Theme: It's About Time

This year's event is about Time... because It’s About Time we let humanity speak to us – today more than ever.

TEDxCoventGardenWomen 2016 focuses on four core traits of the human condition.

Humanity is about movement. People become displaced, from the places they have lived, from roles in society they were born into, from positions in social hierarchies that were assigned to them. To live humanity, the displaced need a voice. Voice gives identities. Everybody matters.

Humanity is about creativity in the tools we produce and the service we deliver to each other. Creativity drives technology, science and the design of products and services. We use these to support each other through our actions. For better or worse, technology and design changes lives. For everybody.

Humanity is about generosity. We share what we have and what we aspire to. We give, help others to give, and learn to receive what is given to us. Everybody counts.

Humanity is about communication. When we communicate, we spark the vision of what is necessary and what it possible. Technology unites us across time and place so that our voices can speak. To everybody.

When humanity speaks it gives voice to those without because of age, gender, heritage or beliefs. TEDxCoventGardenWomen gives voice through the speakers and the ideas they share with their audience in London and across the world.

Vue West End
3 Cranbourn St
London, London, City of, WC2H 7AL
United Kingdom

Alexandra Azúa Hale

Communication Design Consultant

As a product of being raised between two cultures and identities, Alexandra has long been witness to the complex politics of identity and representation. She believes it is now more important than ever to deconstruct these rhethorics, as fear of difference is nurtured in current hostile times. As a result, she approaches the subject of ‘Otherness’ from a multi-disciplinary angle – combining language, politics and design – in an attempt to make cultural theory more accessible. Alexandra focused on the discourses of cultural binaries – their construction and reinforcement – that govern daily life, applying cultural and political critique to the field of visuality. Her most recent work entitled ‘Sleeping Beauty: A Colonial Crisis’ juxtaposes current migration images with those of European colonisation, utilising post-colonial literature to demonstrate key parallels between history and modernity.

Angela Luna

Social Entrepreneur

Angela Luna is a graduate from the Parsons Class of 2016, and winner of the Womenswear Designer of the Year Award and Eyes on Talents Innovation Award. At only 22 years old, she is a social entrepreneur and designer currently in the process of establishing a humanitarian brand with a focus on using innovative design to solve global issues. Her first collection is made to assist refugees, with unisex and one-size convertible outerwear. Each jacket responds to one or more issues that a refugee faces on a daily basis, including lack of shelter and sleep, overseas journeys, too much or not enough visibility, and traveling with children. Through widespread donations, she sees the potential for design to make a difference in the lives of the other 90%. She is dedicated to being a leading innovator in solution-based design, generating products that better the world.

Angela Rastegar Campbell

CEO of Agora for Good

Angela Rastegar Campbell has over a decade of experience in strategy and operations, having worked with Fortune 500 companies, major foundations, non-profits, and multilaterals in the US, Africa, Europe and Asia. Most recently, Angela co-founded Agora for Good, which focuses on bringing transparency and impact to charitable giving. Through Agora, Angela has built partnerships with dozens of major foundations and donor networks. Her content expertise includes global health, agriculture, access to finance, pay-for-results programs, gender, and education technology. Prior to founding Agora, Angela worked at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, PepsiCo and the Monitor Group. Angela is originally from Hawaii and holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Becky McOwen Banks

Creative Director

With over 18 years advertising industry experience Becky has brought her own brand of creative magic to many regions and clients. She is also an advocate for industry change, spearheading many initiatives; from the pilot of The Girlhood programme within FCB Inferno as a new path for recruiting creative talent, to leading The Girl Effect (Rwanda) project, to partnering the launch for Creative Equals, to active roles with SheSays & Who’s Your Momma in the UK and Australia. Whether it’s as part of the IPA Talent & Leadership committee, Women of Tomorrow awards judge or top CreativePool Influencer of the year, Becky keeps the need for greater diversity in the search for better creative work, front and centre.

Daniela Rossade

Mechanical Engineering Student ; STEM Ambassador

Daniela Rossade is studying on an international masters programme in Mechanical Engineering at Bristol University. At university, Daniela headed up a water supply project for Engineers without Borders (EWB). She led a team to Benin, West Africa to research the requirements and design for a rainwater harvesting system at a rural health centre. She is also a member of the Bristol ‘Schools plus’ program and tutors A-Level maths at underperforming secondary schools. Daniela is a STEM ambassador (science, technology, engineering and maths) and has started a project at her old primary school, where she promotes engineering through regular talks and engineering workshops. She blogs about how to reach out to young girls, how to showcase engineering as an exciting field and how networks of teachers and parents could proactively support young girls better. She is currently developing these talks and workshops to reach wider audiences.

