RVA
x = independently organized TED event

Theme: Artful

This event occurred on
April 8, 2016
9:00am - 5:00pm EDT
(UTC -4hrs)
Richmond, Virginia
United States

ARTFUL is a quality. An opportunity. An invitation to approach life, work and challenges as a master would his craft. It’s unbound by industry, unlimited in its expression, and a wellspring of inspiration.

ARTFUL is the discerning intent behind each snip of a bonsai master’s shears. The catharsis created from the passion and performance of a playwright’s words. The curious thought-wanderings that result in a scientist’s breakthrough. The marvel and cunning of a magician’s sleight-of-hand. The comforting, encouraging grace of a crisis volunteer in action.

ARTFUL is a way of perceiving, a way of doing, an effect. Being ARTFUL means we are led by passion, we contribute value, and we bring about a healthier, more fulfilled society.

Help us provide the platform for those who embody the spirit of ARTFUL to uplift, inspire, and motivate us with their stories at the TEDxRVA 2016 event.

Richmond CenterStage
600 E Grace Street
Richmond, Virginia, 23219
United States
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Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check event website for more information.

Gina Lyles & Trey Hartt

Gina Lyles is a program leader at ART 180 where she currently leads programs in creative expression at the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center. Trey Hartt is on the Board of Directors for Alternate ROOTS, a regional organization calling for social and economic justice and working to dismantle all forms of oppression. Hartt currently serves as the Deputy Director of ART 180 helping to lead its new juvenile justice program. For the past year, Gina and Trey have been working together on the Performing Statistics project connecting incarcerated youth to artists, legal experts, and community activists in order to advance juvenile justice reform in Virginia. The project has gained the attention of the local Richmond City Police Chief and the Director of the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice and was recently awarded a Robins Foundation Community Innovation Grant to transition it into a 3-year program of ART 180 and the Legal Aid Justice Center.

Gull

Musician Nathaniel Rappole’s solo project, Gull, has been active for 13 years and has recorded extensively and spent the better part of the past six years touring globally. Gull has toured in support of White Rabbits, Tres Mts, and RNDM and has shared the bar arena with the likes of Silver Apples, Girl Talk, Deerhoof, Adrian Belew, Panda Bear, and Melt Banana. In 2012, Gull was featured in a movie about music in Mexico called Hecho en Mexico, which is available on Netflix. In 2014, he produced, hosted, and performed in Street Muse: Kenya, a documentary on street/public music and culture in Kenya. Rappole graduated from James Madison University with a BS in Psychology (2002) and presently lives in Richmond, VA.

Bill Maher

Bill Maher has over 25 years of experience and is a highly successful and innovative interventionist. He has helped to create intervention and care techniques and specializes in models that address the effects of addiction on the whole family. As a preferred interventionist for a number of the country’s top treatment centers, Maher has facilitated over 3,000 interventions nationally, with a very high success rate for placing the addicted individual into treatment. In the last few years, he has witnessed the developing heroin and opiate epidemic from the front lines. He is passionate about identifying and implementing solutions to stop the widespread loss.

Dr. Allison Jackson

Dr. Allison Jackson, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Certified Sex Offender Treatment Practitioner in Virginia, and a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in the District of Columbia. Currently, Dr. Jackson is supporting the City in coordinating the first Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience Summit ever offered in the State of Virginia. It is the hope that this Summit will further the knowledge and strategic planning of the City and surrounding communities in this most important public health issue. Dr. Jackson works independently as the CEO of Integration Solutions, providing trauma informed care consultation, education, and technical assistance to human service organizations interested in furthering their integration of trauma informed child and family service systems. www.integrationsolutions.org

Dr. Danielle Dick

Dr. Danielle Dick is a Professor in Psychology, African American Studies, and Human and Molecular Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research examines genetic contributions to substance use and mental health outcomes, and how the importance of genetic predispositions changes in different environments. She has received millions of dollars of grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and won numerous national and international awards for her research. She founded and directs the College Behavioral and Emotional Health Institute and runs a study called Spit for Science with nearly 10,000 college students taking part.

