What happens when our perceptions suddenly don’t match reality? When the things we have taken for granted change in the blink of an eye? When hope becomes fear, and progress seems interrupted? Such Disruption can leave us defeated, or it can be embraced and turned into opportunity.
Join us as we explore life’s events from ten perspectives to see where they land on the spectrum of resilience and hopelessness at the TEDxMidAtlantic Salon: Disruption.
TEDxMidAtlantic Salon Details
Dates: Monday, March 6
Program Time: 5:30PM to 9:00PM
Location: Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Washington DC
Ticket Price: Free!
Salon Speakers
Richard Lui
Journalist
Richard Lui is an American journalist and news anchor for MSNBC and NBC News. He was formerly at CNN Worldwide. Lui’s enterprise reporting has focused on humanitarian issues including gender equality, human trafficking, and affordable housing. His charity work in the same spaces has led him to work with Plan International USA and he is an ambassador for the Epilepsy Foundation. Lui splits his time between New York City and San Francisco to help care for his father, Stephen, who was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago.
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In addition to his political and journalism work, Lui spent 15 years in business working in consulting, manufacturing, food and beverage,
and environmental industries. During the late 1990s, Lui worked with several new technology businesses in Northern California. Most
recently he cofounded the first bank-centric payment system for which he holds a patent. He also worked for firms including Citibank, and
Mercer Management Consulting in New York.
Lui has spent 25 years in community service in Africa, Asia, and the United States, volunteering for organizations like the United States
Capitol Historical Society, the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, and APIA Vote.
Lui attended UC Berkeley majoring in the political economy of industrial society, later graduating with a BA in rhetoric. He received his MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and is enrolled at Stanford University in its program in International Security.
Desirée Venn Frederic
Artist and Activist
Desirée Venn Frederic is a Sierra Leonean born immigrant, a writer and installation artist. As the founder of Nomad Yard Collectiv, a globally minded vintage shop in Washington, D.C., Venn Frederic creates a playground for those who love culture, history and rare antiques steeped in stories. She uses her work to negotiate multiple strata of marginalization being both undocumented and an aboriginal indigenous woman. She is a community organizer, and founding member of Artist Union DC, with a keen interest in cultural studies and artistic expression.
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Desirée is particularly interested in the ways in which fashion, visual culture and critical theory inform, shape and encourage discourses surrounding the socioeconomic, political and cultural. Venn Frederic has shared her creative interests as an exhibiting artist with the Smithsonian Asian American Pacific Center drawing parallels of her own personal immigration detention in 2013 to the criminalization of human existence throughout history. She holds a certificate in Community Advocacy and is fluent in French and Krio. She exists via the internet sphere on all social platforms, is a mentor to 2 college aged creative entrepreneurs and loves kimonos.
Adnan Virk
ESPN Sportscaster
Adnan Virk is a Canadian sportscaster, currently working for ESPN. He is the fifth Canadian and first Muslim sports anchor to be hired by ESPN. At ESPN, Virk is one of the main anchors for Baseball Tonight, and College Football Final. Virk has also hosted SportsCenter, Outside the Lines and Mike&Mike for ESPN radio. Virk also was the primary fill-in for Keith Olbermann on his ESPN show. Virk also hosts his own movie podcast Cinephile on ESPN. Virk was born in Toronto and studied radio and television arts at Ryerson University.
Dahlia Aguilar
Educator
Dahlia Aguilar is the founding principal of Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter School – the first and only school in the District focusing on Education for Sustainability –and brings 20 years of school leadership and instructional experience in bilingual elementary and high school education to her role. She has worked for over ten years to strengthen the practice of teachers and leaders in public and public charter schools with multicultural and multilingual student bodies.
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Dahlia’s teaching career began 18 years ago in early child development and early elementary programs – she taught pre-kindergarten and kindergarten in both bilingual immersion and English as a second language programs in District of Columbia public schools. More recently, Dahlia served as the Director of Teaching and Learning for the National Council of La Raza, where, among other things, she designed professional development for educators serving Latino student populations nationally. Dahlia is an alumna of Teach for America and a former New Leaders for New Schools Fellow/Principal Resident. She earned her B.A. in English from Georgetown University, her M.A. in secondary education from Texas A&M University and her M.S. in educational leadership from Trinity University. Dahlia is Mexican-American and fluent in Spanish. Dahlia lives in Washington, D.C., is a member of Mundo Verde’s founding board, and has a child who is in this year’s third grade class.
Jay Newton-Small
MemoryWell
Jay Newton-Small is cofounder of MemoryWell, a startup of journalists who tell the life stories of those living with Alzheimer’s and dementia in order to improve their care. Previously, Newton-Small was Washington correspondent for TIME Magazine, where she remains a contributor. At TIME she covered politics as well as stories on five continents from conflicts in the Middle East to the earthquake in Haiti and the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. She has written more than half a dozen TIME cover stories and interviewed numerous heads of state, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
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She authored the 2016 best selling book, Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works.
Before TIME, Newton-Small was a reporter for Bloomberg News, where she covered the White House and politics.
Newton-Small received an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and undergraduate degrees in International Relations and Art History from Tufts University. She is a 2017 Halcyon Incubator fellow, a 2016-2017 New America fellow and a 2015 Harvard Institute of Politics fellow. She is the 2016 winner of the prestigious Dirksen Award for congressional reporting and the 2016 Deadline Club award for community service reporting.
Dushaw Hockett
The SPACEs Project
Dushaw Hockett is the founder and Executive Director of Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity (SPACEs), a Washington, DC-based leadership development and community building organization dedicated to bridging the gap between what people imagine and what they achieve. He’s the former Director of Special Initiatives for the Center for Community Change (CCC), a 40-plus year old national social justice organization founded in the memory of the late Robert F. Kennedy.
