About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

About TEDx

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.

TEDxYouth@Granville

TEDxYouth@Granville is tailored to the youth of Greater Vancouver between the ages of 12-18. Our goal is to foster the spread and application of wonderful, local ideas, and promote TED-style talks in the Vancouver region. We seek to bring together a diverse group of students from all walks of life, and provide them with a platform to inspire, and be inspired. Run entirely by a group of local high school students, the conference is truly made for youth, by youth.

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Master of Ceremonies: Frankie Cena

As a singer, model, and television presenter, Frankie Cena has loved the spotlight from a very young age. Frankie believes in following your dreams, no matter how unconventional they may be. It is this philosophy that has allowed Frankie to balance a career as an international speech and debate coach, as well as an Entertainer.

Some of Frankie's highlights include being crowned Mr. World Canada in 2012 and becoming Mr. World Talent and earning a place in the Top 10 overall at the Mr. World competition in Kent,

England. Frankie became the only Canadian selected among thousands of North Americans to be featured in American Eagle’s 2013 Back to School Campaign. In 2014, Frankie began his professional television-presenting career as the competition’s co-host. He was privileged to work along side Miss World, Megan Young and was also able to perform his original song. At the end of 2014, Frankie received another call from the Miss World Organization to work as the Web Presenter for Miss World 2014, the world’s oldest and largest beauty pageant, featuring over 120 women from around the world.  Frankie enjoys fitness, spending time with his friends and family, and traveling. His motto, “Find Your Voice; It Matters”, perfectly illustrates his passion for inspiring youth and also using his voice as a speaker and singer. 

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Speakers

Mercedes Nicoll

Mercedes Nicoll is the most decorated rider of the Canadian women’s halfpipe team, Nicoll has represented Canada at three Winter Olympic Games Turin 2006, Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014. In front of a home crowd in 2010 Nicoll rose to the occasion finishing in sixth place – Canada’s best result in halfpipe for both sexes in 2010. After a long recovery from a crash a the Sochi 2014 Winter Games where Mercedes suffered a concussion leaving her out of sport for 2 years, she is back on her board winning her 5th National Halfpipe title March 2016. She is here to give everyone a better understanding of what it’s like to go through and deal with concussion and just how important believing in yourself is.

High on Life — Parker, Ryker, Alexey Parker, Ryker, and Alexey have been friends for over 15 years and managed to take their childhood passion of adventuring and making videos, and turned it into a thriving lifestyle brand that has them travelling the world for a living.

The road hasn’t always been easy, they were told they weren’t going to succeed, told they should get real jobs, and faced countless financial adversaries and emotional battles. But through dedication, commitment, and relentless focus on their vision, they created a wave of inspiration and influence that started with just a small community, and has now attracted over 2 million followers. By sharing stories and experiences, this group of travellers will help you see the endless possibilities of your dreams, and understand the power that focus has to make them actualize.

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Nicole Ticea

Nicole is a 12th grade student, currently attending York House in Vancouver. Since her first science fair in grade 8, she was inspired by the other students who actually conducted research in labs. This prompted her to become further involved in her work, competing at the national level, the Canada-wide Science Fair.

Nicole developed an early-stage HIV test when she was in Grade 10, using Isothermic Nucleic Acid Amplification. Her novel, disposable device allows users to receive a near instantaneous response to find out if they are infected. The test won her first place in the British Columbia 2014 Regional Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge. Nicole also received the Intel Foundation

young Scientist Award, and $50,000, from the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair- the largest international high school science research competition.

Nicole’s talk will discuss the value of liberal arts education in science, examining how creativity and rhetoric are intrinsic to connecting ideas, laying out the groundwork for research, and communication.

Matthew Clarke

Matthew Clarke, is a Vancouver based filmmaker, writer, actor, musician and comedian. He is most well know as creator, director and star of the hit, award winning web-series, “Convos With My 2-Year-Old,” which has garnered over 90 million views and 800,000+ subscribers. Over the past 15 years Matthew has worked in film, TV, theatre, toured North America with his band, Honey and the Money, created branded content for companies like Disney, Geico and Toyota, grown as a person, had numerous hair styles, owned two cars, joined a book club, and developed a habit of sharing things in bios that are completely irrelevant. 

“The Goal is Failure.” For him, the secret to success is trying to fail. He will tell his story and provide some

sure fire tips on how you too can fail wildly.

4

Amy Pezzente

From being admitted into the Provincial Specialized Eating Disorders Inpatient Unit to working for three Eating Disorder Nonprofit Organizations, Amy Pezzente boldly forged a new identity that was her own. Known for her brave recovery from an Eating Disorder, Amy obtained a new outlook on life in the way we view ourselves.

She currently works for Jessie’s Legacy Eating Disorders Prevention Program, where she coordinates the Love Our Bodies, Love Ourselves movement driven by the Provincial Eating Disorders Awareness campaign. Amy is also an Eating Disorders Peer Counselor and Project Coordinator at the Kelty

Mental Health Resource Centre located at BC Children’s Hospital, where she assists people of all ages who are struggling with eating disorders from the perspective of having fully recovered from an eating disorder herself. Finally, Amy helps train and facilitate the Online Peer Support Groups for the Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders.

The field of eating disorders holds a very precious and delicate place in her heart and she has an intense passion for it. Amy’s conversation will share her own personal journey with an Eating Disorder and explore ways to embrace our unique selves we were gifted.

