The main event: March 15, 2024
Get to know our Speakers •
Get to know our Speakers •
A speaker’s journey to the legendary TEDx stage begins long before they arrive at the historic Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. Speakers undergo a rigorous application and selection process, including multiple rounds of review with a diverse group of leaders from across North Carolina. In 2023, more than 250 people applied but only 9 will be selected for the main event in 2024. There are a few criteria for selection, eg. must be within a 4 hour drive of Asheville (to attend meetings, rehearsals, etc.), your idea must fit the theme, and you should be open to feedback. Once selected, speakers work with a dedicated speaker coach to craft and rehearse their talk.
Check out the intro videos below for a little insight into what makes this year’s Speakers tick! Further below are their formal bios and backgrounds.
ADITI SETHI, MD - Intro video
SPENCER SIMRILL, Jr - Intro video
SALLY COXE - Intro video
DAVID LAMOTTE - Intro video
ANDY BOBOWSKI - Intro video
MICHAEL ROSENBERG - Intro video
JENNIFER HOUGH - Intro video
MELISSA RED HOFFMAN, MD - Intro video
MADAM NSELAA WARD - Intro video
We’re mixing it up a little this year; here’s a teaser :-)
Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen are co-founders of Western North Carolina-based Stewart/Owen Dance, resident dance company of Wortham Center for the Performing Arts.
As a choreographic duo, S/O Dance is committed to cross-genre collaborations, partnering with writers, filmmakers, and musicians to produce stage productions, films, music videos, an immersive parking lot show, and a dance and spoken-word exhibit. Their choreography has been presented across the U.S. and abroad on fifteen tours with the U.S. State Department and Company E.
Achievements include the Audience Choice Award, a Dance Gallery Festival commission, a McDowell Regional Artist Project Grant, and two N.C. Artist Support Grants (2021, 2024), an N.C. Grassroots Arts Program Grant and a commission from American Dance Festival (2024 premiere). As resident artists of the Wortham, S/O were the first to be commissioned for new work and presented in Wortham’s Mainstage Series. Their latest production premieres at the Wortham in May 2024 in the Tina McGuire Theatre.
For some more in-depth information on our Speakers’ bios and backgrounds, click the + below.
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Jennifer Hough worked corporately for years until she got sick. Her migraines and depression catalyzed her to ask important questions about how to live a life of fulfillment and meaning.
As a result, she has now worked with over 10,000 visionary leaders from around the world to help them start over 1400 movements, write 3100 books and help hundreds of thousands of people to live a better life.
Currently she holds her Embodiment Workshop three times per year to help solution oriented leaders and entrepreneurs turn their lives into ‘works of heart’, by living aligned with the projects that have them waking up inspired every day.
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David LaMotte has performed over 3000 concerts on five continents and all fifty states, releasing thirteen albums and three books along the way.
In 2004, David and his wife founded Senderos, a non-profit working with local leaders in Guatemalan communities to support education, arts, and mentoring for students in Guatemala.
He is also a Rotary Peace Fellow, with a master’s degree in International Studies, Peace and Conflict Resolution from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the former Clerk of the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Committee. LaMotte has presented at the PC(USA) Mission to the United Nations, at a peace conference at the Scottish Parliament, and at conferences in India, England, Germany, and Australia.
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A writer, producer, and educator, Spenser Simrill, Jr. was born on Koinonia Farm, the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity. He earned his PhD at the University of Georgia where he taught for many years. His films have appeared in numerous festivals, on Georgia Public Television, and in the online editions of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and NME.
In 2013, he discovered the witness of Harriet Simril, a thirty-year-old Black woman who testified against the KKK in a federal Reconstruction trial—she had been enslaved by his ancestors. He sent a letter to every Simril—black and white—in the Carolinas. A phone call led to a meeting, to an annual reunion, to peace walks in Northern Ireland and Liberia, and to the first historic marker in South Carolina to mention the Ku Klux Klan.
In March 2024, Audible and Audio Up Media will release a documentary podcast on the Simril-Simrill story. ‘Once Removed: An American Family Reunion’ features narration by Elvis Mitchell and an original soundtrack produced by T Bone Burnett.
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Melissa Red Hoffman, MD, ND, FACS, began her professional career as a naturopathic physician and a yoga teacher and now practices as an acute care surgeon (a combination of trauma, emergency general surgery, and surgical critical) at Mission Hospital in Asheville, where she is a very active member of the medical staff.
