Helen Walters

Why you should listen

Helen Walters is the head of media and curation at TED, where she has the privilege of overseeing the work of an absurdly talented group of people to bring the sharpest minds to the TED stage -- and then distribute their ideas around the world.

Walters first attended TED in Monterey in 2008. Back then, she came as a journalist, reporting on the ideas and speakers as the editor of innovation and design at BusinessWeek. Later, she helped to write and produce TED's own coverage of the conference. Later still, in 2013, she went all in and joined the organization full-time, first as the ideas editor, launching and running TED's ideas blog, then as editorial director, working to help translate stage talks into wildly successful online videos, and now helping speakers at all major TED events. She also serves as a member of TED's leadership team.

In her previous life as a writer and editor, she wrote about everything from high technology to low culture, including writing one book on experimental animation and three books (yes, really) on T-shirt graphics. She still likes nothing more than talking to interesting people about the ideas and passions that fuel them, and that's why she argues that hers is essentially the best job in the world.