Theme: Counter Intuitiveness

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

Art Share LA Theater
801 E. 4th Place
Los Angeles, California, 90013
United States

Earnest Sweat

Earnest advises tech-enabled service companies that are focused on solving problems in the financial services, real estate, and education industries. In addition, he helps these startups secure their product/market fit, raise capital, and grow their businesses.

Jeffrey Chen

Dr. Jeff Chen, MD/MBA, founded and is currently leading the new UCLA Cannabinoid Affinity Group, where he's recruited 40 interdisciplinary faculty members. We are currently working on building a world-class cannabis research center at UCLA. He's spoken on the topic of cannabis at venues like UCLA, the RAND Corporation, and Senator Feinstein's Office. He is an experienced public speaker and has taught public speaking courses at Cornell. Jeffrey has sung with various internationally recognized groups (choirs, acapella, etc), which brought him to performances at venues like Carnegie Hall and the Vatican. He has also performed in various rock bands, and had a brief stint as a singer/songwriter.

Kiel Berry

Kiel Berry is the Senior Vice President and Co-Head at Viacom Labs, an incubator for the future of fan experience and engagement. In this role, Berry is tasked with generating new ideas, businesses and opportunities that inspire creativity and innovation across the unit’s various verticals. Prior to joining Viacom, Berry was Executive Vice President of the Grammy-award winning rock band Linkin Park’s proprietary company, Machine Shop Entertainment, where he helped leverage Linkin Park’s global fandom and extend their brand into arenas such as tech and design. Berry also helped the band launch Machine Shop Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in early-to-growth stage companies including Lyft, Hyperloop One and Blue Bottle Coffee. He maintains an advisory role for the company. Before joining Machine Shop, Berry held roles at Creative Artist Agency and at JP Morgan in New York, London and South Africa.

Lisa Pegram

Lisa has built a career in analytics, she creates advanced statistical algorithms and manipulates data to explore themes. Lisa uses both Frequentist and Bayesian methods to analyze data queried from relational database management systems, to develop insight and implications. She is also a practicing consumer psychologist with 15 years of experience in: applied research, numerous data collection methods and various statistical software packages . She has provided consumer behavioral insight for clients like Target and Coleman.

Marianne LeFever

Marianne Lefever is an innovation strategist with nearly 10 years of experience in climate mitigation and sustainable city design. She founded Reshape Innovation, an innovation facilitation company that is on a mission to spread real change and innovation in organizations and actively contribute to a new world. Working in the innovation space on a daily basis, she experienced firsthand how big the gap is between where we want to be and what we’re doing to get there. Trying to close this gap, she searches for signs of unreasonable innovation and explores how she can use it in her work to help her clients change their perspective and act. Marianne has a background in architecture and renewable energy and is a strong visual thinker. She has experience working as a structural engineer, a Management Executive at a real estate developer specialized in sustainable city design, and she manages the Building & Sites team at a renewable energy consultancy agency. After living all over the globe, she landed in Toronto where she started Reshape Innovation. Reshape works out of Toronto with clients across Europe, the U.S., and Canda. Marianne uses powerful graphic tools to support the innovation processes she embarks on together with her clients.

Matthew May

Matthew E. May is an independent innovation strategist and speaker. He works closely (and often confidentially) with executives and their teams to help them not only define innovative new strategies, but also help them build the creative confidence and capability to deploy them. He specializes in innovative program design, facilitation, and training. Industry-agnostic, he works with and speak to companies of all types and sizes, all over the world. When my schedule permits, he coaches senior executives one-on-one. He comes from a strategy and design background, heavily influenced by the eight years he spent as a fully-retained advisor to Toyota. It was a life- and career-changing experience which enabled me to publish a 2006 bestselling book about their innovative methods (The Elegant Solution) and enter the global lecture circuit. He now speaks regularly on innovation, strategy, and design. He has also published five popular books, the latest being Winning the Brain Game: Fixing the 7 Fatal Flaws of Thinking, encapsulating a decade of fieldwork. He's written for The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Strategy+Business, Rotman Magazine, Fast Company, 99U, and INC.

