We hope you're as excited about TEDxChigwell as us!

As per the TEDx license, we are only allowed 100 attendees at the TEDxChigwell event but we expect much more demand than that.

Free lunch + teas and coffees included! Dietary requirements will be collected closer to the event.

Any questions, please email amar@tedxchigwell.com, this ensures that your message will be seen rather than ending up in the requests folder on social media.

Chigwell Marquee
159 High Road Chigwell, IG7 6BD
Chigwell, Essex, IG7 6BD
United Kingdom

David Corfield

Independent Researcher on AI and the Future of Society

Like the Olympics or the World Cup, David Corfield returns to the TEDx stage after four years. His first talk, The Real Problem with Robots Taking Our Jobs, started the conversation on the impact of job automation on identity and mental health. Four years later, with artificial intelligence automating jobs earlier than most people expected, David will discuss how we can all maintain our authenticity and sense of self in a world that is changing at an ever-faster rate…and has no plans on slowing down. David runs the largest community of AI governance researchers, aligned on a mission to mitigate the risks from the development of transformative AI and ensure that it is used for the good of humanity. He writes about the impact of transformative technology on society at his website What Future World?, asking what we really want from the technology we are striving to build.

Deborah Hall MBE

Director of Chigwell Riding Trust for Special Needs

Deborah Hall MBE is also a Fellow of the Riding for Disabled Association. She has run Chigwell Riding Trust for Special Needs (CRT) for the past 42 years and she lives there with her husband Ken. Ken is very much part of the team. They have one daughter who is married and lives in Japan. CRT is the very first purpose built riding school of its kind in the world. It started in 1964 and has been offering therapeutic lessons ever since. ‍ Deborah is very passionate about the work she does, and the people she meets. She knows from experience that children with disabilities can achieve life changing skills as a result of this activity. CRT has 14 horses and ponies, each specially chosen for their temperament and what they have to offer. ‍ Deborah‘s work is definitely not 9 to 5 because of living on site. It seems more like 24-7. However, she has no complaints.

Deborah Widdick

Founder at Globelle Travels

Deb Widdick is a marketing professional and the founder of Globelle Travels, a community for female travellers & adventurers that connects, teaches, and inspires through shared experiences. She has a keen passion for travel, sustainability, philosophy and all things digital. Having spent her formative years within West Essex, and given her interest in driving both online and offline connection in her career, Deb will be exploring what it means to stay connected to our hometowns in the age of the internet. She will explore what it means to consider a place your hometown, and look to define the varying levels of what it can mean to stay connected to it. She will also review how our ability to access information via the internet has impacted how we stay connected to our hometown, and how it has changed how we interact with those we may have met throughout our formative years.

Dwain Chambers

Sportsperson

Dwain gained a 100m world junior record of 10.06s in 1997 and became the youngest ever world medallist in the event at the 1999 World Championships, taking bronze. On his Olympic debut at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, he was the best European performer in fourth place. He broke the 10 second barrier twice at the 2001 World Championships. After a brief hiatus, sprinting success came over 60m when he won silver at the 2008 World Indoor Championships, gold at the 2009 European Indoors, became a world champion at the 2010 World Indoor Championships and competed in the 2012 London Olympics. Dwain’s time within athletics has unearthed many chapters that has seen him live life on both sides of the coin. Dwain has chosen to turn his experience into a vehicle that allows him to give an honest account of his journey so far.

Jasneil Singh Panesar

Architect at Sheppard Robson

Beginning my interest in architecture, around the same time I became interested in learning to walk, I have spent a significant amount of time grappling with the concepts around architecture. I have a diverse portfolio featuring a number of high profile, large-scale, mixed-use, urban regeneration projects with particular experience in the creative re-use of existing buildings. Spending the last 10 years trying to marry poetic imagination and surgical precision I have used architecture to express my internal propulsion to challenge any vaguely pedestrian expectations of architecture. But let's not mistake this for a mere poetic folly. I wish to inspire a clarion call against the soulless banality of the built environment. We must reconnect with the tactile, the sensory, the narrative – to embrace architecture that's as real as it is evocative. Presenting to those within the sector for years, I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to building users.