Emma Cannon

Fertility, pregnancy and integrated women's health expert, registered acupuncturist and author.

Emma Cannon is a fertility and women’s health expert, registered acupuncturist and founder of the Emma Cannon Clinic in London. She has written many books on the subject of fertility and helped countless patients achieve their dream of having a family over 25 years in clinical practice. Emma holds a Bachelor of Science and is a member of the British Acupuncture Council and The College of Medicine; she has attended The Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology for the management and treatment of infertility. She is a regular contributor to newspapers, magazines and TV/radio programmes on the subject of fertility and has had work published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine. She runs a satellite clinic at the Lister Hospital where her team support IVF patients through their treatment.

Farrah Storr

Editor of Cosmopolitan

Farrah, was appointed Editor of Cosmopolitan UK in July last year. Since taking the role, she has led the magazine through a dramatic new look and introduced brand new content. In the latest round of ABC figures, she has successfully grown circulation by 59% year-on-year. She joined from Women’s Health magazine where she was launch Editor. Under her tenure, Women’s Health has become the most successful women’s magazine launch of the last decade, recording six consecutive increases in its ABC circulation figures. Prior to that she was Features Director of Marie Claire in Australia and Deputy Features Editor of Glamour UK. She began her career as Features Assistant at Woman & Home, followed by Features Writer at Good Housekeeping. She regularly contributes to broadsheet newspapers and television about a wide range of women’s issues.

Hala Abdullah

Spoken Word Poet

Hala Abdullah is a poet, performer, and a self-proclaimed radical feminist. Since the age of 15, Hala has only been able to find solace in writing. At 18 – desperate and lonely in her passions – Hala started the first Riyadh Writing Club with the help of her best friend, in search for solidarity and inspiration. The Writing Club provided a safe-haven for female writers in the country’s capital and encouraged them to dig deep in their literary and self-discoveries. Throughout the years, the club has expanded to Jeddah, Dubai, and Kuwait, and they have organized several poetry/literary events in the region. Having found that she likes performing her poetry as much as she does writing it, Hala delved into the world of spoken poetry and grasped at every opportunity to perform her poetry on stage. Hala’s poetry has a heavy feminist theme to it. As a born-and-raised Arab woman, Hala has struggled in her fight for equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal rights.

Hayley Smith

Founder of FlowAid

Hayley Smith, 28 is the Founder of FlowAid, an initiative and campaign to provide free sanitary products for homeless women. Hayley, also Owner of London based PR company Boxed Out PR, set up the campaign in 2015 in London, and has since expanded the outreach throughout the UK. Hayley has also been a leading voice for the removal of the tampon tax, and has spoken out and been featured in Dazed and Confused Magazine, PR Week, leading feminist blog Zusterchap and other blogs. Hayley has also collaborated with the Miss LondonSemi finalists, in which FlowAid was initially launched. FlowAid is 100% non-profit. The only transactions made are from the generous donations of sanitary products from the public, which Hayley relies solely upon.

Jendella Benson

Writer, Photographer and Filmmaker

Jendella Benson is a writer, photographer and filmmaker based in London. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and The Metro, as well as on BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, London Live, and MumsNet. She has exhibited at The House of Commons, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, and Rich Mix in the UK, as well as at The Brockton Collective in Toronto, Canada. For the past three years she has been working on a long term project called Young Motherhood, which challenges the myths and misconceptions associated with young mothers and their families. She is also a columnist for Media Diversified.

Khemaridh Hy

RadReads Curator

Khemaridh Hy is the creator of Rad Reads and Quartz’s first Entrepreneur in Residence. Khemaridh grew up in New York City and spent fourteen years as a hedge fund investment analyst. The last eight years were at Blackrock, where he oversaw the NY research team for the firm’s Alternative Advisors unit. He left in 2015 to explore projects focused on community, generosity, and introspection. RadReads is a passion project that emerged out of the desire to answer the question “What does it mean to live a whole life?” It takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering this question, drawing on fields ranging from neuroscience to sports psychology, then sharing stories to empower its community to take action. Khemaridh also works with individual companies on ways to inject compassion and introspection into their cultures. As Quartz’s EIR, Khemaridh is writing, collaborating on numerous digital projects, and supporting new strategic initiatives.

