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).

Mira Costa High School
1401 Artesia Blvd
Manhattan Beach, California, 90266
United States

Allan Guei

Basketball Skill Specialist with a Big Heart

Allan Guei has spent a good part of his life focusing on his physical abilities, however it was his integrity and sacrifice that drew widespread recognition. After spending his younger days in Europe and Africa, Allan and his parents moved to the United States where he found a deep passion for sports, especially basketball. He became an accomplished athlete at Compton High School, the school that produced star basketball player DeMar DeRozan. Allan earned a full scholarship to Cal State Northridge, transferring to Humboldt State University for his final two seasons. He then tried out for the Toronto Raptors and LA Clippers. Allan combined his sports knowledge with his degree in Recreational Administration and his certification as an ACSM Personal Trainer to train a broad range of athletes. In 2018, he worked under Chris Farr, the player development coach at the Denver Nuggets. This provided him with the confidence and experience to be a Skill Development Trainer.

Bernhard Zünkeler

Artist

Dr. Bernard Zünkeler received his doctorate in law and after twelve years working as a business attorney, turned his studies of art history and passion for artistic thinking and action into a profession. Bernard co-founded the research institute artlab21 located at ESMoA in downtown El Segundo. Believing that art, art education, and art appreciation are at the foundation of any society, Bernard celebrates the spark of creativity within everyone by creating educational and artistic experiences. In 2018 he co-founded the artist collective Freeters who design, create, transform, and play with spaces. Bernhard splits his time living and working in Berlin, Hamburg and Los Angeles. In Germany, his focus is on inspired art projects for industry and urban cultural landscape for which he has received numerous honors including the German Design Award. He is a book-series author and at the center of a recent documentary that was ten years in the making.

Court Crandall

CEO/Creative Catalyst

As the founder of Positivity, Court splits his time between advertising, entertainment and philanthropic endeavors. The Line That Unites Us was the first of his two TED Talks. He has written screenplays for the feature films Old School and A Lobster Tale and co-wrote and directed the comedy, Bromates, which was recently released on Hulu and gave him some good Snoop Dogg stories. Court also wrote the children’s book, Hugville, released by Random House and created the Positivity Magnet, a ten-foot-tall interactive sculpture, which was featured on the Kelly Clarkson Show and appears at different events around Southern California. While they take different forms, these projects are all merely expressions of hiss personal mission to promote positive thinking and behavior in the world.

Dante Simonetti

Associate Professor, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering

Dante Simonetti is a Core Faculty member and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education at UCLA Samueli’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. He is also the associate director for technology translation at UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management. His research interests include reaction chemistry and engineering with a specific focus on reducing the carbon footprint of industrial processes and energy generation while also remediating legacy emissions. Dante received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively. He joined the UCLA faculty in 2014 after working as an R&D project leader at Honeywell’s UOP. Dante has published several peer-reviewed scientific publications and holds several patents in his areas of expertise.

Debi Gutierrez

Comedian

For the past 20 years, Debi Gutierrez has had one foot on a red carpet and the other on a rug that she’s trying to vacuum. She’s a real-life wife, mom and friend that just happens to make a living on television. She is an explosively funny comedian who takes her audiences on high-energy, heart-warming roller coaster rides through the perils and delights of life, relationships and marriage telling tales of home-schooling a teen, cleaning her own house, running daily errands, and cooking her own meals – even to the frustration of her makeup artist who was trying to get her ready for the Emmys while she was whipping up her kid’s favorite, mac and cheese! When Debi isn’t hosting television or touring the country as a headlining comedian, motivational humorist or keynote speaker, she’s busy living an action-packed life with her girlfriends, children and former Marine husband who all provide her with tons of laugh-out-loud moments to pass on to her audiences.

