Theme: A Step Further

TEDxCU connects two exceptional communities, the University of Colorado, a world-class institution serving over 30,000 students, and the city of Boulder, a vibrant and diverse community of artists, scientists, creative thinkers, engineers, and more… Organized by CU students and alumni, TEDxCU provides a professional and thought-provoking stage for our speakers to deliver their “Idea worth sharing” and spark intellectual collisions between the two communities.
This year's theme is A Step Further: our speakers will be focusing on topics that are outside the norm, transcending common thinking, and looking towards brighter and more intellectual futures. They want to spread their ideas not just for the purpose of education, but for the purpose of action. Attending this event solidifies your place in this movement, and will make you not only a smarter thinker, but a better thinker.
This is the third event for TEDxCU, and the event has grown bigger and bigger with each passing year. We anticipate that this will be our biggest and best event to date, and we hope that you will be a part of it! Join us on April 11th for an event that you will not soon forget!

Folsom Field Club Level
2400 Colorado Avenue
Boulder, Colorado
United States

Batya Greenwald

Batya Greenwald is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher with more than 15 years of experience teaching elementary school and kindergarten. She is a lead faculty member for the PassageWorks Institute, a nonprofit organization which teaches educators to integrate social, emotional and academic learning, mindfulness, and cultural responsiveness (passageworks.org). Batya also facilitates courses for Girls Leadership Institute, teaching girls and their parents how express who they are and what they believe, and empowering them to create change in their world (girlsleadership.org).

Benjamin Tarasewicz

Since age 17, Benjamin has been regularly giving lectures about living with autism; he speaks at conferences, at universities and colleges, at middle-schools and high-schools, and at community venues. He has been featured in various news articles and on TV, has spoken for Talented and Gifted conferences and Autism symposia, and was a keynote speaker at the 2014 national conference of the US Autism & Asperger Association. Benjamin loves performing in choir and musical theater productions, and he is passionate about the great outdoors. He also enjoys creative writing, and collaborates with his mother in posting to “Benjamin Breaking Barriers: Autism Blog.”

Elizabeth Boese

Elizabeth Boese is a teacher of computer science, motivation, travel, and business. She is the author of three books, a serial entrepreneur, and goal achiever who has traveled around the world to over 70 countries across every continent and races her mountain bike for 24 hours. She is passionate about helping people succeed in all areas of life!

Mariam Shareefy

Mariam Shareefy is an Afghan rock climber, social entrepreneur and a women rights activist who actively promotes the rights of women to get an education and play sports specifically rock climbing. She has worked in several NGO’s empowering women and children in Afghanistan. Mariam founded AERCS (Afghanistan's Entrepreneurship and Rock Climbing School) a non-profit using rock climbing as a tool to develop young entrepreneurs in Afghanistan.

Michael Wigge

Award-winning reporter Michael Wigge has specialized on incredible challenge stories, e.g. ‘How to Travel the World for FREE’, ‘How to Barter for Paradise’ (He turned an apple into a Hawaiian dream House just by bartering for bigger and better things) and ‘How to Travel 2000 Miles on a Razor Scooter in 80 Days’. He recently shared his amazing success stories on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Katy Perry and also on the Today Show.

Peter Genuardi

Peter Genuardi is a digital advertiser based in Boulder, Colorado.

Ryan McGranaghan

Ryan is a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder who uses elements of space physics and aerospace engineering to study the weather in space.

Zack Kanter

Zack Kanter is an entrepreneur, futurist, and writer. As the founder of several startups, Zack became fascinated with the accelerating pace of innovation - and the reactions that we have to the changing world around us. He writes and speaks about a wide variety of topics, from relationships and love to business and predicting the future. You can find his blog at zackkanter.com or on Twitter @ZackKanter.