Theme: Muthos

Muthos is the Greek word for public authoritative speaking which has the power to effect change. We borrow the meaning from Homer who used the word muthos in The Iliad and The Odyssey to describe the clever and powerful orations of many male characters who used cunning rhetoric to help win the Trojan War.

But, Homer, ahead of his time, did not see muthos as merely the domain of clever men. The iconic Penelope, wife to Odysseus, is perhaps the most skilled weaver of muthos in the epic The Odyssey. Left behind when her husband is shipwrecked, Penelope weaves her unspoken agenda into a narrative tapestry, which she then unweaves at night.

In both weaving and unweaving, saying and unsaying, Penelope employs an even more sophisticated form of muthos than her male counterparts. Penelope speaks through silence, asserts only to deny, and keeps everyone guessing as they struggle to follow the threads of her wily and clever discourse.

Penelope finds a space and a means to not only be heard and heeded, but to get exactly what she wants without having to say a word.

And that is what The Benjamin School's TEDx event Muthos is all about - weaving together the voices of not just a few, but all. When those diverse voices, in the spirit of muthos, come together, detail and dimension are added to the larger TEDx tapestry and voice is given to ideas worth spreading.

The Benjamin School
11000 Ellison Wilson Road
North Palm Beach, Florida, 33408
United States

Alexa Cousin

7th Grader

Alexa is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Alison Hockenberry

Journalist/Producer

An Emmy and Peabody Award winning producer at ABC News, Alison is currently the producer of the popular podcast Tell Me Something I Don't Know. She was previously a producer at The Documentary Group and produced the 5 hour documentary The Age of Aerospace for the Science and Discovery Channel. She has served as an adjunct professor at The Columbia University School of Journalism as well as a consulting editor at Ashoka Changemakers. While at ABC. she produced and wrote segments for "Back to the Beginning with Christiane Amanpour," a four-hour documentary on the shared stories and traditions that unite and divide the followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. . For IFC Media she produced a series of investigative pieces. Alison was also a founding editor of Blue Egg, a media company aimed at encouraging and inspiring mainstream Americans to live more sustainably.

Ashley C. Harris

Author/Film Director

Author and film director Ashley C. Harris wrote and directed the teenage film “Lines”. "Lines" was the first feature film in the world captured using only Mac Laptops. In 2013, she teamed up with Barclay Publicity to release the first in a new young adult novel series, “Shock Me”. Ashley then went on to author eight other titles, in multiple genres, as she also worked behind-the-scenes on a morning news show that aired on ABC. In 2014, four of Ashley’s books (SHOCK ME, SPARKS, ONE NIGHT IN, LINES ) landed on the Amazon's Best Selling Top-Ten-List. In 2015, she received her first publishing deal for “Troll”, a KindleScout novel winner. TROLL, which fans call a teenage Game Of Thrones, takes place in both a present-day high school and a magical world of deadly magic. Harris’ second novel in the series, TROLL CRIES, will debut in 2017.

Ben Taylor

7th Grade Student

Ben is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Benji Gans

7th Grade Student

Benji Gans is a seventh grader at Meyer Academy. He is fluent in Hebrew, plays several instruments, and has an uncanny memory for details. His peers refer to him as Ben-gps because he can tell you how to get anywhere in the United States even if he has only been there once. Benji was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder when he was three years old. Learning to talk was extremely challenging for him. Many experts wondered whether Benji would ever learn to communicate. Now, a decade later, Benji has a remarkable ability to articulate what it is like to have autism and how he has managed to overcome many obstacles at such a young age.

Cole McIlvaine

7th Grade Student

Cole is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Cynthia Lowen

Emmy nominated filmmaker and writer

Ms. Lowen is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and writer. She is the director of NETIZENS, a feature documentary about women and online harassment, currently in production. She is also the producer and writer of BULLY, a feature documentary film following five kids and families through “a year in the life” of America’s bullying crisis. BULLY was awarded a prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award for excellence in journalism, as well as the 2013 Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild of America. Drawing on BULLY’s success, the filmmakers created The BULLY Project Social Action Campaign, a collaborative effort in partnership with multiple organizations, foundations, brands and corporate sponsors, sharing a commitment to ending bullying and transforming society. In April of 2012, Bully was screened at the White House and the film and the campaign have garnered support from such prominent voices as Anderson Cooper, Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa, Meryl Streep, Katie Couric, Justin Bieber, and many others. If that weren’t enough, our speaker is also an award-winning poet and winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series for her collection The Cloud That Contained the Lightning. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Ms. Cynthia Lowen.

