Excitement is building as TEDxSantaCruz reveals the lineup of speakers set to take the stage on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at the Crocker Theater on the Cabrillo College campus. With a focus on this year’s theme, RISING TOGETHER, speakers from across Santa Cruz County will deliver talks aimed at celebrating collective strength and offering fresh ideas and solutions for building resilience within the local and global community. The event will feature talks in English, with simultaneous Spanish translation available.
Consuelo Alba, one of the event’s primary producers and co-founder and executive director of the Watsonville Film Festival, highlighted the theme’s emphasis on “an immense scale of collaboration” in tackling significant challenges such as poverty, racism, climate change, food insecurity, and divisiveness. “To address that deep question, Alba, along with co-producers Nada Miljkovic from the University of California Santa Cruz, and Elana Solon and Jenny Kurzweil from the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, were part of a 10-person selection committee tasked with choosing this year’s speakers,” said Alba.
During the open application period, TEDxSantaCruz received over 130 proposals from local community members. From these applications, 30 finalists were selected.
As Miljkovic shared on behalf of the selection committee, “We were beyond impressed by the overall quality of the applications, the innovative thinking in our community, both in terms of building social movements and developing technology. The applications we received were by and large a showcase of how people in this community are powerful forces for good.”
The selection committee rigorously evaluated this year’s speakers based on the quality of their content, their ability to shift conversations, their relevance to local and global issues, and their potential to inspire calls to action.
The lineup for the 2024 TEDxSantaCruz event includes:
● Alex Chavez-Guerrero, Jacob Martinez & Martin Vargas Vega — Scalable Impact through Social
Capital
● Antonella De La Tore Marcenaro — Belonging and Nature: Connecting To Ourselves Through
Land
● César Rojas Bravo — Shared Humanity, Shared Night Sky
● Daisy Nuñez – Rising Through Grief Together: A Community and Educator Support Perspective
● Effron “Donnie” Veal — Transcending Incarceration Through Education
● Esabella Bonner — Values As Verbs: Walking the Walk
● Galina Hale — Funding Climate Solutions
● Juliano Calil — Immersive Narratives for Climate Awareness
● Kara Meyberg Guzman — Local News: Telling Our Story Through the Lens of Listening
● Kat Armstrong & Jorge Guillen — Someone Like Me: Drag Matters
● Kyra Bobinet — Iteration: The Neuroscience of Change
● Luna HighJohn-Bey — Following A Hunch: History, Community, & Belonging
● Madeline Aliah — Beyond Safe Spaces: Meet Me There
● Maria Cadenas —Building a Shared and Prosperous Economic Future for All
● MariaElena De La Garza — What Did You Call Me? Reclaiming Our Power Through Language
● Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela — Traditional Knowledge & Ecotourism: A Tale of North and South
● Nicole Beck — Rainwater Not Wastewater
● Stephen Will Weir — Intentional Consumption: Three Simple Questions
● Terry Carr — Growing Justice, Growing Food, Growing Tech
At this time, TEDxSC is sold out, but there is a waitlist available for interested attendees that can be found here. Further, the event will be live streamed the day of via our website.
Community Foundation Santa Cruz County is supporting the event as the presenting sponsor. Susan True, the Foundation’s CEO, said this year’s event will help inspire collective action in the community, creating solutions for challenges that are too large for any one person to solve alone.
“We’re honored to partner with TEDxSantaCruz to showcase local innovation and solutions and help provide space for meaningful community conversations,” True shared.
Other sponsors include Rise Together Fund for Racial Equity at the Community Foundation, Driscoll’s, UCSC’s The Humanities Institute/Office of the Chancellor/Baskin School of Engineering, Lookout Santa Cruz, Watsonville Film Festival, Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, Blue Heron Design Group, Bay Federal Credit Union, Digital NEST, the San Lorenzo Valley Post, Event Santa Cruz, LIFEAID, Allterra Solar, Dientes Community Dental, Pedro Gonzalez Farmers Insurance Agency, Aurora Wonder Properties, and Janet Janssen Life in Business Coach. The event is fiscally sponsored by United Services Agency.
About TEDxSantaCruz
The mission of TEDxSantaCruz is to bring together a community of some of the brightest and most innovative thinkers who contribute to solutions for our local and global challenges. Our purpose is to establish fresh, new conversations, perspectives, and exposure to different ideas from Santa Cruz and the world beyond. We provide a stage and platform for the very best ideas, thoughts, and actions generated in Santa Cruz County. TEDxSantaCruz has been holding events since 2011 with a total of 106 speakers garnering over 3.2 million views through the TEDx YouTube channel.
What is TEDx?
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxSantaCruz, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxSantaCruz event, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.
