Theme: Dare to Bend

TEDxYouth@WHRHS is Watchung Hills' premier self-organized conference where students, teachers, and professionals take the stage to speak about topics they are passionate about. These events bring people in the community together in an intimate yet lively setting to share a TED experience and learn about new ideas worth spreading. The talks are uploaded to the official TED YouTube page where our voices are shared around the globe.

Dare to Bend is the fifth annual TEDx event at WHRHS.

Watchung Hills Regional High School
108 Stirling Road
Warren, New Jersey, 07059
United States

Abigail Shanahan

Student

Abigail Shanahan is a senior at Watchung Hills. She is the President of the All School Council and captain of the Track and Field Throwing team. Next year, she plans to go to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands to study International & European Law, which motivated her TEDx talk. She speaks about “Alternate Routes After High School,” which she hopes will empower students “to dare to bend” the traditional college experience. By using her college journey as a metaphor, she wishes to enlighten students about non-traditional post-high school options. She will demonstrate the importance of considering multiple options and the benefits of avoiding student debt.

Adithi Yellamelli

Emcee

Adithi Yellamelli is a rising sophomore at Watchung Hills Regional High School. She is a member of Watchung Hills Field Hockey team and pursues her interest in public speaking through clubs such as Speech and Debate and Model UN. Her interest in public speaking first sparked during her middle school’s TED Talks course and since then she has aspired to not only be a part of the TEDx committee at her high school, but to also present a talk to her classmates and community.

Arjun Singh

Student

Arjun Singh is interested in the intersection of computers and biology. Additionally, he examines modern culture and how it tries to adapt to the changes in technology. Arjun’s talk, “The Surface Area of Serendipity”, discusses a lifestyle concept that describes one’s ability to maximize the likelihood of encountering opportunities by chance. Engaging with other people, groups, events, and organizations will increase the chance that one finds a successful opportunity. With the COVID pandemic requiring people worldwide to quarantine, the internet is becoming ever more important in allowing individuals to maximize their Surface Area of Serendipity. Arjun’s talk will focus on the logic behind this concept and its real world applications. He hopes his audience understands that often chance plays a role in achieving success.

Arshia Agrawal

Student

Arshia Agrawal is currently a junior at WHRHS. She has a passion for music and community service. She loves hosting performances in her local community, performing with the Tri-M Music Honor Society. She also enjoys serving as a member of FEMA’s Regional Youth Preparedness Council, where she helps individuals and families prepare for emergencies including disasters. In addition, Arisha loves publishing articles especially looking at the relationship between self-esteem and mental health. In her Tedx Talk, "Refining Beauty Standards," Arshia decided to focus on a topic she feels passionate about: body image. She critiques beauty standards and how they can lead to low self-esteem. As someone who struggled with body image in the past, she wants to help others who may be struggling with a similar issue. She is very grateful for the opportunity to use her voice to help uplift others through the Tedx platform.

Jayanth Mammen

Student

Jayanth Mammen talks about the beauty of the science of emotion, and how we can change the way we interact using recent scientific understanding. Having entered high school seeking to expand his social impact, he found an early passion for behavioral sciences and striving to discern the ramifications of human decisions, in a larger social scope. However, alongside analyzing the clinical and cognitive grounding for these various psychological phenomena, he seeks to leverage his research with various academic institutions for pragmatic impact and real world application. To that end, in his TEDx talk, he hoped to educate his audience on a novel understanding of emotion and how the need to accept social diversity extends to the diversity of emotional expression. Jayanth discusses the Theory of Constructed Emotion, and how scientists proved this understanding of how emotions are built, reframing their understanding of human emotions.

Mariam Contractor

Student

Mariam Contractor spent two years at Watchung Hills before moving to Louisville, Kentucky where she is now a junior. She is very interested in many subjects including philosophy, social culture, biology and computer science. Her hobbies include music and film, both topics she spoke about at last year’s TEDx event, when she discussed the impact of a score on a film’s character. In her free time, she enjoys playing with her two kittens. Her talk this year is on: “Bending the Unspoken Rules of Leadership”.

Maylin Zhu

Student

Maylin Zhu is a 17-year-old Senior at Watchung Hills. In her free time, she enjoys learning about mental health, making music, playing tennis, and reading. Maylin will be attending Cornell University in the fall of 2021. In her talk, “Finding Balance in a World Saturated with Screens,” Maylin accepts that technology has become a crucial tool for many aspects of our lives, but also argues that it is changing the way we think and behave- not always for the better. Her goal is to motivate people to reflect on how technology has impacted their own lives so they can begin to use it not out of habit, but with intention. Through this reflection, people can begin to rediscover their identities, which Maylin believes may have been drowned out by the light of our phone screens.

Roy Bumiller

Teacher

Roy Bumiller has been teaching at WHRHS for over ten years. He is originally from Morristown and currently lives with his spouse and three children in western NJ. Before coming to work at Watchung Hills, he taught English literature and writing in another high school and also in Japan for six years. He pursued a career teaching English after he found a passion for reading and social justice early in life. His love for the outdoors came from his love of books. He enjoys hiking, camping and he used to be an avid snowboarder, but now spends his free time reading, tying fishing flies, and exploring NJ and NY waters for trout, which inspired his talk, "Follow the Bend."

Ryan Rana

Student

Ryan Rana is a filmmaker and writer in New Jersey who makes movies for his YouTube channel. Ryan's challenge is to create content that truly embraces his resources, but more importantly his limitations. All of his work is produced, written, filmed and edited by Rana. In his talk, "Embrace your Limitations," he shares his making movies story. Even if you are not a budding filmmaker, this talk is not only addressing artists or even really about making films: it's about accepting constraints and making restrictions part of your work.

Sarai Gonzalez

Student

Sarai Gonzalez is a sophomore at WHRHS. She is a professional actress, and has starred in a viral music video called “Soy Yo.” The video has amassed over 100 million views, and spreads a message of confidence and self-love. Following the success of her video, Sarai was able to publish the “Sarai” book series with Scholastic. She is also the president of the American Sign Language Club, teaching sign and explaining deaf culture. Having once been a witness to her relative’s manic episode, Sarai hopes to use her talk, “Mental Illness: Do You Understand?” to talk about the importance of mental health. She shares her realization of how little she once knew about bipolar disorder. Sarai wants the audience to understand how important rich and varied resources are to addressing mental imbalance and how knowledge of these resources can positively impact those families who have a loved one suffering from mental health concerns.

Shiv Goel

Student

Shiv Goel is a youth climate activist and public speaker with a specialization in sustainable fashion and environmental living. Shiv co-founded, ( now the Executive Director of the Green Consumer Project), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to promoting sustainable consumerism. He is also on the Youth Advisory Board for Harvard University’s Making Caring Common project, as well as the Director of Finance at OneUpAction International. Throughout the pandemic, Shiv channeled spontaneity as a source of happiness, and he tries to share it with others whenever possible. Tonight, he hopes to continue spreading spontaneity with his TEDx Talk, “Meditating in Thunderstorms.”