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).

Falk Laboratory School
4060 Allequippa Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15261
United States

Anar Virji

Field Producer, Al Jazeera English TV News

Anar Virji is a journalist with Al Jazeera English TV. Based in their Washington DC bureau, she has worked as a news field producer for the past six years. She’s covered the last 3 U.S. elections, President Donald Trump’s impeachment, climate change, the sovereignty of Native American nations and tribes, immigration, abortion access in the United States, and other current events. Anar has won multiple awards from the Native American Journalists Association, including best news story for a piece she produced on the Quapaw tribe’s cleanup of hazardous waste at the Tar Creek Superfund site in Oklahoma and best feature story for a piece on development around the Grand Canyon that threatens the Havasupai’s water resources. She is the daughter of immigrants and has lived and worked in Germany, the UK, Syria and Qatar. Anar enjoys kayaking, rowing, hiking, writing, reading and her volunteer work with the Visible Poetry Project.

Cameron Barnett

Visiting Demonstration Teacher, expertise in poetry and creative writing

Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher in Pittsburgh. A quasi-native of the city, he received his BA in English from Duquesne University in 2011, where he was the recipient of the O'Donnell Award for Excellence in Poetry. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was poetry editor for Hot Metal Bridge Literary Magazine and co-coordinator of Pitt’s Speakeasy Reading Series. He currently serves as an editor for Pittsburgh Poetry Journal. Cameron’s poetry explores the complexity of race and the body for a black man in today’s America. He is the recipient of the 2019 Emerging Artist Award for the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Awards, co-sponsored by The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments. He is the author of The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water, winner of the Autumn House Press 2017 Rising Writer Contest, and finalist for the 49th NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.

Robin Colucci

Author, Speaker, and Strategic Book Writing Coach

Robin Colucci helps world-class experts write world changing books. Whether professionals, top scientists, CEOs, astronauts, Nobel laureates, or non-profit founders, Robin’s clients have been published by “Big 5” and other top publishing houses and others have self-published. Many have won awards, received outstanding book reviews, and/or become bestsellers on Amazon, USA Today, and The New York Times bestsellers lists. Just before becoming a book writing coach, Robin was an acquisitions editor for an independent publishing house. Before that, she worked as journalist, reporting for a mid-sized metropolitan newspaper, and has researched and/or written freelance articles for The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, and Newsweek. She has a BA in Journalism from George Washington University and completed a 2-year program in Spiritual Psychology at University of Santa Monica.

Ted Anthony

Global Director of Digital Innovation, The Associated Press

Ted Anthony has been a storyteller for three decades. He has reported from more than 25 countries, from North Korea to Myanmar to Afghanistan to Iraq, and from 48 U.S. states (Hawaii and Alaska remain out of his grasp). He was attending Falk in 1979 when he and his parents became one of the first American families to live in Beijing after U.S.-China relations were established. The time in Asia made an impact: From 2001 to 2004, he was correspondent and news editor for the AP in Beijing, and from 2014 to 2018 he was the news cooperative’s Asia-Pacific news director, overseeing 200 journalists from Japan to India to New Zealand. Today, he splits his time between New York City and Hampton Township, where he lives with his wife, the writer Melissa Rayworth, and their two sons in the house where he grew up. He is the author of “Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song,” a 2007 cultural history, and is a graduate of Hampton High School and Penn State University.

Tereneh Idia

Eco-Designer: IdiaDega, Writer: Pittsburgh City Paper

Tereneh Idia is a designer and writer focused on issues of justice in environment, society, design, arts and culture. She founded IdiaDega a global eco-design collaboration of Kenyan Maasai and Oneida women artisans. They have shown their work in Pittsburgh, Copenhagen, Paris, New York City, Nairobi, Kenya and Goa, India. She has conducted workshops and talks at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Library, the Africa Energy Forum, The Frick Museum and the Yale-National University of Singapore. She is a 2019 Golden Quill awarded columnist for the Pittsburgh City Paper, her writing also appears in Pittsburgh PublicSource, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, AfroPunk.com, The North Star and TENDER a literary anthology & book of spells: evidence. Tereneh is Pittsburgh Style Week’s Designer of the Year 2019 for her work with Idia’Dega. She was 2018 Artisan Leader leader at the Nest Hermès Convening on American Craft in New York City.