Leigh Caldwell

Mathematician and Cognitive Economist

Leigh is a mathematician and cognitive economist who carries out research into how people behave and make decisions, whose work mixes psychology with economics, cognitive science with computer science. Leigh graduated university at 18, founded a Web software business at 19 in the early days of the commercial Internet, and went on to write The Psychology of Price – a book about how our mind interprets and interacts with the prices of the products around us – and co-found the Irrational Agency, a market research firm that uncovers the unconscious needs and wants of consumers, so companies can design products that make people happier. The traditional practice of economics is already being challenged by new theories, but only at its edges. Leigh’s research aims to dig up its whole foundation, and build a new economics of consciousness, hope and empathy – a more human economics.

Muna Hassan

FGM Activist

Muna Hassan is a co-founder and a lead outreach worker for Integrate Bristol, a charity that tackles the issues of gender based violence. She was part of the core group that started the work around FGM at the charity, which since has been recognised nationally and internationally. She also a co-founder of YouthforChange, another youth organisation that tackles the issues of FGM and Child and Early Forced Marriage in 4 countries. While also working with the charity, Muna is also currently doing her postgraduate studies at King's College London, and hopes to be a nurse one day, in order to support survivors of gender based violence.

Najwa Zebian

Author & Educator

Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese Canadian educator based in London, Ontario, Canada. Her passion for creative expression was evident from a young age as she delved into Arabic poetry and novels. She arrived to Canada at sixteen years of age and pursued higher education. In 2011, she became a teacher and is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Educational Leadership as she teaches high school students.

Rachel Arthur

Fashion, Business and Technology Journalist

Rachel Arthur is an award-winning business journalist specialising in fashion and technology and contributing to titles including Forbes, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Business of Fashion. She is also the founder of tech-focused news site FashionandMash.com and the vision behind the global #FashMash community. An expert in all things digital, she otherwise acts as a strategic brand consultant within the fashion and luxury space, future-proofing businesses by bringing them first-to-market insights and bespoke solutions surrounding the evolving retail, technology and communications landscape. She regularly speaks on such subjects at conferences around the world, including SXSW, CES, Web Summit and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and serves as a mentor on various start-up accelerator programmes in London. Rachel was awarded trade/B2B fashion journalist of the year by Fashion Monitor in 2015.

Ruba Salih

Reader in Gender Studies

Ruba was born from Palestinian parents who became refugees after the creation of the state of Israel. Her family scattered all over the world and were never allowed to return, forever cut off from their homes. As a young woman, it was natural for her to develop an academic passion for the study of people suffering from injustices. After a degree in Political Sciences, Ruba achieved a PhD in Social Anthropology and is today a Reader in Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Ruba is a trustee of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and today her research focuses mainly on refugees as they have become mirrors of the predicament of humanity in the 21st century. She strongly believes that refugees are the critical consciousness of the project of humanity, questioning the notion of a shared human condition.

Sangita Mehra

Spread a Smile India Founder

Sangita Mehra gave up her successful business as a fashion designer to dedicate all her time to ‘Spread A Smile – India’. An initiative of Mehrasons Jewellers Charitable Trust. Sangita co-founded the initiative in 2005, with her son, Aashray, as a vehicle to help the children living and begging in the streets of New Delhi. Lacking any mentorship, these children are propelled into the worlds of thievery, drugs and violence, which Sangita aims to rectify by introducing a much-needed maternal love into their lives. At Spread a Smile – India, she creates the environment of an extended family to motivate the children find purpose in their lives. Sangita also aims to empower the children with their rights against abuse and holds workshops to equip them for a healthy and secure future. She is in the process of setting up a vocational centre aimed at helping women and children to pursue careers, breaking out of the poverty cycle.

Toby Walker

Trans Journalist and LGBTI Liberation Officer

Toby Walker is a trans journalist and LGBTI+ Liberation Officer for Westminster University, where he is in his final year of study. He is particularly interested in intersectionality in news and the politics of who sees what.