Theme: The Story of Growth

On June 26th 2015, TEDx Münster presented 14 Speakers following the topic “The Story of Growth” with a wide range of unique stories and ideas that look at topics of growth from a variety of angles . Again, we united a blend of the most different backgrounds on the stage, such as technology, entertainment, education, design or economy.

Münster School of Design
Leonardo-Campus 6
Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, 48149
Germany

Abbas Adel

Digital Activist

Abbas Adel is an award winning social entrepreneur from Egypt who is involved in various digital initiatives that evolved around the Arab Spring. Amongst others Abbas has founded the political transparency tools MorsiMeter.com and GlobalMeter.org, the anti-corruption initiative Zabatak.com and the MUFIX student community. As a senior software engineer Abbas has worked for several major telecom operators in Egypt, before moving to Spain and eventually to Münster in March 2014 for an international masters degree program.

Aya Chebbi

Blogger and activist

Aya Chebbi is an award winning Pan-African Tunisian activist and renowned blogger. She is well-known for her activism during Tunisia’s Revolution 2010-2011 that overthrew Ben Ali’s regime. Her blogs were published at Al-Jazeera, OpenDemocracy and Foresight-Africa among other media outlets. Beside her prominent online presence, she is the founder and chair of the African Youth Movement and the co-founder of the Voice of Women initiative (feminist collective). She previously worked at the refugee camps during Libya’s civil war and monitored 2012 Egyptian Presidential Elections. In recognition to her achievements, she was named one of Africa's most Outstanding Young Women leaders in 2013 (Ghana) and won the Young Achiever of the year 2015 (South Africa). She is currently a Mo Ibrahim Scholar for a Masters degree in African Studies at SOAS, University of London.

Cornelia Mayer

Social worker + activist

Born and raised in Austria, Cornelia Mayer studied social work and is today working in child welfare services as well as a social entrepreneur. In 2012 Cornelia took a half year off and traveled the world. Experiences during that travel laid the foundation for her own award winning social start-up: Topfreisen is a social & culinary journey that connects refugees with local communities in Austria through the art of cooking.

Felix Oldenburg

Social entrepreneur

Felix Oldenburg is one of the pioneers for social entrepreneurship, social innovation and bottom up ideas in Europe. Ranked for the third time in Germany’s „40 under 40“ list, he is a BMW Responsible Leader, member of the Baden-Baden CEO Conference, and recipient of the German PR Award 2007. He started an internet company before he graduated in Philosophy (Bonn, Tübingen, Oxford) and Policy Management (Georgetown). He worked with McKinsey&Company in London, and later led a series of large scale citizen participation projects across Europe, before joining Ashoka as Germany director in 2009.

Jule Schnakenberg

Environmental activist

Jule Schnakenberg is a 17 year old environmental activist from Hamburg. In 2009, at the age of 11, Jule joined Plant-for-the-Planet, a youth organization the has planted more than 14 billion trees around the world. Over 30,000 ambassadors promote climate justice and a more sustainable future at about 500 academies. Today Jule is Climate Justice Ambassador for Germany and Member of the Youth Council of Plant-for-the-Planet. Together with her team, Jule has organized special academies in order to to empower children to raise awareness for the need of sustainability. Jule is an active supporter of the campaign “We want to vote”, which supports the right to vote for underage youth.

Julian Baehr

Pharmaceutical scientist and environmental activist

Born and raised in Hamburg, 21-year old Julian moved to Münster a couple of years ago to start his pharmaceutical studies. At early age, Julian already started to get more and more fascinated by natural phenomenons, biological diversity and oceanographic science. 2010 he spent six months in New Zealand and South-Easy Asia. However, during a diving trip in Thailand he got confronted with some of the worlds largest ecological disasters, the environmental plastic pollution. Back in Germany, inspired by “The OceanCleanUp”-founder Boyan Slat and his TEDx talk in Delft, Julian started his reseach on the impact of our society’s plastic pollution with focus on micro plastics.

Kaurna Cronin

Musician and Traveller

With promises of a capturing and energetic Australian folk performance Kaurna was awarded Best Acoustic Act at the Fowlers Live Music Awards and the prestigious APRA-AMCOS Emily Burrows Award in late 2014. At just 22, Kaurna Cronin has performed alongside Keith Urban and gone on to grace the stage at Australia’s Festival Of The Sun, Gorgeous Festival, Germany’s StadtFest & Breminale, two previous international tours while also recently performing 50+ dates throughout Europe on his 2014 International tour. His much anticipated Debut Album “Glass Fool” is scheduled for release in June-2015 with national and international tours to follow.

