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).

The 'Quin House
217 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts, 02116
United States

Ali Feller

"Ali on the Run" podcaster, blogger, runner

Ali Feller is the host of the Ali on the Run Show, the #1 running podcast in the country with more than 13 million downloads. On every episode, Ali interviews professional, amateur, recreational, and celebrity runners about why they love the sport, the mental side of running, and what keeps them moving when things feel tough. Ali is also a race announcer for New York Road Runners, the TCS New York City Marathon, the Boston Marathon, and Millennium Running. She is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Runner’s World, Women’s Running, Self, Shape, Fitness, Well+Good, Dance Magazine, and more, and she is the former editor-in-chief of Dance Spirit magazine.

Anna Johannes

2012 Paralympic Bronze Medalist and Disability Inclusion Advocate

Anna Johannes was born without her left hand and forearm and started to fight for disability rights and social justice at a young age. Whether coaching low-income families, Wounded Warriors, or the future generation of Paralympic athletes, Anna has dedicated herself to helping others. After a professional career of swimming and participating in the Paralympic Games – coming away with a Bronze medal – she took her skills from the pool to the realm of business to continue that same fight. At Speedo, Anna helped guide them to sign their first Paralympic athlete and consulted with sister brand, Tommy Hilfiger, on their Adaptive clothing line. At Boston Children’s Hospital, she fought to make sure every patient’s story was told. At Porter Novelli, Anna works on the internal marketing team and their Disability Inclusion Task Force. She has served on Board of Adaptive Sports New England and on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USPOC) Social Racial Justice Task Force.

Cassidy Bargell

Student and Athlete at Harvard

Cassidy (Cass) is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in integrative biology and government. At Harvard, Cass was an All-American for the D1 varsity women’s rugby program as a freshman and sophomore, a finalist for collegiate player of the year in 2019, named to the All-Ivy Academic 1st team in 2020, and elected captain in 2021. A diagnosis of severe acute ulcerative colitis upended her training and studies. When all medical therapy options failed, she underwent a total colectomy (removal of her colon) and now has an ileostomy--an opening in the abdominal wall where the end of the small intestine is pulled through and an external bag is attached. Since surgery, she has returned to Harvard and to full-contact rugby. The surgery provided relief to her physical pain and opened the door to a new community of ostomates. Cass learned first-hand dealing with the challenges of IBD and illness can be scary and isolating, and hopes by sharing her story she can connect with and help others.

Cheri Blauwet

Two-time Boston Marathon wheelchair division winner and Harvard sports medicine doctor

Cheri Blauwet is a mother, physician, Gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete and leader in the Olympic and Paralympic movement driven to promote inclusion in the sports and fitness sector and beyond while empowering others to reimagine their full potential. Cheri is a retired Paralympic athlete in the sport of wheelchair racing, competing for the United States Team in three Paralympic Games (Sydney ’00, Athens ’04, Beijing ’08) and bringing home a total of seven Paralympic medals. She is also a two-time winner of both the Boston and New York City Marathons. Translating her background as an athlete to the clinic setting, Dr. Blauwet now serves in numerous leadership roles throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Movement. Cheri has become a global leader who leverages her personal and professional experiences to advocate for inclusion and accessibility across the fitness landscape, community and beyond.

Dava Newman

Director, MIT Media Lab; Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics MIT

Dava Newman is the director of the MIT Media Lab. She holds the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow (a chair for making significant contributions to undergraduate education); and was the former Director of the Technology and Policy Program at MIT (2003–2015); and Director of the MIT–Portugal Program (2011–2015, 2017-present). She has been a faculty leader in Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT’s School of Engineering for 28 years. She holds a top-secret clearance. The Honorable Dr. Dava Newman served as NASA Deputy Administrator (2015-2017). Nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate unanimously in April 2015. Along with the NASA Administrator, she was responsible for articulating the agency’s vision, providing overall leadership and policy direction.

Dede Griesbauer

Professional Triathlete, Ironman Champion, World Record Holder, Coach, Sports Commentator

Dede is force. After a successful swimming career as a student athlete, Dede retired from the sport to pursue an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked on Wall Street for eight years as an equity trader. That wasn't the end of the story. In 2005, Dede left Wall Street to pursue a career in extreme sports. Highlights from her career as a Professional Triathlete include 3 Ironman wins. In her second year as a pro, Dede won Ironman UK, setting a new course record in the process. She won Ironman Brazil in 2009 and in 2015, at the age of 44, Dede became one of the fastest over 40, winning Ironman Taiwan. Dede is a 3-time top-10 finisher in Kona in 2007, 2008 and 2009. In 2011, Dede had a near career ending crash during Ironman Germany. She broke 6 bones; an elbow, 2 ribs, her pelvis in 2 places and her hip. She was told she’d never run again. By mid 2012, she was back on the race course and still going strong.