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Dushaw has written several publications focused on citizen engagement and conflict transformation.Dushaw’s current work includes Allies for Inclusion, a multi-year project with the National Park Service (NPS). The project equips park service employees with the skills needed to create environments that support inclusion and belonging. A native New Yorker who now resides in Maryland, Dushaw has over 20 years of experience in community building and organizational development.
Irene A. Magafan
Storyteller and Activist
Irene A. Magafan is a Emmy Award winning natural history documentary filmmaker, multimedia video producer, a freelance actor and voiceover artist and a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Her current film, ‘The Bonobo Connection’, narrated by Hollywood actor and activist, Ashley Judd, is a documentary about one of our closest living relatives; the bonobo. Irene’s passion is to work for animals rights, human rights and to be an environmental activist. Inspiring people through the powerful medium of storytelling and ultimately film is where her path takes her.
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The film was an official selection at the 2012 Int’l Wildlife Film Festival in Montana and will screen at the 2014 G2 Green Earth Film Festival in Venice, CA this fall. Irene has also won 9 Television Internet & Video Association Peer Awards for her work on ‘The Bonobo Connection’. Irene worked as a project specialist at RHED Pixel. She has interned at National Geographic Television and volunteers for the Bonobo Conservation Initiative, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC. Irene is a member of Women in Film & Video, and SAG-AFTRA. Irene has worked on various films such as Hannibal, Traffic, The Wedding Crashers, Evan Almighty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, HBO’s The Sopranos and The Wire, HBO pilot produced by Sarah Jessica Parker called Washingtonienne, and the Angelina Jolie film, Salt.
Irene holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film & Electronic Media from American University’s School of Communication. In graduate school Irene directed and co-produced a documentary entitled ‘Hands on the Future’ which won first place at the DC Environmental Film Festival. In addition Irene was part of a team of students who won a National Emmy Award for ‘Eco Views: The Chesapeake Bay’, a program that was filmed and produced for Maryland Public Television.
Nat Kendall-Taylor
FrameWorks Institute
Nat Kendall-Taylor is Chief Executive Officer at the FrameWorks Institute. Nat oversees the organization’s pioneering, research-based approach to strategic communications, which uses methods from the social and behavioral sciences to measure how people understand complex socio-political issues and tests ways to reframe them to drive social change. As CEO, he leads a multi-disciplinary team of social scientists and communications practitioners who investigate ways to apply innovative framing research methods to social issues and train nonprofit organizations to put the findings into practice.
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An expert in psychological anthropology and communications science, Nat publishes widely in the popular and professional press and lectures frequently in the United States and abroad. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Science Communication, Human Organization, Applied Communications Research, Child Abuse and Neglect, and the Annals of Anthropological Practice. He has presented at numerous conferences and organizations in the United States and around the world, ranging from Harvard University and the National Academy of Sciences to the Parenting Research Centre in Australia, the Science and Society Symposium in Canada, and Amnesty International in the United Kingdom. He is also a visiting professor at the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine and a fellow at the British-American Project.
Nat joined FrameWorks in 2008; since then, he has led work across the FrameWorks portfolio, with a special focus on issues related to early childhood development and mental health, criminal justice, and aging. He has also led the expansion of FrameWorks’ work outside the United States, working in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Kenya, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Prior to joining FrameWorks, Nat’s research focused on understanding the social and cultural factors that create health disparities and affect decision-making. He has conducted fieldwork on the Swahili coast of Kenya, where he studied pediatric epilepsy, traditional healing, and the impacts of chronic illness on family well-being, and in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, where he studied child marriage and higher education. He has also conducted ethnographic research on theories of motivation in “extreme” athletes. Nat holds a B.A. from Emory University and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Donald Stevenson
Youth Advocate
Donald Stevenson has worked to serve and uplift his community for over 10 years. He is the Co-founder of Sons of Life and Brand Ambassador for the DC or Nothing community initiatives. His service in the community humbly started with him serving as a Junior Roving Leader for The Department of Parks and Recreation (CPR) and quickly flourished into a life commitment to empower his community. He is certified in Positive Youth Development, suicide prevention; and a, Certified Life Skills Facilitator (A.R.I.S.E. & Points of Life Youth Leadership Institute) and Professional Community Gang Outreach/Intervention Specialist.
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Donald takes pride in assisting youth at the Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) with life skills, educational, conflict resolution and rehabilitation services. He has held countless workshops with DYRS youth to discuss mental health concerns, their emotional triggers and provide strategies they can implement to help establish and maintain safe and healthy living. Donald has received numerous accolades for his work in the community and with youth such as the Peacemaker Award and Dedicated Youth Development Specialist of the Year.
Amanda Gookin
Cellist
Amanda Gookin, praised for her “deep, rich tone and a lovely rubato” (SoundWordSite) and “exceptionally evocative form” (The Glass), is a chamber musician, soloist, and educator living in New York City. She is the co-founder of innovative PUBLIQuartet, quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Concert Artists Guild’s 2013 New Music/New Places Ensemble. She gives master classes on improvisation and chamber music throughout the U.S. and is a Teaching Artist in New York City public schools.
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Amanda is the Professor of Topics in Career Development at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College and has been sought after as a speaker on entrepreneurship by the Mannes School of Music.
Amanda is the Artistic Director of PUBLIQuartet’s composers program, PUBLIQ Access, commissioning new works by emerging composers significantly impacting the approach to writing for string quartet. Her latest initiative, the Forward Music Project, commissioned seven new works for solo cello by today’s most forward-thinking composers who encourage social change and empowerment for women and girls. The Forward Music Project will open the “Spring Revolution” festival at National Sawdust on March 1, 2017, the first day of National Women’s History Month.