Joel Gujral

Founder of MYNDUP

Joel Gujral is the Founder & CEO of a mental health startup MYNDUP. Joel founded the company after his own mental health battle due to an undiagnosed gut condition and he struggled to access support when working at a global corporate company that offered counselling only. MYNDUP is to stop the one size fits all approach to mental health and remove all barriers to care. Joel bootstrapped the company with £105 and grew it to a £25m business in 3 years raising £5m of funding along the way. MYNDUP is now servicing 50,000 employees in 50 countries with brands like Dentons, McCann, Savills, CVC & The Princes Trust. Joel has won several awards during his entrepreneurial journey including: -Winner of the Barclays Start-up Entrepreneur of the Year Award -Winner of the London Stock Exchange Group Entrepreneurship Programme

Sonali Ohrie

Photographer & Director

Sonali Ohrie (b. 1995, London, UK) is a self-taught South Asian Female Photographer and Director, brought up in England and raised in a Hindu-Punjabi household. Hardly able to find acclaimed visual assets from an Indian female perspective, she quit her full-time job to change that narrative. She utilises her art as a catalyst for change, particularly in expressing themes of womanhood, intimacy, and power. Through her powerful and impactful images, she portrays authentic stories while also confronting harmful stereotypes, aiming to enlighten her audience. In 2022, she won the Female in Focus Global Photographer Award with the renowned British Journal of Photography, where her work was exhibited in London and NYC. This won this from the first professional portrait she ever took. In 2023, the first video she made was picked up by Vogue and Levis. She then went on to make her official Video Directing debut with Apple Inc.

Suniti Marwaha-Sharma

Founder of Hypnodental and United In Grief

Death is the final, certain and inevitable end of life, yet nothing seems to prepare us for it. When coupled with a lack of societal understanding, those grieving often struggle to support themselves and each other; I bring to you the concept of uniting in our grief. Though we all grieve differently and our experiences are unique, so much of what we feel is the same. People think that grief is about missing a person; in fact, it’s a lot more complex. The loss of a person creates an aftermath, leaving us to navigate our journey through ‘Grief Mountain’. It affects external & internal factors; our home, family, work, our personality, perspective and mindset. I will explain why grief affects us in this way, how we can use our mind and body to influence our outcomes and how, ultimately, we can learn to control the aspects of our life that we can influence.

Tanya Saha Gupta

Founder of Resale Future

Growing up in India, Tanya was exposed to the realities of the fashion industry. She witnessed the incredible craftsmanship of local artisans and the vibrant celebration of fashion, but also the environmental degradation caused by the booming textile industry. She began her career as an Investment Banker, working with tech companies to grow & raise financing. This gave her a deep understanding of the potential of the sharing economy and the future role of AI in creating seamless customer experiences. This is when Resale Future was born, an innovative solution to underutilised closets, where customers can now list items for sale under 20 seconds. She believes fashion is an important form of self-expression, representing not only how individuals present themselves to the world but also what they stand for. Through Resale Future, she is creating a world where no one stands for landfills overflowing with underutilised garments.

Varun Bhanot

Founder of Magic AI

Varun Bhanot is the Co-founder & CEO of AI Healthtech company, MAGIC AI (https://magic.fit). He has helped scale the company to $2.5 million in investment to date from venture capital funds: Fasanara Capital and SFC Capital. Angel investors include the CEOs/Senior executives from Spotify, Stripe, Tough Mudder, Facebook as well as the founders of major British success stories including Citymapper, OLIO, Beamery, Heights, Humanity and Signal AI. Varun previously scaled tech startup Hubble from founding to £10m+ in VC funding and built non-for-profit UNHOUSED.ORG. He studied Entrepreneurship at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and did his Law undergraduate at the London School of Economics (LSE).