time, labor, and money impacts how people come to value things.

Lis Pardi

Lis is a strong advocate for libraries and has spoken at local events about the ways libraries will remain relevant in a paper-less future. She earned her MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in 2010 and now works for EBSCO Publishing, a provider of online databases for libraries, as a usability researcher and user interface analyst.

Monica Poole

Somerville resident Monica Poole brings her Harvard education to Bunker Hill Community College students in order to train a new generation of change agents. Her courses engage the Boston community through experiential learning in subjects such as: ethical hacking, global history, philosophy, and political activism. Additionally, she is an organizer of Occupy Boston, where she teaches free courses in political philosophy and radical history in addition to other areas in support of the Occupy movement.

Sam Sommers

Sam is an associate professor of psychology at Tufts. His research examines how people think, communicate, and behave in diverse settings. His first book, Situations Matter, written for a general audience, was published in December 2011. Sam has won multiple awards at Tufts, including the Lerman-Neubauer Award for Outstanding Teaching and the 2009 Professor of the Year. He blogs regularly on the psychology of everyday life for Psychology Today and Huffington Post.

Chris Templeman

A long-time Somerville resident who studied physics at The College of Wooster in Ohio, Chris has been involved in technology and product development for 10 years. During this time he co-founded two small businesses in Somerville. He enjoys tinkering with hardware, electronics and power tools. His energy is currently directed at the interplay between innovation and local manufacturing.

Schuyler Towne

Schuyler is obsessed with locks. He got his start as a competitive picker, winning the American Open and competing internationally as well. At an early point in his lock collecting he came across an old "Yale & Towne" padlock. This potential familial connection drove his interest further and he spent the next several years of his life trying to understand everything he could about locks. From how they work and why they fail, to the stories of who invented them and when and where they came into existence.

Alex Feldman

Alex’s life work is based on non-verbal communication, which he has found to be an extremely valuable — and teachable — skill for getting along in life, love and work. As a physical comedian, Alex’s performances have been seen on PBS, Showtime and America’s Got Talent, all with Alex hardly speaking a word of English. Recently, The US State Department engaged Alex in the role of cultural ambassador to bring his unique presentation to Russia.

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Inaugural Event: March 4, 2012