Theme: Lenses

As New York is truly the world's cultural melting pot, NYU brings together inquisitive students from all around the world, and with them, their unique cultures.

This year's TEDxNYU Conference celebrates and explores our beautiful, diverse community, it’s unique perspectives, experiences, and creations, and all that brings us together as one of the world’s most amazing global college communities.

TEDxNYU's mission is and has been to spark new conversations in old communities. Between each of these microcommunities is the potential for new ideas and innovation. Join us to witness the coming together of many diverse communities to engage in interesting and insightful conversation.

NYU's Eisner & Lubin Auditorium
60 Washington Square South
New York City, New York, 10012
United States

Alexa Pearce

NYU Student, Author

Alexa Pearce is a Junior from Little Rock, Arkansas. She is an avid Francophile, an expert scone baker, a wannabe runner, and fair-weather football fan. She's always loved children's literature; she wrote, illustrated, and self-published her first picture book, Hanna's Hats, when she was a Freshman at NYU. Inspired by the multilingualism pervasive in the NYU community, Alexa set out to research bilingual children's literature during her sophomore year, receiving a DURF grant from NYU along the way. Her research led her to develop a new kind of bilingual children's book utilizing the theory in bilingual pedagogy called "translanguaging," which gives young students learning multiple languages at once the freedom to experiment with mixing languages, as fluent bilingual speakers often do conversationally.

Chris Dickey

NYU Professor

Dr. Chris Dickey sees global public health through a unique lens – one that has him constantly reimagining solutions to our globe’s biggest health threats. When he looks out at the myriad challenges facing our field – including vast health inequities, applied skills gaps among public health professionals, weak community health systems, and shrinking research budgets – he sees endless opportunities for CGPH and our amazing NYU students. Dr. Dickey is Director, Global Professional Studies and Entrepreneurship and Clinical Associate Professor of Global Public Health at CGPH, but he is also an international development innovator and public health entrepreneur who has worked in more than 20 countries with UN and other agencies and co-founded a company that provides clean water and primary care in villages in India. Dr. Dickey holds a Doctor of Public Health degree from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from the Wh

Emily Rabinowitz

NYU Student, Researcher

Emily Rabinowitz is a freshman in Steinhardt majoring in Applied Psychology and Global Public Health. Her work was featured at the 2014 American Psychological Association National Conference, on the blog To Write Love on Her Arms, and in various presentations in Maryland. Emily's TEDx Talk focuses on an innovative theory of youth purpose development that focuses on the individual's ability to develop his or her own purpose using the SOC method of life-span development.

Jonathon Kwok

NYU Student, Light Dancer

Jon Kwok is a senior majoring in Business and Technology Management at the Tandon School of Engineering. At TEDxNYU 2016, he will be doing a dance performance using glowsticks to create patterns and shapes in the dark. Performing in the dark creates a unique experience for both the audience and the performer. The audience is unable to see the physical appearance of the artist, except for a few glimpses. The artist must consider how their movements, music selection, and color selection interact, reflect, and amplify each other. The focus on the artist's movements in isolation alongside the context of music and colors creates an interesting perspective on expression.

Kate Yeager

NYU Student, Singer, and Songwriter

Kate Yeager is always excited to make things. Yeager hails from a tree farm in Suffern, New York. She's a sophomore at the Clive Davius Institute of Recorded Music with a minor in Media, Culture, and Communication. Yeager has been involved in various NYU productions and can be seen playing all around the city. She is an artist in residence at The Bitter End, held a solo show at 54 Below, and has been featured at the Lincoln Center. At TEDxNYU 2016, Kate will be performing original songs, taking us on a journey through song and lyrics.

Maame Boatemaa

NYU Student

Maame Boatemaa is a freshman at Gallatin, concentrating on war and its effects on women, children, and world languages. Her TEDx Talk focuses on coming to terms with your own race and identity in a world which tries to choose for you.

Marcus Johnson

Musician

Marcus Johnson is an award winning, Billboard Chart topping, NAACP Image award nominated Jazz Pianist, Entrepreneur, and self empowerment activist from Washington DC. He earned his stripes as an entrepreneur in the music and wine industries after finishing a JD/MBA at the Georgetown University Law Center. Johnson is a proud father who believes that investing in the community and one's self is the best way to solve the problems and questions facing humanity: Why are we here? To Dream! To think! to Create! To Reflect! These are the core points of his cycle of success.

Oles Zhulyn

PhD Candidate, Developer

Oles is the founder of Honeycombinatorics, an app development company based in Canada. Oles' talk will focus on how technology can be used to invent new forms of self-expression (or reinvent old ones) to make it easy for anyone regardless of their artistic ability to both create their own unique and beautiful works of art, and enjoy the therapeutic benefits of the process.