Grettel Fournell

Born in Los Angeles, Grettel was raised in the San Gabriel Valley and Costa Rica. She grew up with her parents, two sisters and a large extended family who all love to dance! Grettel has been married to Manhattan Beach native, Bill Fournell, for 33 years and after working as a consultant for Ernst & Young specializing in financial restructuring for seventeen of those years, she retired to raise their four children. Extremely active in her community, Grettel has served on PTA boards, volunteered in many classrooms, led Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, as well as been a real-life Soccer Mom. She has also been a member of Sandpipers Philanthropic Organization since 2000, serving on their Board and various committees, and recently retired after 10 years serving as the Lead Advisor for Sandpiper Juniors. Today she focuses on her life goal of teaching everyone the joy of dancing!

Josh Brost

3D Printer of Rockets

Josh Brost knows rockets. He started his career as an aerospace engineer at Boeing, moved into business at the Boston Consulting Group and spent nine years at SpaceX. Today he is responsible for business development strategy and customer mission management at Relativity Space. Relativity Space is a vertically integrated technology platform that fuses 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics to design, print and fly entirely 3D-printed rockets with 100x fewer parts in less than 60 days. As an experienced aerospace business leader, Josh has a proven track record of shaping how customers purchase existing services and novel capabilities. Under Josh's leadership, Relativity’s first rocket, Terran 1 has become the most pre-sold rocket in history, with multiple contracts from both private and government entities, such as NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Iridium, and Telesat to name a few.

Lyn Stoler

Climate Optimist

Lyn Stoler is a public health and climate researcher committed to nurturing and sustaining hope as we face the effects of climate change. She has traveled around the globe researching city-based climate solutions that improve public health as part of her new project, Parachute. Investigating how cities in the United States and around the world become more beautiful, livable and resilient in the face of our changing environmental climate, Lyn is taking a novel approach and publishing her findings and stories from people most affected in real-time. Prior to Parachute, Lyn was the Associate Director at the UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions, where she led initiatives to translate public health research into climate action. Lyn was Director of Public Health at Helena in Los Angeles, where she led projects from innovative healthcare finance to direct air carbon capture. These experiences have fueled her passion for impact-driven, real-world solutions to climate change.

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, studies the psychological and neurobiological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for learning, development and schools. She is a Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California, and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE). Immordino-Yang was elected 2016-2018 president of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society by the society’s membership (www.IMBES.org). She is serving as a distinguished scientist on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development, where she was selected to the sub-committee of six scientists and educators drafting a working definition of SEAD. She is appointed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on the Science and Practice of Learning (i.e., the committee writing, How People Learn II). In 2015-2016, Immordino-Yang was selected by the AERA leadership as one of thirty scholars to participate in the AERA Knowledge Forum centennial initiative. Immordino-Yang is associate Editor for the award-winning journal Mind, Brain and Education and for the new journal AERA Open. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Cogent Psychology and Culture and Brain. Among other funded work, Immordino-Yang has a cross-cultural, longitudinal NSF CAREER study investigating adolescent brain and social-emotional development, and relations to school and life achievement in urban contexts. She is currently also PI for a school-based intervention study of the role of students’ social-emotional competencies in academic success, funded by the Templeton Foundation via the UPenn Imagination Institute. She is PI on a study of the neural and psychosocial correlates of mindsets in low-SES adolescents from two cultural groups, funded by the Raikes Foundation via the Stanford Mindsets Scholars Network. Immordino-Yang collaborates with ABC Unified School District, Manhattan Beach USD, Cerritos College, Rowland USD, and Los Angeles USD in her work. She serves as scientific adviser to several Los Angeles schools/districts. Immordino-Yang’s 2015 book, Emotions, learning and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience, is available from W.W. Norton publishers (author proceeds are donated to education-related causes). http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Mary-Helen-Immordino-Yang/

Positive Impact Movement

Positive Impact Movements was created during the COVID pandemic by Travis, James, Andreas, and Nathan with the goal to appear on America’s Got Talent and spread their message of positivity and connection while representing community, inclusivity, play, and pushing the capabilities of the human body. The group has performed on The Ellen Show, NBA Halftime, America’s Got Talent, La France a un incroyable talent (a.k.a., France’s Got Talent), Tú sí que vales, and Georgia’s Got Talent. The four members come from different backgrounds and diverse countries including Mexico, Canada, Japan, and the United States. They found one another at the Original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica which has a rich history of Acrobatics, as well as being the birthplace to the fitness movement in the 1930s. Embodying the art of play, Positive Impact Movements looks to bring more than just high-flying acrobatics when they entertain. They look to relate to those who have gone through serious injuries and show them that it is possible to heal and to rebuild and reclaim their health and vitality through persistence, positivity and the loving nature of play.