Elizabeth Galloway McQuitter

Basketball coach and president of Legends of the Ball for history of WBL, first pro women's league

Liz is a trailblazer in the world of women's basketball. Coming up in the game, Title IX legislation gave Liz the opportunity to play basketball for University of Nevada, Las Vegas as one of the first female basketball players to receive athletic scholarship. After college, Liz tried out as a free agent for the newly formed WBL league (a pre-cursor to the WNBA). She and her lifelong teammate and friend Debra Waddy-Rossow went on the start and play in the first women’s professional game in the United States. When the WBL folded after three years, Liz (and other WBL players) would influence this profession and players over the next four decades. Liz, along with eleven former WBL players formed Legends of the Ball, Inc. As president, her mission is to bring this league out of the shadows and tell the compelling story of pioneers of Title IX, the AIAW, the Olympics, the WBL, so that everyone that followed will know whose shoulders they stand on.

Emily Capodilupo

WHOOP SVP of Data Science and Research, empowering data-driven decision making

Emily Capodilupo is the Senior Vice President of Data Science and Research at WHOOP, Inc., where she leads all efforts around creating algorithms to optimize human performance using physiological data and oversees research efforts which have included novel findings around predicting risk for COVID-19 and modulating training according to the menstrual cycle’s hormonal fluctuations. Her passion is leveraging the uniquely large and context-rich datasets enabled by wearable technology to uncover insights that fill gaps left by traditional academic research.

Emily Saul

Sport Psychology & Performance Coach, Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Founder of E Saul Movement

Emily Saul has a deep desire to help athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and anyone who moves to find the potential inside them. Drilling into the mysteries and nuances of the athletic brain and igniting its full power is her passion and her calling.

Esther Wallace

Founder of Playa Society that promotes equal access for Black girls to athletics

Esther Wallace is the designer and founder of Playa Society, a brand she created to bridge the gap for women’s sports. She is an artist, turned athlete, turned entrepreneur who went from never having played sports as a child, to falling in love with basketball and earning a Division I scholarship to Fairleigh Dickinson University. After playing and coaching overseas, Esther decided to create the brand that she needed when she was younger – one that would prioritize representation and recognition for female athletes. Inspired by her personal experiences, Esther uses Playa Society as a platform to contribute to the growth of women’s sports.

Haley Rosen

Founder & CEO of Just Women’s Sports, former pro soccer player

Haley Rosen is the founder and CEO of Just Women’s Sports. Frustrated by a lack of media coverage devoted to women’s sports, Haley founded JWS in 2020 shortly after retiring from professional soccer. Starting with an Instagram account and a big idea, it took Haley only a few short months to grow JWS into the leading media platform dedicated to women’s sports. An All-Pac-12 midfielder at Stanford, Haley was named to both Forbes’ 30 under 30 and SBJ’s New Voices Under 30.

Joey Lye

Olympian & Founder of Joey Lye OLY LLC

A heart-and-soul type utility player since joining the national team in 2010, Joey Lye competed in five WBSC Women’s Softball World Championships for Canada, earning bronze in 2010, 2016 and 2018. She was also a member of the Canadian teams that took home silver at the 2011 and 2019 Pan American Games and gold in 2015. She started all seven games at second base and hit .316 during Lima 2019. A few weeks later at the WBSC Americas Olympic Qualifier in 2019, Lye hit .600 as Canada booked its ticket to Tokyo 2020. In her Olympic debut, Lye went 2-for-2 with a walk and scored two runs while helping Softball Canada finish third and win it’s first-ever Olympic medal.

Karen Smyers

1995 Hawaiian Ironman and World Champion and Hall of Fame Triathlete

Karen Smyers competed as a professional triathlete for 30 years. In her long career, she won 7 National + 4 World Championship titles, including a dramatic come-from-behind victory in the Hawaiian Ironman World Championships in 1995. With an ITU Triathlon World Championship victory 5 weeks later, she still holds the record as the only woman to win triathlon’s two most prestigious races in the same year. There were challenges: a severed hamstring muscle by broken glass, a time-out for the birth of her daughter, a knockdown by an eighteen-wheeler while cycling, and a battle with thyroid cancer, prompted Sports Illustrated to name her “The Triathlete Most Likely to Be Eaten by a Shark”. She came back to win her 7th Elite National Championship title a week shy of her 40th birthday. Karen was inducted into USA Triathlon’s and the International Triathlon Union’s Halls of Fame. She shares her experience and optimism as a coach, speaker, and organizer through her company Gallivant Racing.

