Registration

Early Registrants Receive a Free TEDxFarmingdale Swag Bag!
Registration in Front Lobby, Refreshments in Cafeteria, NFP Showcase in Commons

Please arrive early to register and catch breakfast in the cafeteria. Feel free to browse the Commons and visit with the non-profits that are fixing the world.

Session 1

Elise Atkins-Louis • Corey James • Nicole Varriale • Peter DeWitt • Alexander & Celeste Huang • Keiya Rayne • Randee Bonagura
Main Auditorium

Auditorium doors close at 9:15am promptly!

Elise Atkins-Louis – Grassroots activism – With the many issues we face as a society, finding a solution to combat them is paramount. From environmental degradation to social strife, Elise Atkins argues that the solution to these mounting problems is already ingrained in our culture. Atkins emphasises the importance of grassroots activism, through it’s applicable nature to everyday life and her own experience of grassroots activism saving a family member.

Corey James – Expectation Feeds Destination: The Case for Inner-City Youth – The expectations we hold of our children are critical in determining their destinies. It is we who are responsible to instill in them the power to become great. Unfortunately, the destinies of countless young people have been destroyed due to negative voices of judgement and criticism. What if they heard things like: “you have great abilities,” “You’re intelligent,” “you can beat the odds,” “you can be greater than your environment,” “you have what it takes.” We must consider what happens if they heard something greater was possible. Corey D. James will show you how believing in our inner-city youth can go a long way!

Nicole Varriale – The Inequity of Education in Our Schools – A journey through the differences between the inequity, inequality, and reality of education in our schools. Nicole offers her opinion on where we stand and solutions on how to close the inequity gap.

Dr. Peter DeWitt – Students Are Only One Connection Away From Success – If we really want to fix the world, one place we can begin is with students who feel alienated and marginalized. Whether it’s during their school experience, or after they leave their K12 setting, we have many students who feel disconnected from school. All students are only one connection away from success.

Alexander & Celeste Huang – Global Refugee Crisis: It’s Now Our Generation’s Time for Action – Half of all refugees around the world are under 18 years old. As teenagers, it is not our fault this situation exists, but as global citizens of any age it is at some level our collective responsibility to fix. Not because of any personal obligation but because this issue affects the world we all share. As individuals, maybe we cannot prevent the displacement of others, but we can certainly decide how we conduct ourselves and how we respond to these situations. Someone once asked why we are so committed to raising awareness about this crisis and the reason is because we don’t want anyone to say, “ I didn’t know.” The problems the world is facing can seem overwhelming at times. And very often they are. But we try to remember that helping even one person at a time can make a difference.

Keiya Rayne – Being Taught To Form a Line Is The Greatest Gift We Can Ever Receive – We take it for granted, being taught as children, that forming a line is a normal and necessary act. Having overcome years of childhood sexual abuse, Keiya Rayne had a profound desire to help others through humanitarianism, but discovered on missions in developing countries that feelings of desperation often led to an everyone-for-themselves mindset, causing crowding, confusion and chaos. Discover how teaching people to form a line can relieve stress, instill trust, and plant the seeds of civility, self-reliance and empowerment.

Randee Bonagura-Books and Biscuits: How Little Free Libraries Can Bring Your Neighborhood Together – Little Free Libraries connect children and adults with books across the world. Be inspired by Randee Bonagura to join the movement and put books in people’s hands, right in your community.

Intersession 1

30 Minute Break For Lunch and a Stretch
LUNCH IN CAFETERIA, NON-PROFIT SHOWCASE IN COMMONS

Lunch break 1! Feel free to grab a bite and visit the Commons for our non-profit showcase.

Session 2

Nicole Bruno • Keren Eldad • Marc Cordon • Kristina Hallett • Mona Prophete •Jennifer DeHayes • Carlos Collado • Estela Lugo • Scott Schmaren
MAIN AUDITORIUM

Auditorium doors close at 11:30am promptly!

