TEDxNSU

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Beyond Words

Mansoor Choudhry

Language may be the first tool invented by human beings, as a response to the problem of communication. The ability to assign meaning to vibrational disturbances culminated in the ability to seed other minds and offered an infrastructure within which to interpret reality. Some argue lang
I Don't Deserve to be Here Today

Sarah Goltsman

Up to 70% of people feel at some point during their jobs that they are frauds, leading to a cycle of thought that creates a fear of being “exposed” for the imposter they are, despite praise. Sarah Goltsman discusses her imposter syndrome and how she has gotten, somewhat, out of this way of thinking by opening a discussion with friends and family.
On Becoming Hopeful in the Midst of Uncertainty

Mariana Guzmán de Pérez

Guzmán de Pérez will discuss her experiences learning to live in the midst of uncertainty with her husband and three children. In her talk, she will stress how growth emerges from adversity. She will suggest that embracing new experiences gives us endless opportunities when we have the courage to face the unknown. Mariana wishes to inspire everyone to take the risk of living with a positive and hopeful attitude.
Art and Science Working Together for the Conservation of Large Pelagic Fish

Guy Harvey

Guy Harvey has spent his life studying animals that most people only catch for a fleeting glimpse. Research on the ocean’s top predators takes skill, creativity, patience, and a bit of luck. As the worldwide demand for ocean resources grows, it has become imperative that we better understand this ecosystem that is so crucial to our blue planet.
Mastering Suffering

Barry Nierenberg, PhD, ABPP

Sages have said while we are alive pain and suffering are inevitable. Looking around though some handle it skillfully and some unskillfully. This leads us to question how to live with suffering when human limitations lead us to be unskillful? This talk explores some ways people are successful and how to apply these learnings to our own lives.
Mastering the Art of the Interview

Ashley Rizzotto

Sometimes people will say anything to land their dream job. However, saying the right thing may not be what they need to be satisfied. In this talk, Rizzotto will redefine the idea of the perfect interview. Through Researching & Soul-Searching, listeners will identify their non-negotiables, accept challenges, and master the art of the interview.
Embrace Challenges to Find Your Meaning

Dr. Rita Shea-Van Fossen

We all face challenges and many of us wish we could remove challenges from our lives. What if instead of avoiding challenges, we embrace challenges in the workplace and in life? This talk explores the idea that embracing challenges will not only increase work meaning but can also contribute to optimizing experiences and making life more meaningful.
Become a Storyteller: The Importance of the Stories of Others

Maria Valladares

As individuals, we have the right to tell our story. But, as human beings, we have the responsibility of telling the stories of others. In this talk, Maria Valladares will reveal how an uprising, a phone call, and a promise changed her perspective and led her to believe that becoming a storyteller is one of the most powerful things you can be.
After the Dust Settled

Jareau Almeyda

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Jareau Almeyda was sitting at his desk on the 85th floor of the World Trade Center in New York City when the first plane crashed just a few floors above him. In this firsthand account, Almeyda recounts how the lessons learned during an hour-long decent through the exit stairwell helped him survive, and how those lessons led to his years-long pursuit of higher education.
The Power of Words

Taylor Bertolini

Taylor Bertolini grew up primarily finding notes filled with love and compassion in her lunchbox. She learned that a few words of encouragement could not only change her life, but the lives of others. That idea followed her to college where she started an organization on the NSU campus called Campus Cursive. When you harness the power of a kind word, you have the power to change lives.
Seeking Inspiration, Not Happiness

Devika Carr

Society uses happiness as a measure of success, subsequently authorizing negative stigmas about those who experience depression or mental health related conditions. Experiencing significant periods of sadness while living in a culture of people only talking about their pursuits of happiness made Carr desperate for an honest approach to living authentically, without disregarding real emotions. With commitment and practice, she discovered the art of finding inspiration in every little moment of life is the minute mindset shift with the greatest impact on achieving all of life’s purpose.
Leaders Are Born to be Made

Bryan Deptula

Leaders are born to be made! Leaders can be made through events in their life that pull out the leader from within, and trigger changes in how they see themselves in relation to others. In this talk, Bryan Deptula reveals how the pillars of leader development—identity, intellect, and instances – can be applied to transform today’s worker into tomorrow’s leader, and make generations of great leaders.
Discovering Hindsight

