Theme: Breaking Boundaries

TEDxLakesideSchool is a student-organized event featuring student, alumni, and faculty speakers from Lakeside School. This year, with the theme of "Breaking Boundaries," we aim to celebrate connection, innovation, exploration, and positive change. Whether it be bridging the political divide or advancing frontiers in science, our event showcases leaders in the community who have thought outside of the box, followed their passions, and dared to be different.

Lakeside School
14050 1st Ave NE
Seattle, Washington, 98125
United States

Briana Abrahms

Dr. Briana Abrahms is a wildlife ecologist with broad interests in spatial and behavioral ecology, global change biology, and conservation. She is currently a Postdoctoral and Presidential Management Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Her research focuses on studying the effects of environmental variability and change on large vertebrate populations, particularly through the lens of large-scale animal movements in both terrestrial and marine systems.

Briana Abrahsm

Dr. Briana Abrahms is a wildlife ecologist with broad interests in spatial and behavioral ecology, global change biology, and conservation. She is currently a Postdoctoral and Presidential Management Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Her research focuses on studying the effects of environmental variability and change on large vertebrate populations, particularly through the lens of large-scale animal movements in both terrestrial and marine systems.

Edward Wenger

Dr. Edward Wenger directs the IDM global health research program, which includes analyses related to malaria, HIV, TB, pneumonia, enteric diseases, and emergent pathogens. Before joining the disease-modeling program in 2011, Dr. Wenger managed the development, validation, and release of reconstruction and simulation algorithms for the heavy-ion project of the CMS experiment at CERN. He supervised the processing and distribution of a petabyte of data from the first heavy-ion collision run, and directed the planning and execution of the first silicon-based analyses. Dr. Wenger graduated from Dartmouth College and received his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT.

Olivia Wong

Olivia Wong is that short Asian Lakeside sophomore with shorter hair who rushes around campus in cat/pun/cat pun T-shirts and an overlarge Halloween-trench-coat-turned-signature-outfit. She loves knives, tangents, primitive nature skills (think friction fire), creation, science and rationality, knowledge, and fidgeting with anything. Because of this random unique taste for the somewhat unconventional and, most consequentially, a lack of taste for the conventionally feminine, she has a story to share about her adventuring through norms, misgendering, and identity that led to a jarring conclusion whose insight flipped her perspective on gender and her view of herself.

Rachel Sottile

Rachel serves as the President & CEO of the Center for Children & Youth Justice (CCYJ), leading communities, our state, and the nation in empowering children and youth, stabilizing families, and strengthening communities through meaningful and lasting justice reform. She is relentlessly committed to developing innovative and creative solutions that bring forth a new future for children, youth, and families for generations to come. With over twenty years of executive leadership experience in the non-profit sector and state government, she catalyzes stakeholders, partners, and the voices of those impacted by injustice and inequity to discover what's possible and create real and lasting change. Over the last ten years, Rachel’s work centered on advocacy, education, and systems reform, most recently as Senior Vice President of the Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI), a national criminal justice non-profit advocating for safe, fair, and effective juvenile and adult pretrial practices. Prior to PJI, Rachel served as the Executive Director of YES Institute in Miami, Florida whose mission is to prevent suicide through communication and education on gender and orientation. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University and has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. Rachel is a graduate of Lakeside School’s Class of 1990. She was the recipient of the National Association of Social Workers "2014 Citizen of the Year" Award for Miami-Dade County, and currently serves on the Washington State Commission for Children in Foster Care.