Dr. Gaynell Sherrod

With strong footholds in both the world of dance and the realm of education, Dr. Elgie Gaynell Sherrod knows more than one way to expertly communicate with a crowd. Dr. Sherrod’s artistic and theoretical works are steeped in the dance of African diaspora cultural traditions. She has created original works and choreographed for theater, as well as taught at New Jersey City University, New York University, and Florida A&M University. Dr. Elgie Gaynell Sherrod is a Fulbright-Hayes scholar in African-derived dance research. Currently, she is the chair of the Department of Dance and Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

Dr. Makola Abdullah

Dr. Makola Abdullah took office as Virginia State University’s 14th President on February 1, 2016. As President, Dr. Abdullah plans to lead with this message: Embracing Opportunities for Excellence. An internationally renowned researcher and educator, Dr. Abdullah has also been recognized for his keen ability to meet and surpass challenging fundraising goals. Throughout his career, he has been committed to increasing the number of African American professionals in the STEM fields. His record of success includes graduating four Ph.D.s and six M.S. scholars, in addition to publishing more than 25 technical publications. Highly respected by students, faculty, and administrators as a forward-thinking, personable leader, Dr. Abdullah is active in his community and is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Dr. Peter Pidcoe

Dr. Peter Pidcoe is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair in the Department of Physical Therapy at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has adjunct appointments with the School of Medicine (Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) and the School of Engineering (Department of Biomedical Engineering.) His research is an eclectic blend of projects where engineering principles are applied to real clinical problems. In his career, the intersection of the fields of engineering and medicine was serendipitous, but the cross-training he now provides his students is intentional. This uniquely blended education has proved to be both productive and rewarding.

Dr. Stefan Bekiranov

After receiving his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from UCLA, Dr. Stefan Bekiranov worked as a microwave engineer at Raytheon Electromagnetic Systems Division in Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara and went on to do postdoctoral research in statistical/condensed matter physics at the University of Maryland. After that, Dr. Bekiranov conducted more postdoctoral research in computational biology at The Rockefeller University. He pioneered the analysis of high-resolution genomic tiling array data as a Bioinformatics Staff Scientist at Affymetrix. He is now an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine working in the fields of epigenomics and systems biology and has published over 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals. The ultimate goal of his work is to arrive at improved therapeutic targets to treat and hopefully, one day, cure cancer.

Holladay Saltz

While working as a creative director and chief creative officer of web-based technology and media companies, Holladay Saltz became increasingly disillusioned by digital media’s frayed connections to the tangible world. A chance reading of Diane Ackerman’s, “A Natural History of the Senses,” led her to reexamine her lifelong fascination with the sense of smell and the ancient, storied history of fragrance and fragrant raw materials. After years of study in the process of formulation and production, she was able to train with Le Labo Fragrances in New York City and went on to found the independent fragrance line Apoteker Tepe in 2014. Now as a Perfumer, she now splits her time between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.

Jessica Smith

For master teacher and performing artist, Jessica “Culture Queen” Smith, there’s nothing more important than helping children and families connect with their culture and discover their own regalia.Smith has traveled the globe to awaken children’s curiosity, cultural awareness, and self-pride. She has taken center-stage at the Kennedy Center, trained educators at Yale University, facilitated workshops for teachers and students in Ghana, and delivered community-based programming for the Smithsonian and dozens of other museums, libraries, and schools. Smith holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater Education and African-American Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2010, she founded the children’s entertainment company Culture Kingdom Kids and has since used self-affirming songs, rich storytelling, and creative movement to produce hundreds of performances, workshops, and professional development programs for families, caregivers, and educators.

John Dau

Born in war-torn Sudan, John Dau is one of 27,000 “Lost Boys of Sudan,” driven from their villages when the northern Arab government attacked the ethnic minority population of South Sudan in 1987. In 2006, Dau was featured in the award-winning documentary, “God Grew Tired of Us,” and wrote a memoir of the same name, published by National Geographic in 2007. Dau is the President of both the Dau Foundation and the South Sudan Institute. The Dau Foundation works on providing nutrition and medical services at three different locations in Duk County, with a special focus on children under five and pregnant and lactating women. Dau is a born leader whose life is defined by his commitment to the future of his native country.

