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).

Lisner Auditorium
730 21st Street NW
Washington, District of Columbia, 20052
United States

Aarash Darroodi

Aarash Darroodi brings a wealth of knowledge and global experience as Executive Vice President, General Counsel at Fender, one of the world’s leading musical instrument manufacturers, marketers and distributors, transforming music history since 1946. In 2022, Darroodi was appointed President of the Fender Play Foundation™ with a mission to equip, educate and inspire the next generation of players through music education. Having lived in over 19 countries, Darroodi has applied this wealth of life experiences to work seamlessly within Fender across multiple countries and cultures, including the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia and Australia. Bringing these diverse perspectives into his role as EVP and General Counsel, his work has led to the largest acquisition in Fender’s history of PreSonus Audio Electronics and the support of the $1 billion California Proposition 28 Music and Arts Education Ballot Measure. Further, he negotiated and cooperated with major music publishers in support of Fender’s online digital learning application, Fender Play, including Universal Music, Warner/Chappell, and Sony Music Publishing. A proponent of technological change and innovation, Darroodi is currently focused on expanding the reach of Fender Play and other digital initiatives across the borders of US and Europe, including entry into untouched territories, such as Japan, China, and South Korea. Darroodi is also a proponent of modernization of the legal profession through implementation of modern technology, promoting business acumen/intelligence, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. In his spare time, Darroodi volunteers his free time to helping refugee foundations through pro-bono legal help, mentorship and translation services.

Argelia Rodriguez

Argelia Rodriguez is the President and CEO of Rodriguez Collaborative Consulting. Her firm focuses on helping corporate and educational clients secure and expand the pipeline of diversity with innovation, strategic planning, and organizational and program development. Prior to establishing Rodriguez Collaborative Consulting, Rodriguez was the first appointed President and CEO of the DC College Access Program (DC-CAP), a four-star Charity Navigator organization funded by leading Washington-area corporations and foundations to enhance college admission and graduation rates for DC public high school students. Annually, DC-CAP administered over $7 million in scholarship funds and operated 40 college information centers supporting 23,000 students and their parents. Under her 23 years of leadership, DC-CAP helped over 35,000 students attend college and over 14,000 graduate, contributing to a 100% increase in the DC public high school student college enrollment and graduation rates, establishing DC-CAP as a leader in college retention research and practice. Before DC-CAP, Rodriguez headed an educational and management consulting firm servicing well-known educational and corporate clients, such as AT&T. Her services focused on educational research and minority student achievement, while also providing expertise on organizational development, service marketing and new business start-ups. While at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Rodriguez consulted Fortune 500 corporations in the insurance, financial services/banking, aerospace, telecommunications, manufacturing, and consumer products industries on projects involving strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, diversification strategies, market research, marketing strategies, and new product development. Rodriguez holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, as well as several accolades like Washingtonian of the Year.

Ben Winters

Ben Winters is Senior Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and leads EPIC’s AI and Human Rights Project. His work focuses on AI policy and automated decision-making applications that disproportionately affect marginalized communities, such as those surrounding the criminal legal cycle. He teaches tech policy at University of District Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law. He has recently focused on analyzing innovative enforcement techniques that regulators can employ to protect consumers, pushing lawmakers and regulators to do more to enact protective AI policy, and analyzing the funding of private technological development by the government using taxpayer funds. Ben was an Equal Justice Works Fellow and Internet Law and Policy Foundry Fellow. He’s been published in Protocol, the University of New Hampshire Law IDEA Law Review, the Colorado technology Law Journal, and the Journal for National Security Law and Policy. He has also been quoted in The New York Times, CNN, Politico, Reuters, and WIRED among others. He is a graduate of Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he was Editor-In-Chief of the Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights and Social Justice and the President of the Data Law Society. He holds a B.S. in Communication Studies from SUNY Oneonta and is a member of the bar of D.C. and New York State.

Darryl Webster

Darryl Webster, B.A. ‘87, has devoted his life to destigmatizing mental health issues. He uses his lived experience overcoming mental illness to help over a thousand children and adults with trauma as a mental health professional. He founded a nonprofit organization in the late 1980s that received national attention. The USA Today selected him as a national hero for working with youth in DC's roughest neighborhoods. His work as a devoted community organizer earned him an invitation by former president George Bush Sr. to witness the signing of a proclamation honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1995, the Washington Post reporter Kate Boo was embedded with him in the field as a child protective service worker during the crack cocaine era. Her story of his heroic efforts earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination. In 2006, Darryl was selected as a “National Father of the Year - All-Star Dad” by the Father of the Year Commission. In 2007, GWU presented him with the DC Government Distinguished Government Award. In 2018, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) MD chapter named Darryl as a Social Worker of the Year. Darryl Webster is the author of two books: How to Successfully Help Your Student Athlete Earn a College Scholarship and I Thought I Was Going Crazy: Overcoming Stress, Anxiety, and Depression. He’s a motivational speaker and trainer focused on trauma-informed schools, organizations and communities. Webster played basketball at George Washington. All three of his children followed in his footsteps, becoming student athletes at Quinnipiac University, Harvard University, and the George Washington University.