Nicole Bruno – Parenting the Child You Have, Not The Child You Thought You’d Have – The story of one family’s evolving journey from crisis to empowerment while raising a transgender child.  A story of grief, acceptance, transition,  and a new found mission to make this world a more accepting place for all of our children.  Nicole Bruno, the mother of a transgender child, discusses the importance of supporting these young trailblazers who are brave enough to challenge social construct and what is considered the “social norm.”

Keren Eldad – You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know: The Power of Uncertainty in a Changing World – For too long, people have believed in and relied on what they “know,” – what they’ve learned in their narrow life and professional experience. It’s how they’ve hoped to avoid the pain of uncertainty and make life predictable. In the face of epic global changes and change in private life – people will find that surviving – and even thriving – will entail cultivating something different altogether: embracing uncertainty, and accepting that you don’t know what you don’t know. This talk illustrates how this paradigm can apply to any situation in life and will teach anyone to use awareness and techniques to stay open and improve their adaptive capabilities towards the creation of new possibilities for their life.

Marc Cordon – How to Create Extraordinary Growth on Ordinary Days – Through our ups and downs and all-arounds, it’s critical to have a mental model for your personal growth. Because without it, we put ourselves at the mercy of the tiniest fluctuations in our environment. Marc Cordon presents the five elements of growth that can be applied to posttraumatic growth, imposter syndrome, posttraumatic stress disorder, fear of success, and even boredom.

Dr. Kristina Hallett – Redesigning Self-Love – We have all been believing a lie for decades. It’s memorialized in over 1 billion self-help resources: you must love yourself before you can love someone else. The science of human development and neurobiology show this is completely false. Loving yourself is important. But here’s the truth: we can come to love ourselves, only when we learn how by both loving someone else and receiving love.

Mona Prophete – Finding The One – Can finding the one really be the solution to fixing our world? Join speaker Mona Prophete, MSW for a quick series of anecdotes regarding the “one” and what it really means as we journey through life. Discover how the one you should be looking for may indeed, be very different than what you’d ever expect.

Dr. Jennifer DeHayes – The Power of Trust – The “Power of Trust” by Dr. Jennifer DeHayes is an influential interpretation of trust three ways.  The first is “deep down raw trust makes you stronger”. She relates this view point of trust to a personal story in her life.  The second is “in order to trust you need love”.  This is related to how in order to trust one needs love and the ability to be vulnerable.  The third, “trust in the field of academia is the ultimate form of vulnerability.”  With over 22 years of educational experience, Dr. DeHayes relates how making yourself vulnerable in the workplace, can gain you trust.  She also brings in her doctoral research to prove this point. Allow yourself to be brought to a different understanding of trust with this TEDx talk and maybe just maybe you can feel, “safe, protected, comfortable and loved”.

Carlos Collado – Intuitive Success – What if you realized one day that you’ve been making decision for your entire life without the assistance of your intuition? Better yet, what if you and your intuition have never been formally introduced. Carlos Collado takes us through his journey to discovering the existence of his intuition and subsequently the journey of learning to trust his intuition in order to be the best decision maker possible.

Estela Lugo – RePurpose Your Pain – What if we could take our life’s most painful experiences and repurpose them into our greatest and most beautiful projects? Disability advocate, Estela Lugo shares her personal journey living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and five important steps to repurposing pain.

Scott Schmaren – Healing the World With Kindness and Love – Our world is in crisis and conflict. We are fighting everything from politics to violence. We have lost the most powerful forces in the universe to fix and heal our world and bring us together as one human race focused on creating a world of our dreams…Kindness and Love are those powerful forces. They have been here since the beginning of time and they are waiting for us to embrace them again. Rediscover the Kindness and Love that already exists inside of…and your life will never be the same.

Intersession 2

45 Minute (Final) Break For Lunch and Conversation
LUNCH IN CAFETERIA, NON-PROFIT SHOWCASE IN COMMONS

Lunch break 2! Feel free to grab a bite and visit the Commons for our non-profit showcase.5

Session 3

Dave Thompson & Josh Mirsky • Dylan Gafarian • Mike LiPetri • Noelle Cutter • Pete Bronski • Orville Davis • Allison Fasano • Jim Hughes
MAIN AUDITORIUM

Auditorium doors close at 2:15am promptly!

