TED Community » James Chesterfield

About Me

I am from the Midwest, where cornfields meet Chicago-city lights. I grew up climbing trees and watching Star Trek. My passions lead me towards science, exploration, and the assurance that my life is worth something to the world.

My classical education comes from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Formally, my focus was international relations in the form of a Political Science degree, but my constant search for my passion drew me into the technology and design field, resulting in a minor in what is called Informatics.

In 2010 I spent my summer living and teaching the English language in Kocaeli, Turkey. The two and a half years surrounding that life-altering experience were spent working at management level positions in the worlds largest international student-run NPO, AIESEC.

Currently I work for XNet, a B2B cloud service, server colocation, and dedicated internet provider in the Chicago suburbs as their marketing director. Everything from social media and web design to graphic design and analytics runs through me, including the company's independent TED event, TEDxNaperville, of which I am an organizer.