As one of just 90 US surgeons board-certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, she serves as an Associate Hospice Medical Director at Care Partners, also in Asheville. Red is the co-founder of the Surgical Palliative Care Society and through her podcasting, writing, speaking and research, has established herself as a leader in the field of Surgical Palliative Care.
She recently launched a new podcast, The Surgical Soul with Red MD, focused on the joys and struggles of surgeons, both inside and outside of the operating room.
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Aditi Sethi is a hospice and palliative care physician, end-of-life doula, and musician. She is also the founder and executive director of the Center for Conscious Living & Dying in Asheville, NC.Featured in the forthcoming film The Last Ecstatic Days, Aditi is an emerging and important voice for shifting our culture's understanding and approach to dying, death, and bereavement care.
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Michael is a designer, technologist, game-maker, and entrepreneur who has helped build mission-driven startups across Sub-Saharan Africa and North America.
He's fascinated by harmonizing human potential with emerging technology and feels driven to help people access the tools they need to shape their own lives and work.
He is currently building Startwise, a startup dedicated to building local pathways to global employment. He is also the founder of HUMANFRIENDLY.AI, a membership community for people of different walks of life and levels of AI optimism to come together for meaningful conversations and projects.
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Andy Bobowski is an educator, social mobility entrepreneur, and co-founder of Backrs, a tech-enabled community that empowers students with the social and financial capital they need to flourish.Prior to Backrs, Andy spent 13 years teaching, founding and leading schools, and coaching teachers and principals in Memphis, TN.
Andy has a B.A. in History from the University of Richmond, a masters degree in education, and an education specialist degree in Administration.
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Sally is president and co-founder of the Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI). Known as ‘Mama Bonobo,’ she has worked passionately for over 25 years to protect endangered bonobo apes, preserve the Congo rainforest, and empower local communities.
Under Sally’s leadership, BCI collaborates with partner organizations, government agencies, and indigenous communities to manifest their common vision for the Bonobo Peace Forest. An expanding network of community-managed nature reserves encompassing nine million acres to date, the Peace Forest is pioneering a whole systems approach that addresses humanitarian and conservation needs simultaneously.
Sally's innovative work has been recognized in The New York Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and the award-winning book Of Bonobos and Men. www.bonobo.org
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Madam Nselaa Ward, Juris Doctor is a business architect, former attorney and former sex worker that studies the prostitute archetype. She particularly deep dives into the impact of shame and self worth on women, youth and diverse communities.
Madam uses a combination of her background as grassroots organizing with the National Organization for Women, the largest women's organization in the world; as a former attorney freeing over 300 years of black lives from the criminal industrial complex; and as business architect, to self reflect and examine the mass effect of confronting our deepest regrets and shames head on.
TEDxAsheville announces return of flagship event to historic Wortham Center for the Performing Arts.
After a year-long hiatus, TEDxAsheville announces the return of their flagship TEDx event to the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. The independently organized event, licensed by TED, will be held on March 15, 2024 from 10a - 4p and feature local voices for a day of multidisciplinary TED talks, demonstrations, and performances around the theme, ‘Meet the Moment.’
“As we collectively emerge from the events of the last several years—a global pandemic; a much-needed racial reckoning; ongoing political divisiveness; accelerating climate change; the emergence of generative A.I., and so much more—we are all grappling with how to navigate the uncertainty and opportunity provided by the seemingly intractable challenges of our time. Our meet the moment theme is an invitation to be present and wrestle with these complexities; to courageously hold space for discourse and disagreement; and build community around ideas that can help all of us meet the moment with more bravery, grace, and authenticity,” said Brett A McCall, license holder, TEDxAsheville.
The ‘Meet the Moment’ theme was born from conversations with the community at TEDxAsheville’s inaugural salon, the Red Rug Roundtable, in June 2023. In addition to the March 2024 event, TEDxAsheville will host two more salons this Fall, the next on September 21, 2023 from 5:30pm to 8:30pm at the Hilton Garden Inn, 309 College Street, Asheville.
“We are excited for TEDxAsheville to bring ideas worth spreading back to downtown Asheville. As our community wrestles with the tensions of growth and sustainability; inequality and prosperity; divisiveness and reconciliation; more than ever, we need diverse, leading-edge voices to bring big ideas, inspiring conversations, and innovative solutions to Western North Carolina,” said Stephanie Swepson Twitty, President and CEO, Eagle Market Streets Development Corporation and Community Advisor for TEDxAsheville.