Brian Foster
Finding Myself Through the Blues
Brian Foster explores the relationships and the music that define him. He grew up in Shannon, Mississippi, a town with one flashing light, a grocery store, and tradition as deep as the red in the dirt roads—roads that led to houses and grave sites, histories and openness. He grew up a lover of music and words. He writes about being black in the South.
Emily Firth
Finding Your Creativity
Creative thinking is a complex process, where the goal is not merely to be creative, but to produce a solution that has value, either on a personal level or on a broad scale. Creative problem solving is used for tasks as simple as using a safety pin to pick a lock, or as complex as making a scientific discovery. A crucial distinction of creative thought is that it is highly personal. In this talk, Emily talks about how you can find your creativity.
Josh Horton
No Matter What
Ten units of energy yields just one unit of results. This is critical to personal momentum in addiction recovery and criminal justice. It’s time to stop addressing addiction as a stigmatized moral failure and start reintegrating those who have been pushed to the fringes of society.
Janet McCarty
Unexpected Mentor: Life Through the Eyes of Cotton
Being introduced to simple, instinctual behaviors from an unconventional mentor can transform the human perspective and the way we pursue our goals and dreams. Janet will introduce a few simple behaviors she learned from her mentor and applied to her life. Putting these behaviors into practice gave Janet a unique perspective on life, allowing her to achieve her dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Janet McCarty is an entrepreneur.
Lena Patel
Bringing the Sandbox to the Board Room
Gamulation is the practice of using games and simulations to improve teaching and learning, specifically in the workplace. Wouldn’t work be a better place for most of us if we were having more fun? “When you marry traditional learning with gamulation, you revolutionize the way people learn, the way people interact, and the way people lead at work. Employees across the board will be happier for it and businesses have a higher chance of thriving from it. Gamulation sparks engagement, connection, and innovation, while making work seriously fun.
Jacy Reese Anthis
The End of Animal Farming
Clean meat — real meat made from animal cells without animal slaughter — and social solutions informed by breakthroughs and historical successes will eventually allow for an ethical and efficient food system where slaughterhouses are obsolete.
Elsie Andre
Travel to Creativity
In this engaging talk, 8th grader, Elsie Andre explains how travel has impacted her life, how it can impact yours, and simple ways to travel even when you don’t leave your home. Just an 8th grader at Lafayette Middle School, Elsie is the youngest speaker to have taken the stage at TEDxUniversityofMississippi. But, don’t let her age fool you. She has gained a wealth of experience traveling and she uses the stage to share why we should all get out a little more and offers some surprising tips on how to make that happen.
Jandel Crutchfield
What’s Your Number?
What’s your worldview? And what experiences have helped you develop it? Before engaging in a debate of any kind, what if individuals truly understood their answers to these two questions? Whether nationality, gender, race, class, religion, occupation, or creed, people find it difficult to understand others who are different than themselves. Using a number as a universal representation of our worldview would allow us to immediately reflect on our own experiences, quickly compare our experiences to another person’s experiences and judge the differences without judging the person.
