Theme: AUDACIOUS

After three reschedules and 1,164 days of planning - Year 10 is happening. Join us for the most inspirational, educational day of the year in Portland at the Moda Center / Theater of the Clouds. Our theme continues to be AUDACIOUS - it still holds after 3+ years of time. It is even more relevant now considering what we all have persevered through and the scale of this event.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. We are going ALL IN on the “E is for Entertainment” delivering value in our 10th Anniversary like never before. The full one-day event will feature 15 TED Talks, highlighted by 6 incredible performances.

The Moda Center
Theater of the Clouds
1 N Center Ct St
Portland, Oregon, 97227
United States

Amy Wolff

Amy is a highly sought-after senior trainer, executive coach and event speaker for Distinction Communication, Inc, a training firm she co-owns with her father. Amy is also making a tremendous impact in her community and around the world as the founder of Don’t Give Up Movement, a non-profit aimed at making hope and love more tangible.

Asia Greene-Rhodes

Asia Greene-Rhodes is a spoken word artist from North Portland. Her passion for poetry, her community, and her family led her to become a high school English teacher. As a black mother, wife, and teacher, she uses writing as a medium to discover and share the truth. This is also a homecoming / encore performance as Asia performed once before kicking off our Year 3 Event “What If?” in 2013 at the Portland Art Museum.

Atticus

Atticus is the anonymous New York Times bestselling author of Love Her Wild, The Dark Between Stars, and The Truth About Magic. He is a storyteller and observer dubbed “The #1 Person to Follow” by Teen Vogue. He has been followed, quoted and retweeted by the world’s top superstars. Born in the Pacific Northwest, he has spent much of his life exploring the world and now calls California home. He loves the ocean, the desert, and playing with words.

Broke Gravy

Broke Gravy uses improv comedy, storytelling, and podcasting to discover truth between the blurry lines of the daily grind. As three Black Americans, they utilize their unique voices to spark thoughtful conversations on and off comedy stages. Through a candid dialogue, they exchange their experiences with those of their audience—exploring deeper perspectives on comedy, relationships, and humanity. Also, they’re funny AF.

Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab for Cutie is an American alternative rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997. The band is composed of Ben Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper, and Zac Rae. Death Cab for Cutie rose from being a side project to becoming one of the most exciting groups to emerge from the indie rock scene of the ’00s. They have been nominated for eight Grammy Awards. The band’s latest release, The Georgia E.P., raised over $100,000 for voter rights organization Fair Fight in 2020.

Digable Planets

90’s hip hop left an indelible mark on the music industry. Groups from De La Soul to Tribe Called Quest - We believe Digable Planets has a seat at that table because they were trailblazers - fusing jazz rap with R&B and melodic rhymes. The legendary Grammy winning trio—Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving return to Portland for Year 10 to perform their greatest hits.

Emily Nestor

Emily is an unassuming fireball whose main goal in life is to advocate effectively for those facing systemic obstacles. In 2017, she also found herself at the epicenter of the #MeToo movement and believes all gender identities will benefit from increased respect, protection, accountability, and understanding. She is a fearless leader and dedicates her time and talent to the national non-profit Friends of the Children, where she continues to live out her passion for inclusion and empowerment.

Eric Tran

Eric is focused on eradicating cancer. After receiving a PhD from the University of Victoria in Canada, Eric trained at the National Institutes of Health with Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, a field that harnesses the body’s immune system to fight cancer. In 2017, Eric joined the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute, a division of Providence Cancer Institute, here in Portland to develop new immunotherapies that specifically target cancer mutations in hopes to #FINISHCANCER.

Jelani Memory

Jelani is a Portland, Oregon native, founder and CEO of A Kids Book About, Inc., and former founder and Chief Product Officer at Circle Media. He's a constant learner, thinker, and aspires to be an artist when he grows up. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and six kids.

Jordan Dinwiddie

Jordan is a copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy Portland with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. She has a love for all things sports, culture, fashion and anything nerdy. Jordan’s work and influence have been recognized and awarded widely, including a Cannes Lion, DGA nomination, One Show, BET's 25 most influential people in sneakers, ESPN's Sneaker Center, and a listicle on Complex. She works to make sure that the multitude of black women is seen. She believes superheroes have taught her to do the work in her everyday life.

