Theme: Building Bridges

Whether bridging the divide between mind and hand to actually launch a business or reconnecting with others after spending over a year physically apart, we hope for our event to showcase talks that will encourage audience members to reach out and connect with our communities and passions. Held in two parts--with the talk showcase followed by a workshop session--this event, organized by the Lowell TEDEd Club, will feature speakers who act as bridges between separate career fields and marginalized communities and provide opportunity for students to begin doing the same in their own lives.

Lowell High School
1101 Eucalyptus Dr. Main Building, Second Floor
San Francisco, California, 94132
United States

Jahkil Jackson

Founder of Project I Am

Named one of 2017’s most influential people by President Obama, Jahkil Naeem Jackson is a best-selling author, social entrepreneur, student athlete, influencer, teacher and founder of Project I Am, a nonprofit organization he created when he was eight years old. Now fourteen, Jahkil has a heartfelt desire to help those in need. Jahkil’s mission is to build awareness of homelessness and to help the homeless population by offering “Blessing Bags,” a giveaway filled with masks, wipes, socks, deodorant, hand sanitizer, and more. In just a few years, Jahkil’s efforts have empowered hundreds of young people to become change agents and has led Project I Am’s efforts in raising over $275,000 for the homeless. Additionally, Jahkil’s efforts have touched over 70,000 men, women and children across the world.

Kathleen Colao, Schuyler Stoller, Maya Dhar, Shivani Mahuvakar (Research Coordinators at UCSF)

Clinical Research Coordinators

Kathleen Colao, Schuyler Stoller, Maya Dhar, and Shivani Mahuvakar are clinical research coordinators at the UCSF Pediatric Brain Center. They work on various projects through the Pediatric Stroke Sciences Research Group and have had unique experiences that led us to clinical research. During our talk, they will share how our role allows us to bridge research to the community, and how high school students can be bridges between healthcare and their communities too.

Samvi Ranka

High School Sophomore

Samvi Ranka is a sophomore at Monta Vista High School from Silicon Valley. She is passionate about research in biology. Samvi is a young entrepreneur, Her desire to help children with autism and enhance their lifestyle led to the creation of Funtastic Box, a resourceful and economically-viable collection of toys. She has spoken about Generation Z making an impact one step at a time in a previous TEDx talk. For the past two years, she has been conducting research experiments related to the encapsulation of RNA.

Sunil Ranka

Founder of Predikly

Sunil S. Ranka is a seasoned leader and investor with a proven record of creating profitable technology solutions for business by integrating disruptive digital innovation. He is an experienced leader in transforming and growing cutting edge technology business practices and solutions in the areas of intelligence automation, big data, AI, data analytics, RPA, Crypto, and hyper automation. As a founder of Predikly (a data innovation and RPA company), he thrives to solve any platform, RPA, application, and data related problem. Sunil has a proven hands-on and well-rounded experience in building niche services startups, Best Fit Technology Solutions for Fortune 500 companies, bold start-ups, and scale growth stages companies. Sunil has invested in 22 startups, a proven track record of building successful business and exiting. He is a contributing writer for Forbes & O'reilly on the topic of automation and AI. Sunil has appeared on various podcasts on the topic of automation.