Karsta Lowe

Professional Athlete

Olympic medalist and AVCA All-American Karsta Lowe is in her first season (2020) as the volunteer assistant coach for the Women of Troy. Lowe is a six-year member of the U.S. Women’s National Team and helped Team USA claim bronze medals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. In other major international competition, Lowe owns gold medals from the 2019 Pan American Cup, the 2016 NORCECA Olympic Qualification Tournament, the 2015 FIVB World Grand Prix, and the 2015 NORCECA Championship.

Kate Ackerman

Medical Director of Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and former National Team Rower

Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, MD is a Sports Medicine Specialist in Boston, MA and has over 20 years of experience in the medical field. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine medical school in 2002. She is affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital. Her office accepts new patients. Dr. Ackerman can speak from the science perspective on the clinical issues facing female athletes: vital perspective to bring to this topic given how much we are learning about the ways in which women athletes often differ in how their bodies and minds respond to and adapt to training so they can perform at their top level in competitions – physically and emotionally. Former national team lightweight rower, Chair of the US Rowing Medical Commission, Member of the World Rowing Medical Commission, Director of Female Athlete Program

Kate Fagan

Author of NYT-bestselling What Made Maddy Run, host of Meadowlark podcast, Off the Looking Glass

Kate Fagan is an Emmy-award winning journalist and the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of WHAT MADE MADDY RUN, which was a semi-finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting. Her first book was the coming-of-age memoir THE REAPPEARING ACT, and her third book, ALL THE COLORS CAME OUT, released in May 2021 from Little, Brown. She currently works for Meadowlark Media and co-hosts the podcast Off The Looking Glass. Kate previously spent seven years as a columnist and feature writer for espnW, ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. She also covered the Philadelphia 76ers for three seasons and played college basketball at the University of Colorado. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina with her wife, Kathryn Budig, and their two dogs.

Kate Madigan

Executive Director, Hockey Management & Operations / New Jersey Devils

Kate Madigan is in her fifth year in the New Jersey Devils organization and second year serving as the Executive Director of Hockey Management/Operations. Madigan serves as the righthand executive to General Manager Tom Fitzgerald and the internal point person for Hockey Operation to ensure communication and integration across the whole department. She handles priority projects for the General Manager including but not limited to trades, draft, development, culture and team services, while serving as a Swiss Army Knife for all things hockey operations.

Katrina Adams

CEO/President Katrina M. Adams Inc.

With an outstanding track record in leading, innovating and collaborating, Katrina Adams is the first African American to lead the USTA, the first two term Chairman and President (2015-2018) and the first former player to hold that honor. Under her tutelage the USTA achieved several major milestones, including the opening of the USTA National Campus, the transformation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and led an outreach effort into underserved communities to share the sport of tennis. Adams sits on several non-profit boards and committees, including being VP of the prestigious International Tennis Federation, Chairman of the Billie Jean King Cup Committee, Chairman of the Gender Equality in Tennis Committee, Executive Board member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the Executive Director/President of the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program. She has also branched onto boards in the private sector and serves in several advisory roles.

Lea Davison

Two-time Olympian and Co-Founder of Little Bellas, mentoring on mountain bikes for girls

Lea Davison is a two-time Olympian and a two-time Mountain Bike World Championship medalist. Over her twenty-year professional career, she has been a multiple time National Champion. Her work ethic, perseverance, and boundless joy have created success and longevity in a demanding sport. Lea uses her platform to lift women up and mentor the next generation of mountain bike racers. Her mentees have gone on to win World Championship titles and to stand on World Cup podiums. Lea co-founded the non-profit, Little Bellas (5013-c), a mentoring on mountain bikes program for girls. Little Bellas creates community to empower women and girls through cycling, accent the importance of goals and a healthy lifestyle, and emphasize a positive female bond. Little Bellas has over twenty female pro athletes and Olympians that visit Little Bellas programs and inspire. Lea aims to be the LGBT+ role model that she needed growing up and to share her story to empower others to live a full authentic life.

Melissa Ludtke

S.I. reporter and plaintiff in baseball equal access case, Ludtke v. Kuhn

Award-winning journalist Melissa Ludtke reported and wrote for Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. Her books have received wide acclaim, and her upcoming narrative social history book chronicles her groundbreaking 1978 federal legal case that established equal access for women reporters to report alongside male reporters in Major League Baseball locker rooms. Her judge’s decision in Ludtke v. Kuhn opened pathways for generations of young women to work in sports media, though issues revolving around gender equality in this profession are still in play 45 years later.

