Theme: Values + Instincts

TEDxYouth@MileHigh showcases brilliant thinkers and accomplished doers as a means to accelebrate innovation and social impact.

Ellie Caulkins Opera House
1000 14th Street
Denver, Colorado, 80204
United States

Loren Cobb

Loren Cobb is an applied mathematician and statistician who specializes in dynamic spatial models of general social processes, including epidemics, public health emergencies, refugee problems, population flows, economic collapse, ethnic cleansing, governmental dysfunction, and civil wars. Loren has written numerous simulation models of societies in extreme distress; these models have been used for the past 16 years in international civil-military-police exercises in complex humanitarian emergencies, disaster relief operations, United Nations peacekeeping operations, and refugee resettlement issues. He has taught at the graduate level in departments of mathematics, statistics, epidemiology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and computer science. He has facilitated more than 50 high-level exercises in national strategy formation in eight nations of Latin America, and has taught international negotiation and crisis management for the Organization of American States. He is the director of the CU-Denver Statistical Consulting Service, the director of the CU-Denver Statistical Consulting Service, and an associate research professor at the CU-Denver mathematics department. Loren holds a doctorate in mathematical sociology from Cornell University.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is an aviatrix and on-air personality at 9NEWS Colorado. Flying is her passion and she is currently training and planning for a flight around the world in a single engine aircraft. Amelia recently recreated Amelia Earhart’s transcontinental flight from Oakland, CA to Miami, FL as a completion of her instrument training hours. Amelia recently launched the Fly with Amelia Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free aviation-based educational curriculum to grades K-12 and a scholarship to fund flight training for the next generation of female pilots. Amelia also works with many charity groups on special projects and events, some of which include Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, Denver Active 20/30, and The Morgan Adams Foundation.

Ryan Ford

Now known internationally as a top parkour athlete and coach, Ryan started training parkour in 2004. Since then, he has performed around the world for organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, Cisco, Nokia, HP, BET, and K-Swiss. Additionally, Ryan has been featured by the New Yorker, TIME, and ESPN. In 2006, he established the western hemisphere’s first formal parkour classes. Recently, Ryan has turned his gym, APEX Movement, into one of the world’s leading parkour gyms, with four locations, an elite pro team, and a leading coaching certification. Ryan also has a renowned parkour training video series on YouTube called Demon Drills, which has over 2 million views and 14,000 subscribers. Thanks to his work on YouTube, he was invited into YouTube’s prestigious Next Trainer program and soon thereafter, joined the prominent FitFluential group as a fitness ambassador. Ryan is from Golden and graduated in 2009 from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Emma Hutchinson

Emma is an environmental activist, musician, world traveler, and optimist. She is a senior at Fairview High School in Boulder, and has also lived in Australia and Brazil. Emma is very interested in how environmental issues and economics overlap, and hopes to be a liaison between science and policy in the future. Starting this fall, she plans to study Biology and Environmental Science at Stanford University. She lives in Boulder with her parents, sister Laura, and three pets.

Easton LaChappelle

Lighthouse Writers and Ballet Nouveau Colorado

DJ CaveM

Ietef Hotep Vita aka “DJ CaveM” of the hip-hop group Moetavation is an all-around VEGAN “B-Boy” utilizing his gifts to serve as an: “O-G”-organic gardener, MC, educator, graffiti guru, breakdancer, world traveler, and award-winning community arts activist. He is a Denver native, hailing from the historic 5 points area and has been a long time community activist. In addition to the entertainment realm, Ietef has always been heavily involved in education. He has taught various after school programs focused on Hip Hop culture with Swallow Hill Music School and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater. He is the founder of the Brown Suga Youth Fest, an annual event that brings together holistic healers, educators, artists and the youth for presentations, discussion and networking. He is an educator for the African American Studies college preparatory course for Metro State College at Thomas Jefferson High School for the spring 2010 semester. He is also an Eco-Cultivator for the local organization Blue and Yellow Logic whose focus is diversifying the “green” movement. In this position he introduced gardening, recycling, composting and other environmental lessons to 20 high-risk young adults during the 2009 growing season. Ietef is an organic gardener with the East Side Growers Collective and is working as the Site Manager and Community Coordinator for the Denver Metro Area for Urban Farming. Urban Farming is an organization based out of Detroit, Michigan focused on building community gardens all over the country. He is securing new community garden sites in food deserts across the city in which he will engage the community; teaching them how to grow food, maintain the land, build compost, and harvest.

Eric Larsen

Polar adventurer, expedition guide, dog musher and educator, Eric Larsen has spent the past 15 years of his life traveling in some of the most remote and wild places left on earth. In 2006, Eric and Lonnie Dupre completed the first ever summer expedition to the North Pole. The duo pulled and paddled canoes across 550 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean. Eric successfully led his first expedition to the South Pole in 2008. In November 2009, Eric returned to Antarctica for the first leg of his world record Save the Poles expedition. This time he completed a 750-mile ski traverse to the geographic South arriving on January 2, 2010. Two months later he was dropped off at northern Ellesmere Island for a winter-style North Pole Journey. The international team reached the North Pole 51 days later on Earth Day - April 22, 2010. He completed the Save the Poles expedition by reaching the summit of Mt. Everest on October 15th, 2010 becoming the first person in history to reach the world’s three ‘poles’ within a year. Eric’s other expeditions include dog sledding in the Canadian Arctic, training trips to Hudson Bay and countless dog sled races (including the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon). He has summited Mt. McKinley, ridden his bike across the United States, been a backcountry ranger in Alaska and a white water canoe guide in Colorado. Eric has dedicated his adult life to sharing his love for the outdoor world with others. As an educator, Eric strives to connect people to places and issues. In recognition of those efforts, Eric was elected as one of Outside Magazine’s Eco All Stars in 2008. Eric travels extensively giving motivational and educational lectures to schools, universities, non profit organizations and corporate groups. He is also finishing the documentary COLDER about the Save the Poles expedition. Eric lives Boulder, Colorado with his partner Maria Hennessey and their baby boy, Merritt.

Swathi Kompella

Swathi Kompella is a 12 year-old, 7th grade honors student at Campus Middle School, Greenwood Village. Swathi lived in Omaha, Neb., before moving to Colorado with her family in 2008. Swathi enjoys playing violin and performing classical Indian dance and has performed at cultural events including Colorado Dragon Boat Festival in Denver. Swathi is interested in pursuing an advanced science degree and career, with a primary interest in medicine and related fields. Swathi represented Campus Middle School in robotics competitions and her team won awards in school district-wide and statewide competitions.

Jonathon Stalls

Jonathon Stalls is an enthusiast for equality, social entrepreneurship, and people-powered transit. He is founder and lead itinerant at Walk2Connect where he builds and promotes long-distance walking program for individuals, groups and neighborhoods. In 2010, Jonathon completed an 8 1/2 month, 3,030 mile walk across the United States, generating half a million dollars in loans to entrepreneurs across the world through Kiva.org. He recently finished walking the 490-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrim path across northern Spain. He holds a bachelor’s degree in design and entrepreneurship from Metro State University in Colorado. He resides in the Park Hill neighborhood of East Denver.