TEDxLawrence 2015 Speakers


The Secrets of People Who Love Their Jobs

Shane J. Lopez, Ph.D., is the world’s leading researcher on hope. His mission is to help people of all ages exercise some control over what their future can become and to teach them how to aim for the future they want in school, work and life. He is also one of the most vocal advocates of psychological reform of America’s education system. He helps schools function less like impersonal factories and more like dynamic human development centers that help students achieve the meaningful futures they say they really want – including a good job and a happy family.

Dr. Lopez is a Gallup Senior Scientist in Residence and Research Director for the Clifton Strengths Institute. As chief architect of the Gallup Student Poll, he has measured hope in over a million people. This measure of hope, engagement, and wellbeing taps into the hearts and minds of U.S. public school students to determine what drives achievement. (It is available at no cost to any school or district interested in using it to start a hope conversation in their community). Dr. Lopez is the director of the annual Gallup Wellbeing Forum, which convenes scholars, leaders, and decision makers to discuss the issues that determine happiness and health.

He researches the links between hope, strengths development, academic success, and overall wellbeing and collaborates with scholars around the world on these issues. He specializes in hope and strengths enhancement for students from preschool through college graduation, advocating a whole-school strengths model that also builds the strengths expertise of educators, parents, and youth development organizations. Dr. Lopez has provided strengths mentoring to thousands of college students, including academic, career, and life planning, and he advises schools, colleges, and universities on these issues. He is coauthor of the statistical reports for the Clifton StrengthsFinder and the Clifton Youth StrengthsExplorer.

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A Yo-yo With A Broken String: How Failure Leads to Success


World Yo-yo Champion Mark Hayward screwed up on national television, and it was the BEST day of his career. He wants to tell your audience why. Mark knows all about turning failure into success. He is a highly regarded and critically acclaimed comedy entertainer and speaker, and he shares the hard-won lessons he has learned from the streets of New York City, all the way to Shanghai. Mark believes that the lessons from his stories will help any organization become a better, more positive and successful place to work. Mark says, “I teach organizations that it’s ok, and necessary, to fail.”

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Lab-on-a-Chip: Catching Molecular Messages Sent by Tumors

Ph.D

Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry University of Kansas

Bioengineering Graduate Program

Full Member, KU Cancer Center

Areas of Specialization

Analytical Chemistry, Micro/Nanofluidics, Single Cell Analysis, Genetic Analysis, Proteomics, Cancer Biology and Diagnostics, Systems Biology, Nanobiotechnology

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Why everybody--not just artists--needs to practice creativity

Pam Grout is the author of 16 books, two screenplays, a live soap opera, a TV series and enough magazine articles that she hasn't starved in 20 years without a 9-5 job.

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Human-Canine Healing

Anthony graduated from Baker University in 2000 and has completed the Triple Crown Academy for Professional Dog Trainers distance education course.  Anthony has owned a business in Lawrence, KS since 2004 and is the founder of two non-profits that focus on the human canine bond in community outreach and in healing.  He was on the Lawrence Humane Society board from 2010-2015, serving as the Secretary, Vice-Chair and Co-Chair during his tenure.  Through his non profits, he regularly volunteers his time in areas relating to the human-canine bond including humane and safety education for local grade schools and at the Lawrence Police Summer Camp, returning to Baker to speak on human/animal ethics, volunteering every week with his therapy dogs at the Topeka VA Hospital in the PTSD, Acute Psych Recovery, and Substance Abuse wings, and as an embedded consultant with the Kansas City Missouri Police 1910 and 1920 SWAT teams in a new collaborative program to reduce dog shootings in high risk situations.  He lives outside Lawrence, KS where he resides with his wife and 6 dogs.



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How Air Guitar Can Reveal Your Own Creative Process

Eric is a multi-headed hydra of creativity, having released 10 albums and toured the world as the drummer for Ultimate Fakebook, The Dead Girls, and Truck Stop Love. He founded the movie-review site Scene-Stealers.com, is a contributor to RottenTomatoes.com, has reviewed movies for Kansas Public Radio, KCTV5, KSNT, and KTKA, and is the current film critic for the Lawrence Journal-World. He's an award-winning business communicator and social media community manager, currently kicking ass for clients at Callahan Creek, a marketing agency based in Lawrence. Eric is currently the social media communications chair for American Advertising Federation – Kansas City, and is the vice president of the KC Film Critics Circle. Perhaps he is best known as the 2013 World Air Guitar Champion, and a tireless ambassador for the sport of competitive air guitar -- and its dream of achieving world peace.