Mira Shane

Diversity and Inclusion Champion, Professional Lacrosse Player for Athletes Unlimited and Michigan Women's Lacrosse Alumnaa

Mira’s passion in life is amplified when she’s focused on building relationships, positivity and storytelling specifically for misrepresented communities. While studying African American Studies, Law, Justice & Social Change and music at Michigan, Mira helped lead the women’s lacrosse program to its first NCAA Tournament bid in 2019. A native of Princeton, N.J. and proud biracial queer woman, she is Michigan’s all-time winningest goalie in program history and the career saves leader. When she isn’t in her goalie gear now as a Pro Athlete, Mira is probably beatboxing or singing. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NYC and works for Verb Energy full time focusing on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Molly Little

Big East Lacrosse Defensive Player of the Year (2021)

Current professional lacrosse player and Collegiate coach, 2021 Big East Conference Defensive player of the year and All-American (‘20, ‘21)

Natalie White

Founder

Natalie is the founder of Moolah Kicks. She played ball her entire life--growing up in NYC, playing school, AAU, and streetball. Throughout her entire career, she felt and experienced the differences that divide men’s and women’s basketball. Her experience walking into footwear stores and seeing that there wasn’t a single sneaker option made for women baffled her. The lack of WBB sneakers had both a negative social implication and a negative performance effect. She was inspired to launch the first women's basketball brand.

Rukhsar Habibzai

Afghani Refugee Training for Olympics with Twenty24, women's pro cycling team

Rukhsar Habibzai was the Afghan first women’s cycling team captain. She was forced to leave her country as part of the mass evacuation of vulnerable citizens who faced targeted gender violence by the Taliban. Currently, she rides for Virginia’s Blue Ridge Twenty24, a national cycling team preparing for the Paris Olympics 2024. Ms. Habibzai and her team were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 due to their unstoppable endeavors for women’s rights and succeeding in becoming/setting an example for the rest of the world’s women to fight against oppression against women. Miss Rukhsar has inspired many girls to take a stand for their rights. She and her team were cycling on many dangerous roads of Afghanistan, where many men did not dare to go. She also participated in many national and international conferences, where she always used her seat for the voice of her peers and to draw attention to the issue of Violence Against Women.

Sara Mae Berman

"Unsanctioned" women's winner of Boston Marathon,1969, 1970, 1971

Sara Mae Berman has been so overlooked among the Boston Marathon’s early women headliners you may never have heard her name. Runners now often know of Bobbi Gibb, who was first, winning in 1966-1967-1968. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer famously survived her tussle with Jock Semple. And Nina Kuscsik is well-remembered for her victory in the first official women’s race at Boston in 1972. Berman fits right in the middle of this trio. Fifty years ago this April, in 1969, she ran 3:22:46, winning her first of three straight Bostons to match Gibb’s threepeat. In 1970, she lowered the course record from 3:21:40 to 3:05:07. In 1971, she and Kuscsik waged the first competitive women’s race at Boston, surging back and forth in the final miles until Berman won by just 30 seconds.

Shawnee Benton Gibson

Co-Founder and CEO of Spirit of A Woman (S.O.W.) Leadership Development Institute

Shawnee is a master teacher, trainer, healer, vision coach, performance artist, inspirational speaker, officiant, mother and friend. Shawnee Benton Gibson, LMSW / FDLC, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Spirit of A Woman (S.O.W.) Leadership Development Institute, an organization designed to educate, elevate and effect positive and sustainable transformation in the lives of individuals, groups, families and communities. Ms. Benton Gibson is a graduate of New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and is a licensed practitioner with over 28 years of experience in the areas of substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery, adolescent development, individual, family and group counseling, women’s health, birth equity, social justice, grief, loss, bereavement and trauma. Her tools include spiritual counseling, coaching, writing, sacred rituals, psychodrama, sociometry, energy work, the performing arts and storytelling as mediums to ignite transformation and initiate catharsis.

Sheryl Swoopes

4X WNBA Champion; 3X Olympic Gold Medalist; 2016 Hall of Famer

Her name rhymes with “hoops.” Her talent has been compared with that of Michael Jordan. Even more importantly, she has earned the ultimate endorsement contract most athletes only dream about—a line of footwear named in her honor. Sheryl Swoopes has reached the pinnacle of women’s professional basketball in the United States. She built her career on record-making play. Swoopes is the only player—male or female—ever to score 47 points in a collegiate national championship game, which she did while leading Texas Tech University to its first national basketball championship in 1993. As a professional player, Swoopes continued her exceptional play, helping to popularize the WNBA. She led the Comets to four consecutive WNBA championships, won three Olympic gold medals, and earned the league’s most valuable player award a record three times.