Ariba Hashmi

Hashmi offers her experience on how small things impact life, through a coming of age story told through cartoon illustrations. In her talk, she portrays the circumstances leading a space alien to explore a new planet and adapt to a world outside of his comfort zone; highlighting how the unfortunate things that “just happen” play a larger role in the grand scheme of things. This seemingly fictional alien tale offers a universally relatable message.
Setting Goals on Your Hands

Ashwin Kalyandurg

Are you scared of your goal? Turning your dream into a reality can seem impossible! But all it takes to achieve the impossible is two simple steps which, when applied to your life, will completely change the way you view the world. In this talk, Ashwin Kalyandurg, will demonstrate how we can reach inside ourselves and change reality.
Living Unforgettably

Siddhesh Kudtarkar

Inspired by the way he was memorizing facts for his medical school exams, Kudtarkar wanted to know if he could remember specific and verifiable details from every day of his life too using a memory program called Anki. Although he was able to achieve this to a certain extent, the insights that he had after conducting this experiment were even more fascinating and speak to memory’s role in guiding our everyday lives.
Cut the Toes Off Your Pantyhose: Patenting Solutions to Life's Little Annoyances

John Rizvi

The proverbial “million dollar idea” that people spend their entire lives pursuing may actually be a seemingly tiny, insignificant thing that has been in their peripheral vision all along. Small simple ideas, that may seem obvious in hindsight, have changed entire industries and made many inventors incredibly wealthy in the process. In his talk, Board Certified Patent Attorney John Rizvi, aka the Patent Professor®, will explain how it’s the little things that count in finding patentable subject matter because innovation depends upon incremental improvement.
From 3 to 5: Our Road to Fostering

Aline Silva

Aline Silva had a tough year, but was able to turn around that difficult year into hope and gratitude by learning more about the need for foster homes in the state of Florida. It is estimated that there are about 14,000 children in the foster care system in Florida. Silva and her family struggled with a year filled with multiple miscarriages, but instead of focusing on the negatives, they took a different approach and focused on all the little things that make life great. In this process, they learned that by focusing on the needs of others versus their own, especially those within the foster care system, they would experience gratitude for what they had, compassion for those that suffer, coupled with a newfound courage to actually do something about it.
I am not a Survivor

Nicholas Curci

In this presentation, speaker Nicholas Curci shares his personal history as the victim of extreme adolescent bullying and social banishment. He survived the terrors of daily physical and emotional harassment and graduated from high school as a student leader and accomplished athlete determined to empower others to find their own strength amid adversity. This talk speaks to those who find themselves in a similar situation—not just behind school walls, but throughout life. Curci explores the idea that one should try to immerse themselves in the very culture that betrays them in order to learn from it and about themselves. Victims of bullying aren’t always easy to recognize. They aren’t necessarily loners, and they aren’t weird or different. They are your friends, co-workers, and family members. Regardless of who it is, if they are suffering in silence, they need to find love and respect within themselves before they can accept it from others.
Rolling with the Punches: Be the Change that Knocks Out Domestic Violence

Amy Daumit

As children, many of us are taught not to be difficult and to “roll with the punches.” Later in life, this metaphor describes how we’re supposed to navigate through challenging circumstances. For victims of abuse, this is both a figurative and literal concept. When you are being beaten down by someone you love, it isn’t so easy to just roll with it. This talk will explore the speaker’s story of surviving and breaking free from an abusive relationship. When she “no longer recognized the girl staring back in the mirror,” her first move was to take inventory of her life. Victims of abuse often see themselves as damaged goods, broken pieces that can’t be put back together. But, in reality, the inventory isn’t broken; it’s just in need of a thorough cleaning. This talk will prove that victims can move past both the abuse and the label of victimhood itself, revealing a life that far exceeds what once felt possible. As her own story will illustrate, Amy Daumit learned to “live with and for me,” when she realized how strong she truly is. This lesson is applicable to all kinds of challenges. We can roll with the punches, no matter what form they take, and come out of the fire burning brightly. It is only then that we can live to our fullest potential, no longer victims but survivors enjoying everything life has to offer.
Putting Out the Fire