Maren Urner

Neuroscientist

Neuroscientist Maren Urner arrived in Münster after her scientific career brought her from Osnabrück, to Canada, to the Netherlands and to London. Fascinated by the complexity and plasticity of the human brain she investigated human awareness and consciousness. However, leaving the lab in the evening she started to feel bombarded by the “real world problems” like inequality, climate change and environmental destruction. The little word “why?” kept on nagging her – and she left an academic career to start from scratch. She is the co-founder of the new online medium and social enterprise "Perspective Daily" (previously: "Positive Daily") that focuses on future-oriented topics using solutions journalism. Together with her colleagues and an international network of supporters she wants to bring constructive journalism to the forefront, empowering people to see their potential and possible influence.

Martin Mall

Artist

Martin Mall’s passions are ideas inspired by gravity. As an award-winning professional performer who specializes in juggling, he has brought his shows to stages all around the world, from New York to Paris, from Greenland to China. Constantly looking for new ways to develop special moments and combine various art forms has led to collaborations with classical musicians, laser designers and other creative minds. He doesn’t just juggle objects but also himself and others in the air – he is an experienced skydiver with over 2,000 jumps, a longtime member in various “big way formation” teams and a participant in last year’s national world record of 214 jumpers. He combines his knowledge about juggling and skydiving, showing how being successful in these fields requires and teaches valuable lessons about teamwork and strategic thinking. http://www.martinmall.com

Martin Moder

Molecular Biologist

His passion for communicating research made him the first European Science Slam champion. Martin Moder is a Molecular Biologist and science blogger. His research focuses on human disease and how cells can repair themselves. When examining brain tumor development in fruit flies, he realized that modern achievements strongly depend on seemingly trivial discoveries that appeared to have little practical value in the beginning. Why was his cancer research enabled by people interested in jellyfish? How did an inconspicuous experiment, performed by a former bookbinder at Christmas lectures in the 18th century, help him share his thoughts more efficiently?

Mikael Colville-Andersen

Urban Designer

Mikael Colville-Andersen is a Danish-Canadian urban mobility expert and one of the leading voices in global urbanism. He consults cities & governments and also applies his marketing expertise on communication campaigns promoting bicycles as transport. Mikael coined the phrase „Copenhagenize“, which now stands for the concept in urban planning and design with the purpose of encouraging cycling.

Nasanin Bahmani

Data security consultant

Nasanin Bahmani studied political science, showing particularly keen interest in the fields of data protection and security policy, before working for the German Foreign Chamber of Commerce in Teheran and Algiers for several years. During this time she experienced both „Twitter revolutions“ – the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring – which motivated her to become a self-employed data security consultant. She is a member of the Teletrust Working Group „IT Security made in Germany“ and provides solutions from Germany without backdoors for foreign intelligence services.

Raúl Aguayo-Krauthausen

Activist

Born in Peru with a zest for action, Raúl Krauthausen grew up in Berlin and later studied Design Thinking. He created a campaign for the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and hosted a call-in radio show for people in crisis situations. Those conversations with his listeners, dealing with poverty, abuse and loneliness, made a lasting impression on him. In reaction to this experience, the idea to create the SOZIALHELDEN with a group of friends was born. Raúl also founded the platform Wheelmap.org, a crowdsourced interactive map with information on wheelchair accessibility in local stores. One of his latest projects is Leidmedien.de, an online platform and workshop series for journalists that strives to bring about a more balanced and non-discriminatory portrayal of people with disabilities in the media. At TEDxMünster Raúl talked about the campaign "Teilhabegesetz" that demands equal income opportunities for people with handicaps in Germany. http://www.raul.de

Wassim Zoghlami

Digital activist

Wassim Zoghlami is a Tunisian Computer Engineering Senior focussing on Business Intelligence and ERP with a passion for data science, software life cycle and UX. Wassim is also an award winning serial entrepreneur working on startups in healthcare and prevention solutions in both Tunisia and The United States. During the past years Wassim has been working on different projects and campaigns about using data driven technology to help people working to uphold human rights and to promote civic engagement and culture across Tunisia and the MENA region. He is also the co-founder of the Tunisian Center for Civic Engagement, a strong advocate for open access to research, open data and open educational resources and one of the Global Shapers in Tunis. At TEDxMünster Wassim will talk about public social media data mining for counter-terrorism and his project idea DataShield.