TEDxUNYP is an event that brings together bright minds to give talks that are idea-focused, and on a wide range of subjects, to foster learning, inspiration and wonder - and provoke conversations that matter.

University of New York in Prague (UNYP)
Londýnská 41, 120 00 Praha 2
Prague, Praha 2, 12000
Czech Republic

Andy Sharafeldin

Psychology Student and Aspiring Poet

Andy is one of UNYP's bachelor's students. He studies psychology and aims to achieve a masters degree in clinical psychology afterwards. Andy's goal is to be able to open his own psychotherapy office one day, and hopefully also his own coffee shop that would host open mic nights and attract poets from all over the world. In addition to his academic ambitions, Andy has been a songwriter, author, and poet since the age of 9. He won the Emirates Festival poetry award in Dubai, and has done his fair share of live slam poetry performances. He took it a step further when he moved to Prague and opened his own poetry club, Papers & Ink, hosting open mic nights and workshops. Andy believes in combining his twin passions for mental health and poetry, as he is convinced that the combination can provide a healthy outlet for any negative emotions that a person can have residing within them. It is his goal to help people, whether through his poetry and music or through his mental health work.

Jakub Lepš

Czech Politician, Political Scientist and University Educator

Jakub Lepš teaches courses at UNYP, one focused on the social and economic contexts of globalization and one covering American government and politics. He has also taught courses on China and Southeast Asia. He is a graduate of Charles University where he obtained his M.A. in American studies as well as his B.A. in economics. He also studied at Central European University in Budapest (M.A. in Political Science) and spent one year at The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a researcher within the Fulbright Scholar Program. Between 2000 and 2014 he worked as editorial director in EIN News, a Czech-American online media monitoring company. Since 2014 he has worked as deputy mayor in the Prague 11 district. Since January 2018 he has served as chairman of TOP 09, a Czech political party, represented in both chambers of the Czech parliament. He regularly comments on U.S. political developments in the Czech and Slovak media.

Jason Nam

CEO of Design Disco

Jason is the CEO of Design Disco, a nonprofit organization that he co-founded to make design education more accessible to more people of all ages. With an amazing team of volunteer staff, Jason has hosted and led numerous workshops, panels, trips, and public events all over the world to help people discover the relevance of design in their lives. A teacher by day, Jason also currently leads the design education program at the Visual Arts Department of Riverside School in Prague. Prior to this teaching gig, Jason worked for Samsung Engineering, Metrostav, and MAP Group as a localization specialist and architect, focusing on project development and client relations. Jason studied at the Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design and received his Bachelor's degree in Architecture at the Architectural Institute of Prague (ARCHIP). His further story can be found at: designdisco.org

Lena Fix

Student of Creative Media Production

Lena Fix is a 21 years old Luxembourger studying Creative Media Production in Prague. She has chosen the field of media mainly to focus on people's stories, as she believes that everyone has something yet to be told. She is passionate about music, cooking, traveling, meeting new people, animals and environment, but more importantly she is always looking for more things to try or to learn. Any experience can be turned into a good experience. Her humor and love for life comes from the fact that she did not have a regular teenage life. When she turned 13, Lena was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. She now is fully cured from cancer and has repeatedly offered her testimony to various media outlets in Luxembourg about what does it mean to be a child diagnosed with cancer. Through this experience, she realized that there's one thing people don't often talk about: what happens after the end of the treatments?

Linda Štucbartová

Transformational Leader

Linda is the founder of Diversio, her vision is to combine empowering talented women and facilitating academia and business cooperation. As her first initiative, she organized the first Women's Entrepreneurial Mission from the Czech Republic to Israel in October 2018 and is currently working on her second mission to Germany. Throughout her career, she consistently established extensive partnerships between the government, academic and corporate sectors and provided them with valuable perspectives as well as deep business insights. She held managerial and leadership positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Servodata and ŠKODA-AUTO before spending the last five years as a Partner at ATAIRU, providing executive coaching, external consulting and leadership development to various companies, from scale-ups to Fortune 500 corporations across the CEE region.

Michael Londesborough

Scientist

Michael was born in 1978 in London, England. He graduated with a first-class degree with honours in Chemistry and attained his Ph.D at Leeds University, England in 2002. Currently he working at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Czech Academy of Science, on the boron hydrides and their application in optics and microelectronics. Previously, Michael worked as a consultant with Semequip Inc. (2006-2009). In 2015 he published the discovery of the first borane laser and is currently focused on the useful emission of light from boron hydrides. He has represented his Institute at the academic congress of the Czech Academy of Sciences, is the chairman of his institute's scientific council, and is a member of the Academy's council for the popularization of science. Michael is the author of 47 original scientific papers, has two contributions to books on modern boron chemistry, and one international patent.

Olga Pexídrová

International Student & President of European Youth Parliament in Prague

Olga is a 4th-year student at the University of New York in Prague majoring in Business Administration. Olga spent a year abroad as a Rotary exchange student in Texas, and another year in Berlin where she learned German, one of the five languages she speaks. In addition to her academic prowess, she is the president of the apolitical, non-governmental organization, European Youth Parliament (EYP) in the Czech Republic which educates young people between ages 15 to 25 through conferences, workshops and educational events. Took a leadership role in twenty-nine EYP conferences, fully responsible for seven and helped reach and work with over 4000 youth over her eight years with EYP. She dedicates her free time to charity projects focusing on fund raising. Olga loves to undertake seemingly impossible challenges, as she is a firm believer that everything is possible, the impossible just takes a little longer.

Rafael Badziag

Global entrepreneur, best-selling author and angel investor.

Rafael Badziag is a Germany based global entrepreneur, top TED speaker, best-selling author and angel investor. He is a valued expert in psychology of entrepreneurship, specializing in self-made billionaires and was featured on NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX as well as in USA Today, Wall Street Journal and other national newspapers and TV networks in several countries. His passion is learning his limits and crossing them as well as learning the limitations of the people around him and helping them to overcome those.

Uwe Brandenburg

Managing Director of the Global Impact Institute in Prague and Associate Professor for Regional Cooperation and Impact of Higher Education at the University Rovira I Virgili in Tarragona, Spain.

Uwe holds a PhD from the University of Bristol in Globalisation Studies, an MscEcon from the University of Wales at Swansea and an M.A. in Islamic Sciences from the WWU Münster. He is currently the Managing Director of the Global Impact Institute in Prague and Associate Professor for Regional Cooperation and Impact of Higher Education at the University Rovira I Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. Prior to that he was Managing Partner of CHE Consult and CHE Consult Prague. He was also Director International at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for eight years. Uwe has published widely on the topic of internationalization such as the much debated article with Hans de Wit on the end of internationalization in 2011 in the Boston IHE. He frequently presents on international conferences around the globe. He also frequently coaches individuals in leadership positions, teaches at different universities and conducts research.