Rishabh Chaudhary

Rishabh caught the entrepreneurial bug at a young age, he always saw problems not as obstacles but as opportunities to create an impact. He started his first company at the age of 15, since then he hasn’t stopped. Rishabh is a co-founder of taski, an app that enables employers to fill temporary or shift work on demand. It also provides millennials with access to flexible work options.

Rishabh is currently a fellow at The Next Big Thing, an accelerator for young entrepreneurs. As an activator and achiever, he has always lived with the mantra “screw it, let’s do it”.

5

Danny Ramadan

Danny Ramadan is a jack-of-all-trades who found his calling in activism, civil society, journalism and creative writing. As an LGBTQ activist, he has been involved in coordinating online and on the ground efforts to support gender and sexual minorities in Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon as well as his birthplace of Syria.

Danny arrived in Canada in September 2014 as a Queer Syrian refugee, and based on his experiences, he decided to shift his focus to supporting the LGBTQ Syrian refugees in the Middle East as they claim asylum in Canada. Danny is an experienced journalist with bylines appearing in the Washington Post, The Guardian and Foreign Policy. He is also the Volunteer

Coordinator at QMUNITY - BC's Queer Resource Centre.

In his piece, Danny is going to examine the concept of true identities, and how such a drastic experience as seeking refuge helps mature those identities within him.

Zoey Jones

Zoey Jones is a grade 10 student attending Stratford Hall in Vancouver. She has been heavily involved in the theatre department at her school, but this year, also took a step into the sciences. Zoey participated in the Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair last year, but this year she took on a bigger project and made it to the fair again.

 Her project will also be seen at Canada Wide Science Fair this May, and involved the creation of a water saving shower head. She was able to use computational fluid dynamics simulations to test different designs of her shower head, and come to final design that involved the atomization of water.

 Zoey’s talk will focus on the process behind a large, daunting task, and the importance of goals and motivation in youth. For her, learning to find her motivation at a young age has been extremely inspiring, and she hopes she can pass this onto others.

6

Carly Sotas

Carly Sotas is the author of Illusion, a non-fiction book which explores questions of identity, happiness, and success.

As a teenager, Carly read magazines for advice on how to be successful and confident, but was left feeling discouraged and inadequate, because the lifestyle presented seemed unattainable. Motivated by a desire to start a more relatable and authentic conversation, Carly wrote Illusion, sharing her struggles in hopes of letting other young people know that they are not alone in the challenges they face and in their desire to pursue their dreams.

With a passion for youth development and education, Carly serves as the co-program director of Vancouver's Heart of the City Piano Program, a music education program that provides accessible music lessons to underserved youth. She is also the co-founder of the Pencils of Promise chapter at The University of British Columbia, the global education organization to which she is donating the proceeds from Illusion.

Carly believes that everyone has a story worth sharing. She is committed to empowering young people to recognize their ability to create positive change, regardless of their age or level of expertise.

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Performers

The Luke Wallace Trio

The Luke Wallace Trio is comprised of Luke Wallace, Karen Hefford and Katie Green. Over the last two years, Luke has released two records and two independent documentaries to raise awareness about the threat of fossil fuel expansion along Canada's west coast. Through his music, Luke strives to amplify the voices of those communities most impacted by oil and gas development. Further, Luke

aims to connect coastal communities around an overarching respect for the natural processes that sustain the beautiful people of the west coast. Luke has performed all over BC and Canada and recently traveled to Paris for COP21 where he performed at a number of conference related events.

Angelica Poversky

Angelica Poversky is 5’3″ of vertically challenged creative passion who wants to use spoken words to create movements of thought. She’s always trying to think of new ways to use words and is perplexed by language.

She is the founder and festival director of Richmond’s first youth-led outdoors arts festival, Arts in the Park and always on the go when it comes to artistic event coordination. If you see Angelica in her natural habitat, she is probably reading her first poetry chapbook “She Is”,  hosting a radio-show or fearing proper punctuation,

Angelica is Vancouver’s Top 24 under 24, Richmond’s 30 under 30 and a Richmond Arts Award Winner. She’s been on the author panel at National Culture Days, a speaker at The Top 25 under 25 Canadian Environmentalists Awards and the feature performer at the CHIMO Violence Against Women Conference.

8

Ed Hill

Originally from Taiwan, Ed is an emerging young comic who moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 20 years ago, thinking he was on vacation at his father's discretion.

Since then, Ed has performed all over the world. He was voted "Best Vancouver Comedian of 2016" by West Ender Magazine, and "Best Vancouver Comedian of 2015" by West Ender Magazine and The Georgia Straight, and named "Comic to Watch" in 2015 by Canadian Immigrant Magazine. He has also appeared on AXS TV's "Gotham Comedy Live", Bite TV’s “Stand up & Bite Me”, and XM Radio’s “Laugh Attack”. He was also invited to perform at Comedy Masala in Singapore,

Live Comedy Club in Taiwan, the Hong Kong Comedy Festival, NXNE, San Francisco Comedy Festival, Austin Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival, the Vancouver Comedy Festival and many more.

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TEDxYouth@Granville would not have been possible

without the support of our Sponsors.

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TEDxYouth@Granville organizing team:

Co-Chair — Cecilia Bao

Co-Chair — Sunny Cui

Director of Marketing — Sandy Pang

Director of Public Outreach — Anushka Kurian

Director of Logistics — Alice Li

Media Lead — Kyle Gomes

A huge thank you to all the Volunteers and Videographers.

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