This event has ended. Thank you to everyone who joined our first virtual event! Please look for sharing of videos from tonight, and register for our next event when it becomes available.
WE ARE RESILIENT
In our community, which has seen its share of trials and transitions, one truth remains constant: We are stronger when we own our differences, share our experiences and create constructive dialogue.
We’re strong. We bounce back.
VIRTUAL EVENT DETAILS
For the first time ever, you can attend from anywhere in the world!
Join us for a virtual gathering of local influential speakers who will share fresh perspectives on the current state of our world.
Register on Eventbrite to hold your spot. Prior to the start time, a link to the online platform will be sent and you will be able to join the live event.
WHEN
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
4:00pm - 5:30pm
TICKETS $0
TEDxStLouis is bringing you this virtual event, free of charge! Just select the Free Registration ticket option below.
DONATIONS WELCOME
If you feel so inclined, you may make a donation in support of our organization’s mission to create an inclusive & equitable community of thought-leaders in St. Louis. Just put any dollar amount in the Donations field below.
Meet the resilient thought-leaders reshaping St. Louis
Hear from a dynamic group of speakers who have unique perspectives for our city. They’re the people of Saint Louis who truly care — invested in local innovation, social justice, change, and bouncing back.
The intersection of COVID, bullets, homelessness and opiates
| LJ Punch, MD
President, Power4STL
Commissioner, St. Louis County Police Department
Dr. Punch loves to heal. This desire has brought to life a career with a three-fold focus: education, violence and equity. As a trauma surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine this work came to life in various undergraduate and graduate medical education courses focused on the experience of violence related injury across the entire spectrum of illness and healing. Through community engagement in St. Louis, Dr. Punch carries this mission forward each day, bridging the gap between the resources inside healthcare and the voices of the people. This includes a campaign to bring the national “Stop the Bleed” campaign to members of the St. Louis community at risk for violence and serious injury. This also includes the creation of “The T”, an anti-violence community center which focuses on harm reduction as primary prevention of urban public health concerns including bullet injuries, homelessness, opiate use disorder and COVID-19.
One Health in an Age of Climate Change, Extinctions, and a Pandemic | Sharon Deem,
DVM, PhD
Director of the Saint Louis Zoo Institute for Conservation Medicine (ICM)
Sharon L. Deem, DVM, PhD, Dipl ACZM is currently the Director of the Saint Louis Zoo Institute for Conservation Medicine (ICM), a role she has held since the ICM was founded in 2011. Sharon uses a One Health holistic approach for wildlife conservation, public health, and sustainable ecosystems to ensure healthy animals, healthy people, and a healthy planet.
In the talk she will offer the opportunities this pandemic gives us and how a One Health approach will allow us to contend with the triple threats of emerging infectious diseases, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity (wildlife species and wildlands). Never has resilience on a global scale been more necessary for human survival—just what the doctor ordered.
Watch Sharon’s 2018 TEDx Talk “The Ties that Bind: One Health”
The use of meditation and mindfulness during stressful times | Jo Pang
Mindfulness and Social Justice Educator; Organizational Culture and Strategy Consultant
Jo is an organizational transformation consultant and mindfulness teacher who is fueled by the process of creating a just, joyous and regenerative world, inside and out. He works with organizations to transform their culture, team dynamics, and individual mindsets in order to more fully live into their mission. Jo's work is rooted in the belief that organizations that create the conditions for people to develop their capacity to become more fully aware of themselves in the context of the world will not only achieve higher engagement and performance, but will serve a higher purpose than the organizational mission alone. He integrates the insights he has gained through his personal experience of transformation, 10+ years of transformational leadership in business, and training as a mindfulness teacher and social justice facilitator to support organizations on their journey of being increasingly conscious. Jo is also a steward of a native landscape and learns most of his lessons about cultivating healthy living systems through this role.
The Pro-cop/Anti-cop divide | Wally Siewert, PhD
Director of the Civic Engagement, FOCUS St. Louis
Dr. Wally Siewert has over a decade of experience with civic and political engagement, from the grassroots and applied level to academic analysis and theory. From 2011-2017, Dr. Siewert was the Director of the Center for Ethics in Public Life at the University of Missouri St. Louis. During that time CEPL established itself as a statewide hub for public ethics information, conferences, research, community collaboration and more. Wally earned his Ph.D. in political philosophy and ethics from the University of California Santa Barbara. He also holds an M.A. in philosophy and a B.A. in philosophy and German from Western Michigan University. Prior to his post-graduate work, Dr. Siewert worked as a political organizer and lobbyist for a network of state-level grassroots consumer justice organizations, including two years as the Campaign Director for the Coalition for Consumer Justice of Rhode Island.
Dr. Siewert’s most deeply held political beliefs are not about policy, but about political process—about what it takes to create cooperation among co-citizens while simultaneously respecting every individual’s right to pursue her own personal conception of the good.
Watch Wally’s 2019 TEDx Talk “Five Alarm American Democracy”
St. Louis’ turbulent history of racial inequality and where to go from here | Walter Johnson, PhD
Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies, Author “The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States”
While growing up in Columbia Missouri, Walter frequently visited St. Louis and was disturbed by the racial inequities he observed in both cities. This ultimately influenced his studies and led to his work as a Harvard professor, American historian and author. Walter received his B.A. from Amherst College and his doctorate from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he taught History and American Studies at New York University. He has written two prize-winning books on slavery, capitalism and imperialism throughout our nation’s history. After the Michael Brown killing, Walter began focusing on the history of structural racism in St. Louis and culminated in his book, The Broken Heart of America, St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States. Johnson is also a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists, and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support revolutionary social change, beginning in St. Louis.
St. Louis’ turbulent history of racial inequality and where to go from here | Tef Poe
Co-founder of the Hands Up United movement, activist, rapper and musician
Tef Poe was born in St. Louis, Missouri as Kareem Jackson. As a rapper he became known by his stage name Tef Poe (short for Teflon Poetix). Tef has consistently advocated grass-roots involvement in improving the lives of African Americans and in racial justice within and outside the United States. In his art and activism, he insists on the value of local people taking charge of conversations about their own communities rather than relying on national organizations. His work during the Ferguson protests was featured in the documentary, ”Whose Streets?” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and had a theatrical release marking the third anniversary of the killing of Mike Brown. He was selected to be the Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow via Harvard University’s prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute for 2017-2018. He was also a Fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for American Studies in 2016.