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Small Ripples, Big Change

Jackie is a native Kansan from Bob Dole Country.  After living on the West Coast, Jackie Counts knew she wanted to get back to the heartland, and wanted to land in a place that valued free-thinking and had a university feel.  She’d been to Lawrence once for an Apartheid protest in college.  Bruce, her husband, convinced her that it was a cool place and that they should give it a whirl.  So, they packed up with a new baby, no place to live, and no jobs and landed in Lawrence in 1993. Today, Jackie is the Director of the Center for Public Partnerships and Public Service at the University of Kansas Achievement and Assessment Institute. In her work and personal life, she pushes boundaries to stretch thinking about what is possible and tries to persuade others to join her on the journey.   


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How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance

Jacqueline Edelberg has been the driving force behind the Nettelhorst School’s dramatic turn around, a story that has been featured on Oprah & Friends, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Redbook, NPR, CNN, 60 Minutes, Education Weekly, and in the local Chicago media. Jacqueline is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Youtopia, a featured Huffington Post blogger, and the co-author of How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance. She has consulted for school districts, civic groups, foundations, universities and parent organizations on how public schools and reformers can galvanize communities to improve public education. Before devoting herself to art, community organizing, and cutting the crusts off bread, Jacqueline taught political science at the University of Osnabrück in Germany as a Fulbright scholar. She earned her bachelor’s degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago. 

View How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance on YouTube

The Distance From Your Center: Mechanical Advantage, Torque, and Your Local Effect Into the Permeating Medium

Matt Kirby is a 22-year member of the Alferd Packer Memorial String Band of Lawrence, Kansas, in which he sings and plays the hammered dulcimer, 2 button accordions, bodhran, snare drum, slide whistle, duck call, and rubber chicken. Matt was a founding member of the Kansas City Celtic band Scartaglen, and the Lawrence, Kansas based Celtic band Newgrange. He is a songwriter, and received a 2006 first place award from the big festival in Winfield, Kansas for a song about antique tractors. Matt also performs in an annual Christmas concert with Tom Jacobs at the Unity Temple in Kansas City, Missouri. 

View The Distance From Your Center: Mechanical Advantage, Torque, and Your Local Effect Into the Permeating Medium on YouTube

Fish Know Nothing About Water

Michael has overseen and helped to develop a revolutionary approach to the management and creative development of CAD and REVIT produced construction documents. The methods he has helped create have had a dramatic impact on the creative culture of what had been for 26 years prior, an MEP firm that was very high quality, but otherwise traditional, in a commoditized field of very similar MEP firms.

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Faith & Science – Healing a Divide

Mick grew up in Tulsa, OK and attended Baylor University, graduating in 2005.  He and his wife Stephanie were both transformed by God in a big way after getting involved at Antioch in Waco, which set the course that ultimately landed them here in Lawrence.  They were married in 2005 and have been privileged to serve as college pastors, and as the lead pastors of a church plant in North Carolina, and on staff with Antioch Discipleship School in Waco.  Mick has also worked in finance and sales and is passionate about seeing personal transformation integrated into marriage, parenting, work, and all areas of life!  He is the proud father of four beautiful boys - Aidan, Paxton, Masen, & Hudson - enjoys anything outdoors, and is a science enthusiast.  Above all, however, Mick is nothing apart from Jesus Christ and he lives to ensure all have the opportunity to know Him as Lord and Savior.

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The Shape of Ideation

Stefan Mumaw is the newly minted Creative Director and Purveyor of All That Rocks for Callahan Creek, a Kansas City-area ad agency. Before writing Chasing the Monster Idea, he co-authored Caffeine for the Creative Team and Caffeine for the Creative Mind with Wendy Lee Oldfield, and also penned Redesigning Websites and Simple Websites. Stefan has spoken at numerous creative industry gatherings over the years, written a smattering of articles for HOW Magazine, Step-by-Step Magazine and Dynamic Graphics, contributes to a number of creativity-focused blogs and been known to embarrass himself and those around him if given the opportunity.

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Speaker registration for TEDxLawrence 2015 has closed.  Keep those great ideas in your pocket for next year!