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 (subject to certain rules and regulations).

609 Congress Street
Portland, Maine, 04101
United States

Celebration Barn & Eepybird Studios

This humorous take on synchronized swimming simply makes us smile.

Emi Kolawole & Amy Lazarus

Amy and Emi are longtime friends. Emi has been an editor and designer at The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) at Stanford University, a producer and editor at The Washington Post, an associate producer for "Washington Week with Gwen Ifill," and has performed at Radio City Music Hall. She is an alumna of the French-American Foundation’s Young Leaders program. Today, Emi is founder and CEO of the media and design consultancy Dexign LLC. Amy has served as the Executive Director of the Sustained Dialogue Institute and Campus Network. She is an alumna of the Coro Fellows program, a recipient of the USA Networks Characters Unite Award, and has been a back-up singer for Aretha Franklin. Today, Amy is the founder and CEO of InclusionVentures in San Francisco, California. Emi and Amy have both been named World Economic Forum Global Shapers. The duo has presented their joint project, “Design for Worldview,” at Twitter, SoCap, ITVS, Dreamforce, and venture capital firms.

The Asthmatic

Sigrid Harmon aka The Asthmatic is a high school student and fringe sound artist with influences such as Bjork, Diamanda Galas and Yma Sumac. Having come through the camps of Maine Academy of Modern Music in Portland, Maine, she has made her mark with a uniquely fierce and theatrical song smithing. Sigrid can be found performing anywhere from the city streets to art galleries to rock clubs. Mirroring her interest in collage Sigrid creates cut-and-paste compositions with narrative layers of digital harmonies with disharmonious content.

Aaron Stephan

Aaron T. Stephan is an artist living and working in Portland, Maine. He received a BFA from Purchase College in 1996 and an MFA from Maine College of Art in 2002. His work presents a wry look at the world around him, focusing on the complex web of information carried by everyday materials and objects. His work has taken form as a twenty-foot high set of table and chairs, a shelter made entirely of books, and a series of drawings reproducing iconic artworks ad infinitum. His work has been featured at venues across the US including DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Samson Projects, The Portland Museum of Art, John Michael Kohler Art Center, California Center for the Arts, Farnsworth Art Museum, Weitz Center at Carlton College, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, DUMBO Center for the Arts, Troy Arts Center, University of Maine Museum of Art, Quint Contemporary, and Albany Airport Gallery.

Alexandra Lawrence

An art historian, activist, dancer and filmmaker, Alexandra Lawrence has worked with private collections and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She served as Director of the Lobkowicz Collections in the Czech Republic. Advocating for those exploited in the illegal sex industry through arts and education initiatives, Alexandra supports organizations working with vulnerable populations in Maine, Massachusetts and Southeast Asia. She helped organize two anti-human trafficking film forums in Boston (2010-12) and co-directed a short film with her husband (2016), a contemplation on modern slavery. On the board of directors of the Knox County Homeless Coalition, she has served on the Maine Humanities Council, the Collection Committee at the Portland Museum of Art and on the Harvard Art Museum Fellows Council. Alexandra holds a B.A. from Harvard College and an M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Anne Verrill

After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in Political Science, Anne moved to Maine in 2003 and opened her first restaurant, The Foreside Tavern in Falmouth in 2004. Following a major historical renovation, her second restaurant, Grace, opened in Portland in 2009. Always trying to incorporate social consciousness into the business structures, both restaurants work with non-profits as a central part of the business model. She lives with her two kids, Jack and Dahlia, in Falmouth, Maine.

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko

Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko is a passionate advocate for museums and their intersections with social justice and activism, community development, and memory and remembrance. Prior to joining the Abbe Museum as President/CEO in 2009, Cinnamon was the director of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where she led the organization to the National Medal for Museum Service. Catlin-Legutko serves on the board of the American Alliance of Museums, the Maine Humanities Council, and the Smithsonian Affiliates Advisory Council. She is president of the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce board and serves on the Island Housing Trust board. Her most recent publication, “Museum Administration 2.0,” was released by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016. Catlin-Legutko received her BA from Purdue University, and is a graduate of the University of Arkansas MA program in anthropology. She is a 2004 graduate of the Seminar for Historical Administration and joined as a faculty member in 2014.

Dana Fadel

Dana Fadel is an activist, advocate, educator, and facilitator, who is committed to working for people in need of adequate information about their sexual health and well-being. She began her journey in sex education in college as a peer educator, and since then has been certified through Planned Parenthood. Frustrated at society’s lack of resources and access to information about sexual health, her commitment led her to create a variety of forums. She founded and co-facilitates Sex of Self, a women’s sexuality workshop group, and wrote a crowdsourcing sex advice column, “In Layman’s Terms,” for the Portland Phoenix. Since 2013, Dana has been volunteering with the Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine on the Crisis and Support Line. Currently, Dana teaches a sex ed class called “Not Yer Momma’s Sex Ed,” at Wayfinder Schools in New Gloucester, Maine, as well as educates young parents in the Passages program.

