Theme: Transcendence

The St. Mary's Academy ASB Officers are excited to welcome the SMA community to the first-ever TED event within their school environment. Join us for an evening of incredible speakers, TED Talks, and musical interludes.

St. Mary's Academy
1615 SW 5th Avenue
Portland, Oregon, 97201
United States

Claire Haats

Confidence Enthusiast

Claire Haats is a freshman at St. Mary's Academy. She has always enjoyed running, but only started competing after joining the SMA cross country team this fall. Claire puts her running experience to good use while playing for a traveling lacrosse team and is looking forward to lacrosse tryouts in the spring. Her favorite subject in school is math. In her free time, she enjoys reading, spending time with her family, baking, and watching television shows such as Sherlock. In the future she hopes to find a cure for cancer, create a more peaceful world, and learn how to form a better paragraph about herself. Claire will be speaking about why teenagers struggle with confidence and how everyone can learn to believe in themselves. She would like confidence to be a component of high school’s curricula, openly discussed and woven into teenagers’ lives on a daily basis.

Emily Purkey

Stuttering Superstar

Emily Purkey is a junior at St. Mary's Academy. When she was younger, she let the fact that she stutters deter her from truly loving herself. Now, that same aspect inspires her to appreciate all that life has to offer. At school Emily works front of house for all of the SMA productions, serves as a core ambassador, and loves socializing with people to gain different perspectives on life. In her free time, Emily enjoys adventuring outdoors or binge-watching Netflix. In her future, Emily plans on studying speech pathology and psychiatry in school to eventually work for SAY (Stuttering Association for the Young) in New York. Emily will be speaking about her experiences as a person who stutters living in a fluent person’s world, how society and the media shape expectations, and how instant gratification plays a role in this speech impediment. She looks forward to sharing her point of view and research, opening the door to a silenced community and starting a conversation about stuttering.

Lena Breda

Freelance Sociologist

Lena Breda is a senior at St. Mary’s Academy. Lena’s interest in gender studies began as a young child, as she kicked and punched alongside “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Powerpuff Girls.” At school, Lena loves her humanities classes. Lena will be attending college at the University of Chicago, although she is concerned about the lack of Tillamook yogurt in Chicago (her daily staple.) She hopes to pursue a degree in Sociology while at college. In her talk, Lena will discuss the disparity between portrayals of male and female “recluses,” and how these conceptions affect our understanding of gender.

Lily Irvin

Advocate and Curling Athlete

​Lily Irvin is a junior at St. Mary's Academy. She has always been passionate about academics and loves her school’s ability to foster students’ success and self-awareness. She is an avid member of the St. Mary's theater department. In her free time, she loves to curl (the sport, not the hair styling practice!) as well as experiment with her newly purchased Vitamix. While unsure where her future is headed, she enjoys living in Portland and is excited to live mindfully as she rounds out her time at St. Mary’s. Lily will be speaking about the misconceptions of success and the positive effects of assuming people can achieve. She looks forward to sharing her experiences and introducing a different mindset to our society.

Maria Gray

Activist and Author

Maria Gray is a sophomore at St. Mary's Academy, where she is a member of the Marian Singer, a student leader of Women's Equality Club, and an avid English student. Outside of school, she enjoys reading and creative writing. Drawn to writing and documentation for as long as she can remember, Maria is interested in pursuing journalism and utilizing this craft to promote and discuss social change. As a second-generation Filipino-American, Maria will be speaking about the belittlement of the Asian-American experience. She will share how this often undermined phenomenon impacts young members of the "model minority" as they grow into their individual racial identities. From media treatment to everyday encounters, she looks forward to discussing the unrecognized factors that feed into the constant dismissal of such a large, diverse, and accomplished demographic.

Mikaela Foster

Political Aficionado

Mikaela Foster is a junior at St. Mary's Academy. She has always had a love for the legislative process and the political world, but never truly explored it until this past summer when she was a Senate Page in Washington D.C. Now, as she continues to immerse herself in the realm of politics, she has observed several flaws in ways that political issues are approached, leading to setbacks in progress and intolerance for others’ views. Through classes such as AP Government and AP U.S. History, and activities such as mock trial and politics club, Mikaela has noticed a bias in the way people discuss politics—both in her classes and across the world. She will be speaking on this political mob mentality, why it occurs, and ways to counteract it.

Sonja Bales

Artist and Globe Trekker

Sonja Bales is a senior at St. Mary's Academy this year. Within the SMA community, Sonja is an officer for the National Art Honor Society and a dedicated member of Art Club. Currently, she is weighing acceptances and will be attending college for Film and Fine Art studies. She works as a professional photographer with Grace Art Camps. Through her involvement in the visual art, she travelled to Peru and Ireland over the past two years. From these international experiences, she will present her perspective on how to experience travel in a genuine and fulfilling way. Connecting with a place on an individual level can be more difficult with the distractions of tourist destinations or rigid programs. Entertain your sense of adventure, submit to your curiosity for new people and places, and most importantly, revisit how you want to see the world.