Clemantine Wamariya is a human rights advocate, social entrepreneur and public speaker committed to inspiring others through the power of storytelling. Her personal accounts of childhood in Rwanda, displacement throughout war-torn countries and various refugee camps have encouraged myriads of people to persevere despite great odds. With no formal education before the age of 13, Wamariya went on to graduate from Yale University with a BA in Comparative Literature.
Wamariya was recognized for her dedication to improving the lives of others, especially the underserved. In 2011, President Obama appointed her, as the youngest member in history, to the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and she was reappointed in 2016. She continues to share her experiences of adversity and seized opportunities as a way to reframe the way her audiences think, whether it be about their own privilege or basic human rights -- and she strives to catalyze development personally, locally and globally. Though still a nomad, she is based out of San Francisco, where she is writing her first book, due in spring 2018.
We all have a story to tell. And in my work as curator of the TEDWomen conference, I’ve had the pleasure of providing a platform to some of the best stories and storytellers out there. Beyond their TED Talk, of course, many TEDWomen speakers are also accomplished authors — and if you liked them on the […]
Continue readingWhat do you say when you see your mother and father so many years after being separated from them during the massacre in Rwanda? Clemantine Wamariya, now a human rights advocate, has lived through this surreal experience.<
Continue readingThere’s a theme of Bridges that plays through this conference — and one of the things we sometimes need to do with bridges is burn them, to move forward with no option of going backward in time or space. In this session, hosted by documentary film aficionado Jess Search, we listen to hard truths about […]
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