Danielle Lancaster

7th Grade Student

Danielle is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Dylan Bernstein

7th Grade Student

Dylan Bernstein is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Evan Liberman

7th Grade Student

Evan is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Ignas Berciunas

7th Grade Student

Ignas is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Jack Horgen

7th Grade Student

Jack is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Jake Zur

7th Grader

Jake is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Jakob Kroll

7th Grade Student

Jakob is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

James Key

7th Grade Student

James is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Jane Boyland

7th Grade Student

Jane is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Joey Palomba

7th Grade Student

Joey is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

John Hockenberry

Journalist

A journalist and author, a four-time Emmy Award winner and three-time Peabody Award winner, since April 2008, John Hockenberry has been host of The Takeaway, a live national news program created by Public Radio International and WNYC New York. Hockenberry has reported from all over the world, reporting on a wide variety of stories in virtually every medium for more than three decades. He has written dozens of magazine and newspaper articles, a play, and two books, including the bestselling memoir Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the novel A River Out Of Eden.He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, Metropolis, and The Washington Post.

John-Vincent Janin

Extreme Sports

John-Vincent is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Laurie Coots

CEO The Hawn Foundation

As CEO of The Hawn Foundation, Ms. Coots spends her days responsible for the development and implementation of the MindUP™ program. MindUP™ is dedicated to helping children thrive in learning and in life by building mindful skills and practices through an in-school curriculum and framework. Ms. Coots had a 29-year career leading the growth of the TBWA global network as the Global CMO. While at TBWA, she provided industry leadership on such topics as compensation methodologies and agency review leadership, and fueled the growth of some of the world’s most admired brands including Apple, Absolut, Nissan, PNC Bank, Adidas, Energizer and more. Never one to have idle hands, in her spare time she is learning to code, has produced her first app, and serves on the Executive Board of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, where she has helped disrupt the school’s approach to educating and developing the next generation of artists.

Liam Gaeta

7th Grade Student

Liam is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Lucy Campbell

7th Grade Student

Lucy is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Madi McVey

7th Grade Student

Madi is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Matthew Postman

7th Grade Student

Matthew is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Matthew Smith

7th Grade Student

Matthew is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Michelle Pfeifer

7th Grade Student

Michelle Pfeifer is currently an eighth grader at The Benjamin School.

Nathan Ginnetty

Musician, Teacher

A true New England native, this songwriter and self-taught multi-instrumentalist has a decade of experience penning and performing original music. Mr. Ginnetty is also a charismatic and unstoppable force as a middle school English literature teacher at The Benjamin School.

Owen Gelberd

7th Grade Student

Owen is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Sophia Liporace

7th Grader

Sophia is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Sophia Smith

7th Grade Student

Sophia is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Spencer Cohen

7th Grader

Spencer is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Steve Caras

Guest Speaker, Arts & Education Advocate

Steven Caras is a dancer, photographer, keynote speaker, published author, and the subject of an Emmy™ Award-winning public television documentary entitled Steven Caras: See Them Dance. For fourteen years, he performed with the New York City Ballet under the leadership of its legendary founder, George Balanchine™. Noting Caras’ passion for photography, Balanchine™ encouraged him to take this added talent seriously which led to a luminous second career for his young protégé. Today, Caras’ 40-year body of work is one of the most valuable and historically significant photographic archives in the history of dance, featuring many of the dance world's most iconic artists and institutions. His images continue to appear internationally in prominent books, publications, films, exhibitions and private collections. In his active travels as a featured lecturer, Caras speaks both personally and historically on dance in America, the exceptional individuals who have brought it to life, and the important interrelated yet oft overlooked and misconstrued subjects ranging from extreme physical and emotional sacrifices a dancer endures, to overall discrimination.

Sydney Steinger

7th Grade Student

Sydney is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Teresa Tuong

7th Grade Student

Teresa is currently a seventh grader at The Benjamin School.

Tina Reine

Aerialist

A Columbia Business School graduate, Tina has a Masters of Business Administration in Marketing and Finance. She is passionate about environmental issues and spent the bulk of her career as an environmental commodities trader. At 43, inspired by Cirque du Soleil Tina was determined to become an aerialist. Nearly two decades older than everyone else in her first class, she persisted through the intense training required to become a professional. Tina began choreographing her own routines and entertaining audiences with her awe-inspiring drops, grace and effortless style. Tina has performed as the featured aerialist at Miami’s Fontainebleau and at the famed Art Basel. Her most unnerving performance was being suspended from a crane 60 feet in the air over a sand pit Tina’s goal is to use aerials to inspire others to be courageous in mind and body and to “fly” in ways they never thought they could. She is the subject of a profile in Marlo Thomas' book "It Ain't Over Till It's Over.