Theme: FWD: Thinking

"The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious." — John Scully

TEDxPlano 2016 is dedicated to the ideas that drive vision and possibility. TEDxPlano is a half-day event that celebrates intellectual curiosity while inspiring and motivating the next great thinkers in North Texas. Now in its third year, TEDxPlano 2016 will take place at Courtyard Theater in historic downtown Plano, Texas. Join us as we explore FWD: Thinking.

Courtyard Theater
1509 H Ave
Plano, Texas, 75074
United States

Craig Janssen

Facility Strategist

Craig Janssen has been working with the owners and designers of the venues where we gather for the past 25 years. A sought-after facility strategist, Craig’s expertise is at the intersection of architecture and technology when it comes to group experiences. He has led over 1,000 projects in 12 countries as the Managing Director for Idibri – a team of technology designers, theatre consultants and acousticians. Craig is the 2016 president of InfoComm – the international Audio Visual association – and holds two patents, one in audio engineering and another in facility planning. Janssen has had a front-row seat to the way culture change has outpaced the design of the venues where people gather to connect with each other. This experience has honed deep insight into the changing expectations of users and how we can navigate an accelerating culture shift.

Diamond Wilson

Author

Diamond Wilson loves travel and adventure. She ate a worm-burger and chicken feet in South America, backpacked through Europe, rescued a friend from arrest in Mexico (the Federales were really very nice), had coffee with the French police, was kicked out of a train station in Italy for having feet on a chair, and spent a night on the beach in a thunderstorm in Spain. She has a favorite scarf that functions as a blanket, a swimsuit, a towel. She doesn’t leave the house without at least three electronic devices, a protein bar, and her passport – because you never know where life might take you. Diamond released her first novel, The Caves of Qumran, in 2013 and continues to write poetry and fiction. She speaks five languages, and oh, yeah, she free-style raps when around very close friends. Diamond enjoys playing basketball, hiking, floating the river, watching the sunrise at the beach, Latin dance, reading, writing, and making hand puppets in the light of projector screens.

Josh Hart

Radio Personality + Certified Mediator + Conflict Coach

Josh Hart serves as the president of Red Panda ADR (Alt Dispute Resolution), a conflict consultant company, located in Plano. Josh Hart has spent the last few years training, teaching and coaching workplace and generational conflict to different companies and organizations in Texas and Oklahoma. Among other learned skills, Josh is a nationally certified mediator and conflict coach. He has over 10 years of experience in managing conflict and diffusing workplace issues within large and small corporations, school districts and church communities. Josh received his Master’s degree in Dispute Resolution from the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Kimberly O'Neil, M.P.A., M.A., C.P.M.

Leadership Coach + Charitable Giving Expert

Kimberly O’Neil is an award-winning executive leadership and nonprofit expert. As the youngest African American woman to serve as a City Manager in the United States, she is now the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Giving Blueprint, a company with a three-point mission to impact social change through the development of strategic partnerships and growth plans within the nonprofit community. As a veteran senior government and nonprofit executive, she has used her voice to impact policy decisions while lobbying in New York City and on Capitol Hill. As a social entrepreneur, Kimberly recognizes the value startup nonprofit organizations provide to communities. In January 2015, she launched Cause Studio, an organization designed to reduce the number of failing startup nonprofit organizations in North Texas. In addition to being a sought-after thought leader, strategist and speaker, Kimberly is an Associate Political Science Professor at Collin College and an author.

Krithika Iyer

Social Entrepreneur + 2016 Global Teen Leader

Krithika Iyer is a junior at the IB World School at Plano East Senior High School. She is a social entrepreneur extremely passionate about women’s health and education. Her first project focused on a Bayesian decision system to reduce false positives in the interpretation of mammograms. She extended this project further and focused on analyzing cancer genes and mutations. For these research efforts, she won the 2nd Grand Award in Math and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN); special award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair; and was a Siemens Competition and Broadcom MASTERS semi-finalist. Additionally, Krithika was selected to attend the Wolfram Technology Innovation Camp. As an advocate for utilizing technology to help educate children around the globe, she founded her own non-profit, the SmartStart Initiative, to encourage parents to be natural educators for their child, as well as empower students to be proactive about their education.

Marquita Burke De Jesus

Dancer + Author + Activist

Marquita Burke De Jesus is described by friends as a lover of passionate justice, unbridled beauty, and unfiltered sarcasm. She breathed her first breath in sunny Los Angeles, California but spent most of her life in the stickiness of Houston, Texas, where she first fell in love with the art of dance. After several years of traveling extensively, performing and choreographing, she began to use dance to combat child sex trafficking in partnership with non-profit organizations in Asia and Africa. In 2012, she founded the Silence the Violence campaign and in 2014, Marquita published her first book, Radically Ordinary. Today Marquita continues to share her work in various conferences, professional gatherings and events locally and nationally. Each winter she hosts and directs iReach, an annual dance benefit concert which partners with the community to offer under-resourced girls educational and economic empowerment.

Melinda Marcus, M.F.A.

International Influence Speaker + Consultant + Coach

Melinda Marcus has rare expertise in The Science of Influence, which leverages proven principles in Persuasive Psychology, Body Language and Strategic Messaging. She consults, coaches and speaks internationally on how to ethically influence decisions before you lose a big opportunity. During her career, Melinda has been named one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Working Women in America” by Glamour magazine and “One of the Five Women to Watch in the Southwest” by ADWEEK magazine. Her work has earned more than 100 awards for excellence. Before starting her firm, she was the first female Creative Director at national branding agency The Richards Group. Melinda is a professional member of National Speakers Association. She earned her B.S. with Honors in Psychology from Northwestern University and her M.F.A. in Mass Communications from Southern Methodist University. Her original Psychology research is published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Ramy Mahmoud

Educator

Ramy Mahmoud is currently in his 11th year teaching at Williams High School in Plano ISD and was named PISD’s Teacher of the Year in 2013. He is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas, teaching “Curriculum and Instruction in Natural Sciences” to aspiring educators. Teaching both levels, Ramy sees a dangerous trend with his students and their ability to think critically. When they should be prepared for the world, many still await instructions and direction. Ramy’s passion in his classrooms is to always force his learners out of their bubble and show them how harmless, and incredibly fulfilling, it truly is!