Theme: Elusive Truth

In our eighth year, TEDxAUBG will once again bring together a unique blend of local, regional and global speakers - each selected by our team to inspire, inform and provoke. We'll include critics and skeptics, but also the quiet heroes driving ideas we can rally around. And through it all, we'll seek to find and tell the elusive truth in everything around us.

Carl Djerrassi Theater in ABF Student Center
12, Svoboda Bachvarova str.
Blagoevgrad, Blagoevgrad, 2700
Bulgaria

Borislava Karadjova

Borislava Karadjova (or Borislava Willnevermadeit, as you may know her) is a graphic designer and an activist illustrator from Bulgaria. Her passion is to tell stories through her illustrated characters. Borislava is most passionate about equality between women and men. As one of the most popular Bulgarian illustrators, she has established a number of partnerships and collaborations with both corporate brands and social institutions.

Eleonore Pourriat

Eleonore is a French filmmaker, who has managed to intertwine her artistic work with her views as a social activist. In her movies she strives to address the struggles the contemporary woman is forced to face on a daily basis. Her films depict a world where social and gender roles seem to be reversed. This is also the central topic of her big breakout project I am not an easy man, which is also the first French movie to be officially released by Netflix.

Francesco Pezzuoli

Francesco Pezzuoli is an Italian entrepreneur, who is determined to give deaf people a voice. Francesco’s love for and fascination with technology along with his compassion and desire to help others have inspired him to create his invention The Talking Hands. This mechanism translates the hand gestures of the sign language into a voice. Thus, Francesco is aspiring to tear down the communication barriers that more the 70 million deaf people around the world are faced with. Francesco is convinced that everyone’s voice should be heard and his invention could get us a step closer to a world of equality and universal communication.

Greta Hristova

Greta Hristova is a modern dancer and rhythmic gymnast champion. Her captivating dance performance kept the audience at the age of their seats and showed us the importance of music and motion in our quest for inspiration and expression.

Ina Ivanova

Ina Ivanova is from the capital of Bulgaria and is an organizational psychologist and co-founder of “People Solutions Bulgaria. She has personally trained prominent Bulgarian political figures, entrepreneurs, leaders and other public figures in Europe. Her work is her passion, and she is determined to spread the knowledge of decoding human non-verbal behavior and effective communication to high achievers willing to take their communication skills to the next level. She believes that with proper knowledge and understanding of social interactions we can eliminate the root cause of all conflicts and misunderstandings and improve our quality of life and the global social climate.

Karina Melkumiants

Karina Melkumiants is a graduating senior at AUBG. She is majoring in Business Administration and Politics and this year she is also part of the organizing team of More Honors. She is a determined and focused student, who takes a passion in Martial Arts, specifically karate, and is currently standing three belts away from the black one.

Leon Windscheid

Leon Windscheid appeared on the 2015 German edition of Who Wants to be A Millionaire and won the final price of 1 000 000 euro. He has a PhD in psychology and has published two books on the functions of the brain. His live program Old Brain, A new World engages the audience in an active psychological experiment which takes people on a journey to their purposefully suppressed thoughts and feelings.

Lorina Kamburova

Lorina Kamburova is a Bulgarian actress, singer, and model who graduated from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia. Adept at performing a wide range of characters, Lorina has starred in action-packed, crime, and thriller movies such as Leatherface, while her latest project involves the Bulgarian comedy-drama series “Dear Heirs.” She is also the lead singer of an acoustic band, “Ross’n Lorina,” formed with Rossen Pentchev and with whom she recently released her first album. She also directs her fashion show on the “7 Minutes” Youtube Channel.

Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova

Dr. Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova is an anthropology professor and a social entrepreneur, holding a PhD from Princeton. She holds numerous awards, such as National Geographic Traveler with a Mission of the year 2012 Award, or the UN Award for Intercultural Innovations 2016. One of her initiatives, which she found herself, is the Bread House Network. An initiative that promotes peace, sustainability, and equality all over the world through the power of food and arts. A network that brings people from different backgrounds and ethnicities together to bake and break bread. On our stage, she will be sharing with you her initiative and talk about the impact that it has made so far!

Nikolay Nedyalkov

Nikolay Nedyalkov is a graduating senior at the American University in Bulgaria. He is currently majoring in Business Administration. He is a hard-working and socially engaged student, who is participating in various events and even organizing a few of them, like the Business Conference. After taking a gap semester to volunteer in Africa, and while working as a teacher at a local school there he learned a lot about the culture, the lifestyle, and the people. On our stage, he will be sharing a little of that experience with us!

Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips Jr. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and European Studies at the American University in Bulgaria. He is one of the founding faculty members of the American University in Bulgaria. His teaching and research interests include foreign policy analysis and the internet and political activity.

Rositsa Zaimova

Rositsa Zaimova is the perfect embodiment of an entrepreneur: she’s constantly working on cross-border learning and data innovations. She co-founded Dalberg Data Insights, a data analytics company which aims to provide real-time insights that create social and economic value for data-poor countries. Through her work, Rositsa has led the development of data products and platforms throughout Africa, Asia, and South America, and now splits her time between Belgium and Uganda.

William Todd-Jones

William Todd-Jones is a Welsh storyteller, puppet designer, director and writer for film, TV and theatre in the UK and abroad. He has been involved in numerous films including, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, Muppet movies, “Batman”, “Pinocchio” and “Harry Potter V”. In recent years, he has focused on combining the disciplines of live performance and computer graphic animation, developing techniques in optical motion capture, performance animation and digital puppetry. His goal is to draw public attention to humankind’s impact on the planet.