In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Furman University: Harper Hall
3300 Poinsett Highway
Greenville, South Carolina, 29613
United States

Dana Sturtevant

Dana Sturtevant, MS, RD is a co-founder of Be Nourished and a nutrition therapist, facilitator, educator, speaker, writer, and activist specializing in chronic dieting, disordered eating, and body acceptance. A Certified Kripalu yoga teacher, Dana draws from her yoga teaching experience to incorporate mindfulness and self-acceptance practices into her conversations about food, body shame, health, and healing. After becoming a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers in 2002, Dana has traveled around the country training thousands of helping professionals in the art and science of behavior change counseling. As a speaker and writer, Dana advocates for compassionate, weight-neutral self-care and offers supervision, training, and consultation for helping professionals. Her work has been featured in Self, Real Simple, Huffington Post, and The New York Times.

David Tolbert

David Tolbert is currently a Ford Foundation Fellow and Visiting Scholar, Duke University, Sanford School of Public Policy. He was President, International Center of Transitional Justice (ICTJ), 2010 – 2018, and a former UN Assistant-Secretary-General. Tolbert served in a number of senior positions over a period of almost a decade at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), including as Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Deputy Registrar and Chef de Cabinet to the President. He also was appointed by the UN Secretary-General as Registrar (UN Assistant Secretary-General) of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and, at an earlier stage, as UN Assistant Secretary-General and Special Expert to the UN Secretary-General on the Khmer Rouge Trials. He has held the positions of Executive Director, ABA-CEELI and Chief, General Legal Division, UNRWA. During 2009-10, Tolbert was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and served on the American Society of International Law High Level Panel on the United States and the International Criminal Court. He has published over 40 scholarly articles on international criminal justice, transitional justice and human rights as well as a wide range of op-eds and shorter articles in the Huffington Post, Project Syndicate and other publications. Tolbert received a LL.M. with distinction (Nottingham), a J.D. (UNC) and a B.A. magna cum laude (Furman University).

Hilary Kinavey

Hilary Kinavey, MS, LPC is a co-founder of Be Nourished and a licensed professional counselor, facilitator, educator, speaker, writer, and activist. Hilary’s private practice, where she specializes in disordered eating and dieting, body shame and weight bias, and trauma, has been thriving for over 19 years. Her counseling framework is collaborative and informed by a relational, systemic and social justice lens. Hilary has additional training in workshop facilitation, mind-body coaching, and is a certified Daring Way facilitator. She is a sought-after speaker on topics such as weight-inclusive approaches, weight bias, Body Trust® and the intersections of activism and therapy. She offers individual counseling and coaching, consultation, and training for organizations and professional groups.

Kartikeya Singh

Dr. Kartikeya Singh is deputy director of the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at CSIS. His research interests include climate change and energy policy, innovation, and the geopolitics of energy use. Dr. Singh has travelled from the Antarctic to the Arctic exploring the challenges of energy geopolitics in a changing climate. His work has allowed him to field-test and deploy clean energy technologies, including electric vehicles and off-grid solar solutions in India and Uganda. His ability to create networks and foster cross-sectoral partnerships started with the founding of the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN), a nonprofit designed to build a national movement to drive India to lead the clean energy revolution.

Lisa Keys

Lisa Keys is a wife to Bill, mother to Caitlin and William and grandmother to Annabelle. She is a graduate of Franklin Marshall College and the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Currently retired from her career as a physician assistant specializing in pediatrics and adolescent medicine, you may know her as a Food Network CHOPPED Champion. Lisa is a successful competitive home cook winning hundreds of recipe contests and author of the blog Good Grief Cook. She lives in Kennett Square, PA.

Mark Gunnells

Mark Allan Gunnells loves to tell stories. He has since he was a kid, penning one-page spooky tales that were Twilight Zone knockoffs. He likes to think he has gotten a little better since then. A self-described horror-hound, he lives in Greer, SC, with his husband Craig A. Metcalf.

Nomonde Gila

Nomonde is a South African Environmental Science and Spanish major at Furman University. Outside the classroom, she spends her time being a Panafrican female activist. As a young African woman, she believes it is a necessity to fight for the millions of girls around the continent that are denied access to an education, freedom of speech and expression. Nomonde also focuses on using different forms of social media, i.e. YouTube and radio platforms to empower young girls to believe in themselves, their inner and outer beauty, and most importantly their brain power.

Olivia Larner

Olivia Larner is a junior at Furman University from Peachtree Corners, Georgia. On campus, she is a Neuroscience major and a member of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. In her free time, she can also be frequently seen dancing. Outside of Furman’s campus, Olivia is very passionate about supporting people with developmental disabilities and/or invisible illnesses. She is currently a SC LEND trainee, which provides interdisciplinary training to improve the health of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families, and previously interned with the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta. As someone who suffers from chronic illnesses herself, she will be talking about her personal experiences and the “Spoon Theory.” Through this talk, she hopes to raise awareness and promote understanding.

Srikripa Chandrasekaran

Dr. Chandrasekaran grew up in Kerala, India, and pursued her undergraduate and Masters degree in microbiology in India. She attended Louisiana State University Health Science Center for her Ph.D. studies in Biochemistry, where she was trained as a yeast biologist, investigating biochemical pathways involved in stress response in yeast. During her postdoctoral training at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill she researched the effects of genotoxic and osmotic stress on DNA Replication in human cells. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Elon University, North Carolina, where she worked on osmotic stress response in zebra fish. She went on to serve as a lecturer at Clemson University where she studied heat stress response mechanisms in fungi and their effects on cytokinesis. As a faculty member at Clemson University, Dr. Chandrasekaran led a study abroad program in microbiology at the University of Wroclaw, Poland where her group researched how scientific discoveries in microbiology and advances in medicine were impacted during and after World War II. Her program had a specific emphasis on understanding how the vaccine against typhus disease, transmitted by lice, was developed prior to World War II in Poland, and used as a war weapon during World War II. Dr. Chandrasekaran joined the Biology faculty at Furman University in Fall 2017, where she currently works on drug resistance in pathogenic fungi.

Stephanie Schuttler

Dr. Stephanie Schuttler studies the behavior, conservation, and ecology of mammals living in human-modified landscapes. She collaborates with K-12 teachers worldwide to implement eMammal, a citizen science camera-trapping program, into science classrooms. The students collect data for eMammal as part of their science classroom activities, and Stephanie uses the student-collected data to study the behavior, distribution, and range of mammals throughout the world. Simultaneously, she conducts research on students’ perspectives towards the wildlife they see on their local camera traps to see if citizen science can improve attitudes and increase connections to nature. Stephanie is highly interested in increasing people’s connections with nature and is an avid blogger and science communicator through social media.