Yolanda Flournah-Perkins

Nothing can inspire us to act and react quite like a fire. If you have been near an uncontrolled fire, your nerves are undoubtedly familiar with the fear and sensations associated with this sudden and growing danger. The truth is, if there’s fire, someone has likely made a poor decision. When we encounter danger in our lives—whether life-threatening or life-altering—we are forced to make split-second decisions. But even in the middle of our most frantic moments, if we can remember to follow simple rules like “stop, drop, and roll,” we can limit and eliminate the damage in our lives from making bad decisions. This talk will acknowledge that bad decisions can have detrimental and even disastrous impacts on our lives, while exploring ways to respond in troublesome situations, avoid or overcome the ramifications of such decisions, and deliver us from danger. Life is full of daily choices and new chances. So, when the world around you catches fire, react with tact.
Following the Goodroad and Other Great Travel Puns

Katie Goodroad

Traveling can teach you to stop showering so often, to drop anything that does not fit in your backpack, and to roll up your sleeping bag before it rains. In this talk, speaker Katie Goodroad will share the life lessons she learned while challenging her own boundaries as a traveler. Travel is not about going into a community and changing their way of life, but instead allowing a community to change you. Global experiences like studying, volunteering, and working abroad, as well as traveling locally through music and cultural events, restaurants, and local organizations can create openings for multiple realities. After four years abroad, travel taught Goodroad to STOP working to meet others’ expectation, to DROP her boundaries and learn from her surroundings, and how to ROLL her interests, passions, and desires to change the world into a future career. While all roads may not lead to the airport, all “good roads” include encouraging people to live globally.
How to Perceive Failure in Life

Pratik Patel

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. But fear is not real. It is the product of thoughts we create. Moreover, when we fear failure, deep inside we know the reason behind our fear, and we avoid confrontation by diverting our thoughts. Fear of failure can actually be the best thing one can experience because it often points us to the areas we need to investigate more closely. Fear itself isn’t the problem; our reaction to our own fears is the issue. In making fear of failure an adversary, we miss the challenge of deciphering the message being sent to us. When we choose to make fear an ally, it can become useful in many ways. This talk encourages us to embrace a different perspective on fear because only by controlling emotion and letting go of negativity can one discover wisdom.
Metanoia: The Reality of Who We Are

Aimee Sanchez-Zadak, Ed.D.

The process of understanding one’s own identity is the journey of life. The aim is to become, in the end, a conscious human. Understanding and accepting ourselves enables us to then be accepted in a world of many cultures. This process, and the internal and external acceptance that follow, requires a conscious effort and a shifting of our thoughts and beliefs. The Greeks call this shift of self metanoia, which means “to change one’s mind or perception.” Through this shift, we can discover parts of life with which we identify and feel at home. This talk will explore how to embrace this mental shift, take fragmented ideas and link them together, improve your persistence and perseverance, and communicate your clear vision of yourself. Sanchez-Zadak will discuss the process of letting go and embracing your identity and the unique role you play in the world. The speaker will share her experience of being labeled a Cuban immigrant by her American friends and a Cuban in Exile by her parents. These conflicting views brought confusion and frustration into the speaker’s childhood, when she simply wanted to belong. She later learned that a shift in her perception was necessary to move forward with her own identity.
Failing Forward

Rosie Taylor

As a teenager, speaker Rosie Taylor dreamed of being a bestselling novelist, teaching at a local New York college, and spending her summers traveling the world. While none of that materialized, she wouldn’t change a thing. Sometimes our big life plans go out the window, and all you can do is look fear straight in the face and forge ahead with ideas that others call downright crazy. After 50 years of putting aside conventional wisdom, Taylor learned that there’s always the opportunity to start a new chapter. Even if there’s a bear standing in the middle of the road, and you’ve got nothing but a motorcycle, you can still get closer to take a better look. Sometimes the bear you feared is even more afraid of you, and the view on the other side is worth the risk.
Creative Violence

Alonzo Williams

Contemporary African American culture is often misunderstood, and at times, its beauty goes unrecognized. Urban artistic expression, in particular, is often perceived as a lesser form of art when compared to more dominant, Eurocentric art forms. Through dance, literature, and photography, this presentation aims to celebrate African American culture through creative expression, rather than resorting to violence as a response to racial discrimination. From its early roots to present day, African American art has served as a tool to fight oppression and inspire social justice and reform. Multiculturalism, gentrification, and racially charged violence in America are topics at the forefront of today’s headlines and family dinner conversations. This presentation will explore these issues through art as a means to shed a positive light on the societal and political changes desperately needed to overcome America’s history of inequality.