Theme: Cutting Edge Conversation

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).

Dixon Hall
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana, 70118
United States

Bryan Lee

Bryan Lee Jr. is the Place & Civic Design Director for the Arts Council of New Orleans. With a background in architecture, Lee is tasked with creating, advocating for, and contributing to the creative intervention of public art and social impact design in civic spaces across New Orleans. Before joining the Arts Council, Mr. Lee spent time at 2014 AIA National Firm of the Year, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (Architecture) in New Orleans. Additionally, Mr. Lee leads an award winning architecture + design curriculum for high school students through the National Organization of Minority Architects Louisiana Chapter (NOMA). As a devoted member of the NOMA, Mr. Lee serves on the National board as the Design Education Chair. He was selected as the 2014 NOMA member of the year and his chapter received the 2014 NOMA Chapter of the Year. Bryan was also selected as a 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow and a 2015 international British American Project Fellow.

Colleen Sinclair

Dr. Colleen Sinclair is an associate professor of psychology at Mississippi State University who recently co-founded the Social Relations ColLABorative at the Social Science Research Center to foster interdisciplinary research on how people form, maintain, and lose social bonds. She is a recent recipient of a $1.6 million dollar NIJ grant to study the consequences of peer rejection and is part of the Center for Open Science’s global endeavor to increase transparency and accessibility in science.

Delaney Perkins

Delaney Perkins is a junior at KIPP Renaissance High School and a student at Bard Early College New Orleans. He is the founding member of KIPP Renaissance’s LGBTQ club, which he created to both advocate for greater tolerance at his school and ensure that students have a safe space to talk about their identities.

Greg Tilton

Greg Tilton Jr. is a New Orleans-based cinematographer and co-founder of inDEPTH Media, a film production company focused on transmedia content. His work has premiered at the New Orleans Film Festival, New Hampshire Film Festival, and New Filmmakers New York Festival.

Lilith Winkler-Schor

Lilith Winkler-Schor is the Program Director and co-founder of Roots of Renewal, a holistic community development organization in Central City that works with young adults re-entering society after incarceration by providing work-training in construction and wrap-around social services. Lilith is pursuing a B.A. in social policy and political science and a B.F.A. in studio art with a concentration in glassblowing at Tulane University.

Manolo Baca

Manolo Baca was always taken aback by the pervasive economic inequality and poverty affecting the majority of Nicaragua, spending his childhood trying to comprehend how poverty develops and is experienced. While in high school he founded DALE Nicaragua, an organization that empowers underprivileged Nicaraguan youth through debate.

Nina Baumgartner

Nina Baumgartner is a senior at Tulane University studying Neuroscience and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Through her work as a Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Intern at the Newcomb College Institute, she recently organized the first ever Louisiana Sexual Assault Student Activist Conference, which had over 100 participants from across Louisiana and beyond. Heavily involved in activism during her time at Tulane, she launched the Know Your Numbers Tulane video campaign to help students understand how to read sexual assault statistics and directed the 2015 production of The Vagina Monologues. Nina also works as a researcher in a Tulane University neuroendocrinology lab, and hopes to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience after graduation.

Richard Carthon

Richard Carthon plays football and baseball for Tulane University. He studies Legal Studies in Business and Management Major with a specialization in energy in entrepreneurship. Richard is also the VP of SAAC (Student Athlete Advisor Committee), a Tulane Ambassador for the Business School, a member of AKPsi, and a member of the Black Student Union (BSU). He is pursuing a MBA/JD joint program post graduation.

Troy Spier

Troy E. Spier was trained as a public school teacher at Kutztown University and is currently a second-year doctoral student in Linguistics at Tulane University. During the 2015-2016 academic year, he took a personal leave of absence and spent the fall semester as a humanitarian aid worker primarily at the Tabanovce Refugee Camp in the Republic of Macedonia and at the Moria Detention Center on Lesvos Island, Greece. He has given previous talks on the Global Refugee Crisis and has also participated in the burial of victims from the journey across the Aegean Sea. Through activism, involvement in the field, and conversations with refugees around fires, he has been able to develop a personal understanding of the crisis.