Dave Thompson & Josh Mirsky – Be Selfish: Embrace Neurodiversity – Josh Mirsky is a big picture guy – a dreamer – and he has a lot to say. But diagnosed with Autism at 13, Josh struggled to fit into a world that simply wasn’t built with folks like him in mind. Things started clicking when he joined forces with Dave Thompson, an educator and innovator within the Autism community. Together, Josh and Dave have teamed up to work towards a more inclusive world for all kinds of thinkers. The two discuss the importance of embracing neurodiversity and including people labeled “different” – not just for those who would benefit directly, but for everyone. They argue that we all have something to gain from their minds, their talents, and even their needs.

Dylan Gafarian – Breaking Bad: Cultivating Your Creativity to Change Our World – Dylan Gafarian, a trained creator, ideator, and teacher, discusses the power of breaking bad habits and implementing new ones that are sure to lead to a more creative life. By following just a few simple guidelines, you will begin to think and create more freely and notice your own openness to new and exciting ideas. Dylan received his first graduate degree in Education Leadership from Hofstra University and his second graduate degree in Creativity and Change Leadership from Buffalo State College. Dylan was recently named one of Long Island’s 30 Under 30 Young Professionals.

NY Assemblyman Michael LiPetri – The Millennial Advantage – There are over 2,000 billionaires in the world and over 50 of them are millennials, collectively those millennials are worth over $200 billion.1 Millennials have been responsible for some of the most innovative and technological advances in the past decade and yet our generation is still labeled lazy and entitled. Millennials are shaping the world right now and previous generations are hesitant to acknowledge it. In fact, the most recent breakthroughs in internet technology, healthcare, transportation, and hospitality are in large part created by millennials. Think about it, would you be able to connect with distant family and friends if it was not for Facebook? Millennials have revolutionized technology, economics, and socialization to a point where they can accomplish more in a day than ever before. I call this level of unimaginable efficiency The Millennial Advantage.

Dr. Noelle Cutter – See Something, Say Something, Do Something: The GenZ Approach to Curing Cancer – Cancer remains the most common cause of death due to disease in children.  Over the last decade, researchers have made great strides in understanding cancer but finding cures has still been difficult.  In an ever changing world sometimes a new approach to solving this problem is necessary.  GenZ is transforming the viewpoint in society by setting a local example through their teamwork approach in solving problems.  And it is this collaboration which will be needed to solve some of the world’s larger crisis, like cancer.

Peter Bronski – Has the Clean Energy Revolution Already Won? Reasons for ‘Applied Hope’ in the Face of Climate Crisis – The global climate crisis is more urgent than ever. Yet rather than despair, Peter Bronski shares an empowering message of ‘applied hope.’ The clean energy revolution, he says, has already won…if only we can see the signs. Learn what clean energy today has to do with the late-1990s camera market and early-1900s 5th Avenue in New York City. And how megatrends such as electric vehicles and renewable energy have already passed unstoppable inflection points.

Orville Davis – All This Junk and Not Enough Time: Top 3 Methods to Reduce Climate Change and Eliminate Waste – When the fate of the world is at risk, there are few that answer the call to “Fixing the World.” Orville shares his uncanny experiences from being born on a junkyard and how it plays a significant part in saving the world against global warming and climate change.

Chef Allison Fasano – Food at Everyone’s Table – We CAN change the world through food.  The world’s greatest challenges are health, growth, and equity.  Hunger in the world still exists. The amount of food waste we throw away every year can feed thousands. If we look at all the ways food impacts our lives, we can end hunger, shop smarter, and know what we’re eating.

James Hughes – Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broken – The world, or at least the people in it, aren’t broken. The flaws or disabilities of people are not something we can fix. What we need to do is accept those that are different in order to fix the world.