By Wyatt Crosher, Assistant Director of Communications for Student Affairs
TEDxUNCCharlotte, the University’s licensed TEDx event featuring speakers from across the Charlotte community, will be taking place for the seventh time on Saturday, Feb. 21. The 15 speakers chosen for this year’s event primarily consists of current University faculty, staff and students, and also includes community members and some Charlotte alumni.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. TEDxUNCCharlotte is the largest of its kind in Charlotte, and this year’s theme is “Reimagining.”
Tickets for the event will go on sale Monday, Jan. 5, and are free and open to the public. There is also a $25 VIP option that includes a name badge and TEDx swag.
Below is information on each of the speakers that will present on Feb. 21:
A.J. Simmons — Staff and Alumni
Simmons currently serves as the senior associate director in First Year and Transition Programs at Charlotte. He also earned a master of arts in psychology, with a concentration in community at the University while studying and contributing to the food sovereignty movement in local communities.
Alyssa McGonagle — Faculty
McGonagle is an associate professor of psychological and organizational science at Charlotte. She has been studying the challenges that workers and organizations face around chronic health conditions and how to address them for the last 15 years. McGonagle has also lived with multiple sclerosis her entire working life, and has managed employees with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
Amanda Brock Morales — Faculty
Morales is a researcher and Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences. Her work focuses on climate change, sustainability and cultural heritage. For over a decade, Amanda has conducted archaeological and community-based research in the Peruvian Andes, building lasting collaborations with local partners to study how ancestral landscapes and practices inform present-day challenges.
Barbara G. Green — Community
For more than 40 years, Green has practiced physical therapy, where she has studied and specialized in pelvic floor PT for both men and women. She is a member of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH), has presented at countless community events and helped teach with PT Pelvic Floor educators Herman & Wallace.
Caroline West — Graduate Student and Alumni
West earned her bachelor in nursing and worked as an emergency room nurse for four years, observing firsthand the impact of treatment resistant infections. Her master's degree is in chemistry, where she studied what causes DNA to change shapes and took classes in nanomedicine and nanoscale phenomena. West is currently conducting a study that explores a fungus that is an opportunistic human pathogen with a mortality rate of 70%.
Charlene Whitaker-Brown — Faculty
Whitaker-Brown is a faculty member in the School of Nursing at Charlotte, where she teaches future nurses about brain health. She is the inaugural Nurse Fellow for UsAgainstAlzheimer’s (2022), and frequently speaks at caregiver support groups and community events. Whitaker-Brown has been instrumental in coordinating partnerships between the School of Nursing and Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute’s Heart Failure Clinic at Carolina’s Medical Center.
Deborah Tillman — Community
Tillman is known to many as “America’s Supernanny.” For over two decades, she walked into homes full of chaos and helped parents turn them into places of peace and purpose. Tillman also founded the Happy Home Leadership Academy and Harobed Consulting to equip parents and educators to raise children anchored in love, discipline and legacy.
Heather D. Freeman — Faculty
Freeman is a professor of art (digital media) in the College of Art + Architecture, and was the host and writer of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded podcast series, "Magic in the United States," which shares humanities and social science research with non-academic audiences through the histories of American magical, esoteric, mystical and marginalized religious practices and beliefs.
John Tuders — Faculty and Alumni
Tuders is an adjunct professor in the department of management and international business in the Belk College of Business. He teaches design thinking and innovation, as well as human behavior in organizations and executive communication, at the graduate level for 10-plus years. He received his doctor of business administration from Charlotte, focusing his research on employee performance within digital entrepreneurial ventures.
Kendra Jason — Faculty
Jason is a sociologist of work and inequality with over 20 years of expertise in organizational behavior, management, inequality and work. She has more than 30 publications among journals, technical reports, book chapters and teaching outlets, and has held administrative roles at Charlotte as the Executive Fellow for Strategic Initiatives in CHESS.
Miriam Espaillat — Alumni
Espaillat graduated from the University with her master in social work in 2013. After earning her degree, Espaillat worked in the social work field before co-founding Raydal Hospitality LLC, a restaurant group based out of Charlotte that owns locally renowned dining establishments, including Sabor. She currently serves as co-chair of the Leading On Opportunity council board and vice president for Charlotte Bilingual Preschool Board of Directors.
Jasmine Oliver and Neha Panajkar — Undergraduate Students
Oliver and Panajkar are both juniors majoring in environmental studies in CHESS, with Oliver minoring in art history and Panajkar also majoring in history in the COAA. They both worked as research assistants in the Earth sciences department over the summer, conducting research on food halls, which included creating a database and cataloging their information. Oliver’s aspirations are to work with underserved communities living in food deserts to sustainability improve their access to fresh, nutritional food. Panajkar is interested in environmental economics and the business of food, and also has a huge passion for science communication and public speaking.
Noah Hughey — Undergraduate Student
Hughey is an undergraduate student who is earning a bachelor’s in political science with a minor in journalism. He runs a newsletter and has independently published five political science/commentary books. Hughey has been selected three times to serve as a preceptor for the introductory level political science courses at Charlotte, serving two of those preceptor roles concurrently, and he is co-authoring a project on political theory with Dr. Joshua Miller in the department.
Stephen Morris — Faculty
Morris is currently a music composition professor in COAA at Charlotte. As a composer, his music has been performed in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Fontainebleau Chateau, Seoul National University and The Royal Conservatory of Music. Morris has four college degrees in music, including a master of music composition from Mannes School of Music in New York City, and a doctorate in music composition from the University of Toronto.
TEDxUNCCharlotte is a collaborative event held in partnership and sponsorship with Leadership & Community Engagement, Student Involvement, the Career Center and Duke Energy.
More information about the event and its speakers can be found on the TEDxUNCCharlotte website.