Patricia Grabarek

Dr. Patricia Grabarek is a Behavioral Scientist at Infor. She has 7 years of experience applying her education in both internal and external consultant roles. Her interests and strengths include selection and assessment, people analytics, survey development, data analysis, competency modeling, leadership development and training, and performance management.

Reuben D’Silva

Reuben D'Silva is an educator from Las Vegas, Nevada. He was born in Mumbai, India and immigrated to the United States at the age of two. He received an associates degree from the Community College of Southern Nevada in 2006. He received his bachelor's degree in American History from UNLV in 2010. Reuben would go on to complete a master's degree in Global Affairs (Religion and Globalization focus) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and a second master's degree from Yale University in Comparative Religion and Politics in 2013. He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on a whole host of issues and topics ranging from history and politics to religion and philosophy. Currently Reuben is a history teacher at Rancho High School (his alma mater) in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is also a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in Nevada's First District. Reuben served in the U.S. Marines and was deployed to Iraq in 2007. While manning a turret gun during a resupply mission in Fallujah, Iraq Reuben was shot through the arm by a sniper. He spent one year at Balboa Navy Hospital recovering from his wounds. Reuben was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Navy Achievement Medal for his actions in Iraq.

Sasha Kapustina

Sasha was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. In 2007-2009 she worked for Leopolis, a film production company based in Moscow. She served as head of the legal department and as a producer on the production of several feature films involving major Russian talent. In 2010 she relocated to Los Angeles, and together with Masha Tishkova started the Goldfish Film Distribution Company, to bring Russian films to Israel. In 2010-2014, Sasha wrote and produced several short films that screened at festivals internationally. Since 2012 she has been working on the "I Clown You" project that has started as a documentary but has grown into an awareness campaign. Sasha talks about benefits and values of the clown-mindset and spreads the word of humanity that clowns bring to the world. Sasha holds a law degree from the State University Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia) and an MFA in Film Producing from the New York Film Academy (Los Angeles). She is a Fulbright Alumna.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is best known as having been the first and only VP, Marketing for MyFitnessPal, now part of Under Armour Connected Fitness. Over 120 million people worldwide use Under Armour Connected Fitness apps to get an around-the-clock view of their food and fitness activities. In Tara’s time on the job, MyFitnessPal grew from 45 million to 100 million users, drove a 25 percent increase in user engagement, and went from raising an $18 million Series A to the acquisition by Under Armour for $475 million. Tara’s teams covered customer acquisition/growth, engagement/loyalty, communications, media relations, content marketing, social media and user insights programs across the digital health and fitness brands MyFitnessPal, MapMyFitness, Endomondo, and UnderArmour.com. Tara is now the Founder and CEO of Transformational Consumer Insights, Inc., a research and management consulting firm. TCI helps brands reach and engage Transformational Consumers: a hyper-growth segment of people who view life as a series of campaigns to change their behavior for the healthier, wealthier and wiser. Tara's exuberant belief that business can be a powerful, transformational force for humanity and her team’s deep expertise in design thinking, neuropsychology, behavioral science, content marketing, brand and digital strategy powers TCI’s approach and offerings. Tara has developed and executed integrated marketing, content, PR and social media strategies that achieved the traffic, brand, PR, niche marketing, business development and revenue objectives of behavior-focused digital companies like HGTV, Eventbrite, ING Direct, Chegg, Lookout Mobile Security, ModCloth, and real estate search engine Trulia.com Tara holds a Master's degree in Psychology and a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Tara is the Board President of City Slicker Farms, a non-profit community farming and food security organization in West Oakland.

Tom Earl

Tom Earl is the Founder and CEO of T.H.E. Celebration Academy - an online learning platform which connects students with their purpose, leadership and gifts. He provides strategic planning, executive coaching, training, and consulting for individuals and organizations across education, non-profit and private enterprise. Tom's prolific music and spoken word career has afforded him the opportunity to perform both nationally and internationally. He facilitates leadership training to thousands of people every week through his weekly podcast and video series, T.H.E. Celebration. Tom has been featured by Buzzfeed, Refinery29, Huffington Post and Now This.