Julia Hansen

Julia considers herself a fearless learner. Trying to make a difference in this hectic yet beautiful world energizes her. She loves diving into the unknown and finding the constellations of small details that make up peoples’ lives. During Julia’s sophomore year of high school, she lost her two closest friends to suicide. While struggling with her own depression, she was faced with how to cope with the loss of these two incredible people in her life. She experienced great darkness and sadness, but always was and still is able to find the beauty in the world. Because of this, she created The Yellow Tulip Project, which is meant to smash the stigma associated with mental illness, and remind people that even in the darkest places, there really is always hope.

Megan Tan

Megan Tan is the host and creator of the podcast Millennial, a show about maneuvering your twenties post-graduation. Before graduating from Western Kentucky University with a degree in photojournalism in 2014 she worked alongside WNYC’s Radiolab, The Minneapolis Star Tribune and Timber & Frame Media. Her film and photographic work has been recognized by College Photographer of the Year, National Press Photographers Association, and The William Randolph Hearst Competition. As a radio host and producer she has been recognized by BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, The AV Club, Medium, The Guardian and Refinery 29. She is based in her closet in Portland, Maine, and was the most the recent addition to PRX’s Radiotopia.

Michael Sauschuck

Michael Sauschuck has been with the Portland Police Department for nineteen years. Early in his career, Sauschuck spent five years in the Marines, ultimately attaining the rank of Sergeant. In March of 2011, then Lieutenant Sauschuck was selected as the department’s Assistant Chief, where he served as the department's second-in-command and directly oversaw criminal investigations, uniformed operations, and emergency communications. He was selected as the department’s permanent Chief in January of 2012. In October of 2012, Sauschuck attended the FBI National Academy for Law Enforcement Leaders. He has worked in a variety of specialties including the crisis intervention team, special reaction team, and as a field training officer. Sauschuck also spent time as a Special Agent with Maine Drug Enforcement and as a Supervisory Special Agent supervising the Cumberland County Task Force. Sauschuck holds a BA in Criminology from the University of Maine.

Samuel James

With a voice of grit and gravel, roots musician Samuel James sings with an authenticity lost in time. He was born the last in a long line of performers including dancers, story tellers, choir singers, jazz pianists, and porch-stomping guitar thumpers dating back to the 1800s. Samuel is an award-winning songwriter, one of the world's most innovative guitar players, and a Moth-featured storyteller. He brings all of this to his amazing stage show. A live performance by James is part theatre concert, part stomping-on-the-porch dance party, and part stand-up comedy. His critically acclaimed trilogy of albums, Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy (2008), For Rosa, Maeve and Noreen (2009), and And for the Dark Road Ahead (2012), for Toronto's Northern Blues label, has gained Samuel praise not only for carrying on great traditions, but for being a true innovator.

Shay Stewart-Bouley

Born and raised on a combination of big city attitude and Midwestern sensibility in Chicago, Shay Stewart-Bouley, also known as Black Girl in Maine, had to learn a bit of Yankee ingenuity when she relocated to Maine in 2002. She was able to continue the socially conscious work she had embarked on in the Windy City, where she worked primarily with homeless people, by running a community center focused on low-income youth in Southern Maine and writing about social issues (racism, class and socioeconomics in particular) on her Black Girl in Maine blog and in various Maine publications, as well as appearing in some anthologies. In 2011, she won a New England Press Association Award for her writing on race and diversity for the Portland Phoenix. Although she stills resides in Maine, she is currently Executive Director of Community Change Inc. in Boston, one of the nation’s longest running anti-racism organizations.

Tae Chong

Tae Chong is a business advisor with Coastal Enterprises, Inc.’s StartSmart Program. StartSmart is a nationally recognized economic development program that assists immigrants and refugees to start and manage their businesses. Tae has over twenty years experience working with the immigrant and refugee populations in Maine as an educator, advocate, policy maker, social service provider and now as a business advisor. He has also held leadership positions as co-chair of the Refugee Advisory Council for the state of Maine’s DHHS Department, as a board member of the NAACP, LULAC, Asian American Heritage Foundation, and the University of Southern Maine’s Department of Social Work. Currently, Tae is serving on Catholic Charities Refugee and Immigrant Services advisory board and is a board member of the Friends of Portland Adult Ed. He holds a BS in Political Science and an MBA from the University of Southern Maine.

Vivek Kumar

Dr. Vivek Kumar is on faculty at the Jackson Laboratory and studies the genetics of addiction using mouse models. Dr. Kumar has a PhD from the University of California, San Diego and conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University and UT Southwestern. His work uses unbiased genetic approaches to discover new genes and pathways that regulate addiction. Dr. Kumar is also interested in communicating science to the lay public and has been an advocate for better long term treatment of addiction, much like other chronic illnesses.

Wayne Maines

Dr. Wayne M. Maines is first and foremost the proud father of identical twins, one boy and one girl. Wayne and his amazing wife Kelly have worked extremely hard to raise their children in an environment that was not ready for a new generation of transgender children. Wayne is an Air Force veteran, an outdoorsman and basket maker. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and Doctor of Education degree from West Virginia University. Wayne has been teaching Emergency Management, Safety and Leadership throughout the United States for many years to help protect people and their communities. Now he has turned his attention to using those same skills to introduce the world to transgender children and transgender rights. Wayne is on a mission that provides a safe environment for transgender children to grow, to learn, to be safe and to become productive members of our society.