John Freyer

John Freyer is an Interdisciplinary artist whose projects include his internationally renowned Internet project, All My Life for Sale, Live From IKEA, his national PBS pilot “Second Hand Stories,” and his readymade projects Walm-Art.com and Big Boy. His work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, The Sunday London Times, Artforum, Print Magazine and NBC’s The Today Show. In 2011, Freyer was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Stockholm, Sweden, where he collaborated with Swedish Anthropologist Johan Lindquist on an art/anthropology project about IKEA’s Billy Bookcase. Freyer is an Assistant Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Media in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Moxie LaBouche

Moxie LaBouche has been performing and producing burlesque in Richmond for four years. She specializes in a style known as “nerd-lesque” and has produced several sold-out shows, including “The Princess Bride” and “Game of Thrones,” which has grown into a national tour after receiving the official blessing of author George R. R. Martin. LaBouche also produces a monthly, non-themed show in the production room of a local brewery. Her style as a performer tends toward the silly, portraying everything from a washed-up beauty queen to a giant barbarian knight to Grover from Sesame Street.

Pam Mines

Pam Mines, the mother of a boy with autism, wrote an interactive children’s book entitled “God Chose Me” to encourage others and tell them that being born with special needs is not an accident, a punishment, or a curse. In 2013, she founded the JP JumPers Foundation, a nonprofit organization to help families affected by autism, special needs, and unique circumstances. Her advocacy was key in getting “JP’s Law” passed by the Virginia General Assembly in 2014. The law created a voluntary designation on state-issued licenses and identification cards for people with Autism or an intellectual disability. At TEDxRVA, she plans to convey that people don’t have to wait for something tragic to happen before initiating a proactive change.

Robert Russell

Architectural historian, Robert Russell, has been the director of the Cultural and Historic Preservation Program at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, since 2013. Russell has written about topics as diverse as American county courthouses, medieval Italian architecture, and flim-flam artists on the American frontier in the 1830s. He has just finished a book on the 19th-century architect, William Strickland. Though he continues to be a passionate lover of architecture, he feels that many architects seem to have forgotten how to design buildings that contribute to the cities in which they are built. This has led to his growing interest in urban design and the things that make cities work for their citizens.

Sheila Battle

Philadelphia native, Sheila Battle, is a transformational leader, change agent, and human services advocate. Her passion is to see people grow from the inside out through practical teaching and application of basic principles. Whether managing a team or leading a workshop, her enthusiastic style motivates and inspires from the board room to the pulpit. Sheila’s fusion of real-life stories and her conversational techniques connect with her audience at an intimate, intense, and individual level. Sheila and her husband, Frank, live in Richmond and are the visionaries of the Daughters of Destiny Foundation, which owns the rights to a curriculum-based program for teen mothers and fathers.

Stephen Vitiello

Electronic musician Stephen Vitiello’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon. His exhibitions include a site-specific work for New York City’s High Line and the 2006 Biennial of Sydney. Vitiello has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts, Creative Capital funding for Emerging Fields, and an Alpert/Ucross Award for Music. In 2012, Australian Television produced the documentary, “Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent.” Originally from New York, Vitiello is now based in Richmond, VA where he is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Ted Elmore

After 15 years of practicing corporate finance law, Ted Elmore now leads a community effort to bring a unique public gathering space to the James River in downtown RVA. Ted graduated from the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia School of Law before joining the international law firm Hunton & Williams. He serves on the Board of Directors of Current Art Fair, The Gray Haven Project, GroundworkRVA, and Studio 23, and was a founding director of Fall Line Fest. His love of creativity, design, nature, and community combine to drive the ambitious BridgePark project, an innovative public park plan that would create a dramatic new green space with breathtaking views of the James River and downtown Richmond.

Organizing team

andy
stefanovich

Richmond, VA, United States
Organizer

Farrah
Haddad

Co-organizer
  • Leah Fremouw
    Curation
  • Lloyd Young
    Marketing/Communications
  • Risa Gomez
    Team member