Theme: Resilience

At TEDxWoking, TED Talks live speakers and video combine to spark deep discussion and connection. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.
First run in Woking in 2015, and again in 2017, 2018, and 2019, TEDxWoking has attracted a large and positive audience to hear talks on the themes of ‘transformation', 'innovation’, 'discovery' and 'collaboration'.
In 2021, the event was live-streamed to the audience, on the theme of Resilience.

McLaren Thought Leadership Centre
Chertsey Road
Woking, Surrey, GU21 4YH
United Kingdom

Jane Stacey

Business owner, expert shopper and creative thinker

Do you have a job you absolutely love? Can you imagine how you would feel if you lost it? Are you sure you would make the right choices for you? Jane Stacey shares the shame, grief and relatable mistakes of her own experience of losing her job. What she learnt about herself, how she got her spark back, and the answers she discovered that have helped her to find the job she loves and the ‘Why’ she didn’t know she had! A creative and critical thinker, Jane Stacey has been responsible for creating and implementing Category Strategies for some of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies. Her 'Fire' comes from getting the good ideas to the people who need them, which she has done through her career in Category Management for global brands and for SMEs, through her business, Idea Cake.

Kimberley Leung

Speaker and advocate for young leaders

Resilience is a word that we hear more and more in our day to day lives, and is a hot topic for leaders. As a high-performing young leader, Kimberley Leung found her own resilience was in question in her working life. She soon realised that being resilient would help her be successful and, more importantly, able to help those around her. But first, Kimberley needed to understand what resilience truly means to her. She needed to change it from being something that only challenged her, to something that could be used as her strength. Kimberley shares her own story about resilience and the tools that she developed to help strengthen hers, and proves how you can say to yourself 'You've got this!', even if you tell everyone around you that you haven't.

Louise Curtis

Ex-philosophy student turned product person and humanist celebrant

Impostor syndrome can be crippling. The fear of being exposed as a fraud, the feeling that you don't know what you're doing and everyone is going to find out, is something many of us deal with on a daily basis. But what if you could turn impostor syndrome into your superpower? What if, when you started to feel like an impostor, you used that feeling to spur you on and do great things? In this talk, Louise shares some of her insights into impostor syndrome, and how, instead of letting it rule her life, she now sees it as a positive feeling. She shares tactics to help you remove all the fear from impostor syndrome, and start to embrace it. Louise suggests that if you can start to treat impostor syndrome as a superpower, just think of all the things that you'd feel brave enough to tackle.

Marilise de Villiers Basson

Founder and CEO, executive coach, wife, mother and author

Marilise is the founder of ROAR! Coaching & Consulting, and the author of ROAR! How to Tame the Bully Inside and Out. ROAR! is Marilise's blueprint for how to live life on PURPOSE, in your own POWER, and with the COURAGE to speak your truth. Through her own personal and emotional story, Marilise shares her experience of bullying and her model for taking back control. She challenges the audience by asking: "Have you found your ROAR!?"

Mel Loizou

Author, coach, consultant and facilitator

How do you deal with adversity, toxic situations, or challenges? Do you always know exactly what you are going to do, or do you sometimes feel completely overwhelmed and stuck? Having always been fascinated by people’s ability to deal with change and difficulty, Mel developed the Fish Climb Trees Philosophy to help individuals, teams and organisations shift from that place of believing they can’t to one where they know they absolutely can, thereby building their resilience. Combining a trip to a restaurant where you eat in the dark with the adventures of some brave fish who make the journey from Toxic River to Legacy Lake, Mel encourages you to identify and break through your own fishnets. Fishnets that keep you caught up in the beliefs you have about yourself, stuck where you are, unable to fulfil your hopes and dreams. Mel specialises in the areas of leadership and change management, helping those she works with understand that sometimes the apparently impossible is possible.

Ruchi Pathak Kaul

Maxillofacial surgeon , entrepreneur and STEM Mentor with special interest in 3D printing and allied technologies

Ruchi shares the story of one of her patients and her personal journey during the expectional period of the Covid-19 pandemic. She believes that by building resilience and reimagining healthcare, through embracing and implementing new technologies, more people can be helped more efficiently across the world. Over a number of years, Ruchi has succesfully developed a 3-step process to benefit society, as well as individuals navigating difficult life circumstances. Ruchi is a speaker, maxillofacial surgeon and researcher, healthcare entrepreneur, podcaster and STEM mentor, who believes that technology is a tool with potential far beyond what we can possibly think. She says: "Let technology not use you. Rather, one needs to use it to pivot the unimaginable benefits."

Susan Walsh

Fixer of dirty data and stubborn optimist

For many, the word ‘no’ is final. It’s a roadblock. A shutdown. The end of the line. But not in the eyes of Susan Walsh. Susan says, ‘say No to No’. For Susan, no is an opportunity. No can mean better things are around the corner. ‘No’ doesn't really have to mean no. Throughout her life, there have been many times when Susan - also known as The Classification Guru - has had to say No to No and it's led to better things. And it is Susan’s hope that in telling you her story, you too will begin to identify opportunities in your life where you can also say No to No, and build your own resilience through a simple determination not to fall down at the first hurdle or turn around at the first roadblock, but to find alternative routes to your end goal.

Will Hemmings

Proud father, husband, and founder of startup social enterprise seeking to strengthen communities using technology and outreach

Resilience is defined as 'the ability to bounce back from difficulties'. But when we live in such an interconnected world, a bouncing back for one group can mean more difficulties and pressures for others. Taking examples from ancient sacred texts and a range of topics including re-wilding and volunteering, Will explores how loving one another through shifting our focus from resilience to endurance could be the key to a better, more sustainable world - one less prone to bouncing from crisis to crisis. In this witty and thoughtful talk, Will uses his LOVE model to ignite a new kind of passion in people across the planet.