Love, Loss and the Quest to Live Happy
Jack Goodwin |
TEDxUCSD
• May 2019
Jack Goodwin first became involved in the TED community by co-founding TEDxUCSD in 2012. In their first-annual event, Jack led a team of 40 student volunteers, attracting 18 talented speakers and 500+ attendees. Now in its 7th year, the student led TEDxUCSD group has curated dozens of speeches which have reached thousands of viewers locally and millions online.
After graduating from UC San Diego as an Outstanding Senior Award finalist with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2014, Jack went on to become a staff researcher and then fully funded graduate student in the Stanford University Plasma Physics Laboratory. While a graduate student, Jack met and then fell in love with Mallory Smith, a recent undergraduate alumni of Stanford and featured character in his TED talk.
Choosing to forgo the remainder of his PhD, Jack graduated with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering in the fall of 2016, taking a job working on Military Satellite Communications at Los Angeles Air Force Base. This decision would permit him the time and freedom to support Mallory during the indefinite wait for her double lung transplant, as well as allow him to meet Mallory in her home town of Beverly Hills once she returned from her double lung transplant surgery. Tragically, they never got that far.