Raci Levine

Climber of Mountains

Raci Levine is currently a junior at Mira Costa High School. She is passionate about writing and runs the Features section for La Vista, the school’s newspaper. Raci is also the president of Mira Costa’s American Jewish Cultural Club where she is committed to raising awareness and encouraging diversity throughout the campus. Raci volunteers with the philanthropic group Sandpipers Junior and has completed UCLA business and entrepreneurial courses. Whichever college Raci ends up attending, she hopes to travel the world and take on many new adventures.

Rich Keller

Distiller

Rich Keller believes that everyone has a personal brand. He contends that today, technology dramatically influences that brand. Impressions have become instant, unavoidable and accessible to everyone. Clearly understanding their personal brand allows an individual to harness it, controlling all aspects of their narrative from how they are perceived by others to how they perceive themselves. Rich developed the philosophy of identifying a one-word core value to craft identities and utilized this for 25 years for some of the world’s most iconic brands at Nabisco, Kraft Foods, Cadbury, and Godiva. He walked away from his successful corporate career to fulfill his personal mission — to transform one million lives “One Word” at a time. Today Rich is disrupting the way people think about themselves, so they too can craft their personal one-word brand identities.

Rob DeCou

Athlete with a Cause

Rob DeCou is an entrepreneur, educator and an ultra-endurance athlete who uses his passions and abilities for the purpose of raising awareness and building community around important issues. In 2020, Rob became the 7th person to complete the world’s toughest ultra-triathlon, the Uberman, raising over $55,000 to fight human trafficking. In 2019, Rob swam across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, Canada to prevent trafficking. In 2017, Rob completed the world’s toughest foot race, a 146-mile run across Death Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney, raising over $700,000 for End Polio Now. In 2016, Rob completed the solo Race Across America, known as the world’s toughest bicycle race -- a 3,000-mile journey -- to fund brain cancer research. Rob is also the Founder & CEO of Lux Virtual, a full-service digital marketing agency designed to illuminate brilliant ideas through video and animation storytelling, augmented reality, websites, and social media content.

Tashanda Giles-Jones

Climate Educator

Tashanda Giles-Jones is an award-winning environmental educator eager to support the learning and growth of urban youth in Los Angeles, California. She develops human impact lessons that are adapted for her student population and provides engaging learning activities through garden-based education. She has a relentless drive for discovering and applying innovative, sustainable skills that provide for communities that are often left behind and who may be uninformed about local mandates, regulations and accessibility. This drive has fueled her passion for teaching about environmental issues and sustainable solutions. She holds two Associate of Arts degrees, a Bachelor’s of Arts degree, is an expedition fellow at EarthEcho International, a Master Gardener, and is currently completing a MESA Agroecology Fellowship. She is also the Lead Educator in Kiss the Ground's Introduction to Regenerative Gardening online course and host of their podcast, Grow What You Know.

The Passing Zone

The Passing Zone delivers a high-octane presentation that is full of big laughs, wild stunts, hilarious audience participation, and mind-blowing skills. They were finalists on America’s Got Talent, are regulars on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, have performed on The Tonight Show, and at The White House, and hold four Guinness World Records. After many years headlining theaters, performing arts centers and special events, and opening for such comedy legends as Weird Al Yankovic, Bob Newhart, George Carlin, David Spade, and more, Jon Wee and Owen Morse now travel the world performing at meetings, conventions and conferences, for companies and organizations of all kinds. Jon and Owen are passionate about showcasing their three cornerstones of success: innovation, collaboration and execution which are crucial for the success of any team. They don’t just talk about teamwork – they DO it – role modeling trust, cooperation, communication, and practice to inspire other high-performance teams.

Thomas Suarez

tbd