Fred Tutman

Fred Tutman is a grassroots community advocate for clean water in Maryland’s longest and deepest intrastate waterway and holds the title of Patuxent Riverkeeper, which is also the name of the non-profit organization that he founded in 2004. Some of the lessons learned on the Appalachian Trail have inspired Fred’s work on Water Trails as well. Prior to riverkeeping, Fred spent over 25 years working as a media producer and consultant on telecommunications assignments on four continents, including a stint covering the Falkland War in Argentina for the BBC; managing a Ford Foundation funded project to help African traditional healers tell their stories to the world; and nine years of intensive media productions for with Fire and Emergency Management organizations. Fred has won several awards for both radio and television production writing and production. In recent years, Fred has taught courses in Environmental Law and Policy at Historic St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. He splits his time between Maryland and North Carolina where he maintains busy Blacksmith forges in both places. He is the recipient of numerous regional and State awards for his various environmental works, is the longest serving waterkeeper in the Chesapeake Bay region, and the only African-American waterkeeper in the nation. He also lives and works on an active farm located near the Patuxent River that has been his family’s ancestral home for nearly a century.

Lizzie Peabody

Lizzie Peabody is the host and senior producer of Sidedoor, the Smithsonian’s flagship podcast, where she brings listeners behind-the-scenes of the world’s largest museum and research complex. Sidedoor has been recognized as a leader in educational podcasting, using humor and narrative to broadcast stories of art, history, science, and culture from the Smithsonian’s collections around the world. After graduating from Amherst College, Lizzie worked as a classroom teacher for several years before beginning her career in audio production. During that time, she learned firsthand from her students the key to capturing and holding any group’s attention: spinning a good yarn. She has carried that lesson into her involvement in the Washington D.C. storytelling community. Lizzie has served on the faculty of Story District, a DC-based nonprofit dedicated to teaching and showcasing the art of first-person storytelling, and has told her own stories at The Moth GrandSlam, Story District’s Top Shelf, Story Collider, Perfect Liars Club, and the Capital Fringe Festival. She also hosts and produces an annual storytelling show in East Blue Hill, Maine. Lizzie’s career in audio production began in 2016, when she made a New Years Resolution to interview a new person every day. The hundreds of resulting conversations spurred the creation of her first podcast, Your Story Here, which drew connections among strangers’ perspectives and put them into conversation with one another. Through Sidedoor, Lizzie combines her love of teaching and storytelling with the creative puzzle of working with sound.

Shirley Graham

Dr. Shirley Graham is the Director of the Gender Equality Initiative in International Affairs and an Associate Professor of Practice in International Affairs at George Washington University. She teaches two graduate courses: Global Gender Policy and Gender, War & Peace, and an undergraduate course: Women in Global Politics. Shirley is from Ireland and growing up during the time of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland influenced her decision to work on peace and security issues. Shirley’s research includes the analysis of gender discourses on peacekeeping amongst officers in the Irish Defence Forces and the role and challenges of military gender advisors in U.S. security cooperation missions. She led a civil society consultation process in Ireland, north and south, to inform Ireland’s first national action plan on women, peace, and security . She is a member of the U.S. Civil Society Working Group on Women, Peace & Security (WPS), a coalition of experts serving to inform and educate U.S. Congress, the Administration, and civil society on WPS thematic areas and issues. Shirley is the founder and faculty mentor for the Student Consortium on Women, Peace & Security with over 200 members focused on researching and publishing about the necessity of women’s equal participation in all aspects of peace and security, the protection of women and girls human rights, and women’s role in the prevention of violent conflict. Each year, Shirley hosts an international women’s day event to highlight progress and gaps in achieving gender equality and providing a space for women’s powerful voices to be heard.

Suzanne Firstenberg

If you ask social-practice artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg what her medium is, she will reply, “Empathy.” She champions human dignity through the topics she explores, including homelessness, gun safety, politics, and drug addiction. She begins each new art series with research, reading and interviews. Then, she chooses materials best suited to communicating her messages. Firstenberg ventures beyond traditional media, employing buffalo skulls from her native South Dakota, concrete rubble, and even shipping containers to effect social change. Her artworks lure viewers with beautiful aesthetics, then deliver powerful messages. She represented the United States at the 2016 Harbin (China) International Ice Sculpting Competition, bringing home the Creativity Prize. For her Empty Fix art series to destigmatize drug addiction, she traveled over 57,000 miles, interviewing hundreds of people suffering or recovering from addiction. Images of her art have appeared in the press on six continents. Her latest work, In America: Remember, an art installation of over 700,000 white flags honoring those lost to COVID appeared on the National Mall in September 2021 and has been replicated in communities across the country. Google included the art in its “2021 Year in Search.” Artsy Magazine honored In America: Remember as one of twelve exhibitions considered the “Best Public Art for 2021” worldwide. Washingtonian Magazine named Firstenberg as a “Washingtonian of the Year.”