Portugal. The Man

Over the past decade, Portugal. The Man has established themselves as one of rock’s most prized possessions and a live phenomenon, with over 1,600 shows under their belts and a storied reputation as festival favorites. Originally heralding from Alaska, the Grammy Award winning Portland-based band is comprised of John Gourley, Zach Carothers, Kyle O’Quin, Eric Howk, Jason Sechrist and Zoe Manville. Alongside the shine of their myriad of musical accomplishments lies the group’s long-standing passion for social justice. In fact, this is precisely the intersection on which Portugal. The Man thrives. Throughout their career, the band has consistently exemplified how to deeply commit to both artistry and activism. This dynamic inspired them to officially launch their PTM Foundation in 2020.

Regan Parker

Regan is a mother, lawyer and author whose debut memoir, (Mis)carriage, pursues her deeply driven commitment to open the dialogue around pregnancy loss and to change the way we heal from miscarriage. She believes in the power of words and stories, and that healing can come from telling the truth.

Rukaiyah Adams

Rukaiyah is driven by the belief that we are all just trying to take care of one another. Her desire to succeed in capital markets to benefit everyday people is the driving force behind her ambition. She is a fearless leader and pillar in the Portland community. Her pro bono work includes negotiating on behalf of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the Homeless Prenatal Project in San Francisco, the North Albina Vision Project and the National Children’s Defense Fund.

Tatiana Mac

Tatiana (they/she) is an independent American engineer. They are an open source maintainer who created and is building Self-Defined, a modern dictionary about us. An international keynote speaker, they speak on the intersection of technology and ethics, examining how our products both fit and define our social and environmental settings.

Taylor Stewart

Taylor started the Oregon Remembrance Project in 2018 to help communities unearth stories of injustice and engage in the necessary truth-telling and repair required to reconcile instances of historical harm. His work connects historical racism to its present-day legacies in order to inspire contemporary racial justice action. In what started as simply a way to memorialize a man named Alonzo Tucker, the most widely documented African American victim of lynching in Oregon, Taylor has grown to see the power of reconciliation to rectify further instances of historical injustice.

Tyrone Hendrix

Jimi’s cousin lives in Portland, Oregon and his name is Tyrone Hendrix. He is a remarkable musician in his own right blending elements of funk, rock & roll and hip hop. Tyrone has shared the stage with artists such as Prince, Stevie Wonder, Liv Warfield, Allen Stone, Mike Phillips & the Portland Cello Project. He will be headlining the Tribute with a very special guest and accompanied by the iconic imagery of Ed Caraeff, the legendary photographer that took the greatest rock n roll photo ever as voted on by Rolling Stone Magazine.

Vince Kadlubek

Vince is Co-founder and Executive Advisor of Meow Wolf, an award-winning art collective turned art and entertainment production company specializing in immersive, walk-through experiences. Kadlubek’s goal is to create the largest, most innovative and audacious monumental art exhibits in the world. Vince is most interested in co-creating fully realized alternative realities that bring paradigm-shifting transformation to the world.

Vitor Bastos

An experimentalist by nature, Vitor defies the boundaries of design through his work. He has been featured on runways, in exhibitions, and in print in over ten countries. But when he received a health diagnosis he didn’t expect, he began to imagine a whole new way of living. He began to question which parts of himself he was hiding to fit in - particularly how his identity led to self-confidence or self-shaming. Today, Vitor leads by example with empathy-inspired strategies to design systems and campaigns that highlight the beauty - and complexity - found in humanity.

Viva Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas first took the stage in Portland 24 years ago in a fit of intellectual and moral pique after learning in college that stripping and sex work were considered “un-feminist.” In the intervening decades, she’s published two books and countless essays, released half a dozen LPs with various bands, and inspired a feature-length documentary. Her first book, Magic Gardens, was alchemized into the hit opera “Viva’s Holiday” by Portland composer Christopher Corbell.