TEDxYouth@SHC | Speakers 2016

Introducing...

Our TEDxYouth Speakers!

Edelbert Claudio

Edelbert Claudio is a senior at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco, California. Inspired by his mom who is an intensive care unit nurse, he is drawn to learning more about the advancement and future of our growing medical field, immersing himself into the world of healthcare. It was his experience at CPMC as a medical volunteer that initially taught him the fundamentals and values of human health care, including the focus on human dignity and compassion. In his free time, Edelbert enjoys running with his track team, reading books about psychology and philosophy, playing the drums, and spending time with his friends and family. By sharing his talk, he hopes to inspire others as well to seek their passions and find their essence in life.

Audrey Moore is an adventurous and creative junior at Campolindo High School. She enjoys swimming, teaching kung fu, and exploring new places. Her fun-loving spirit and quirky sense of humor lead her into many different scenarios that give her great global perspective. Combined with her passion for helping others, Audrey is excited to spread her views on empathy's power to change the world. In the future, she hopes to continue having a positive impact on others, whether it be by sharing a smile or an insight.

Audrey Moore

Mei Tam

Mei Tam is a senior at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, California. As a Chinese-American attending a predominately white high school, she has come to realize the importance of keeping one's own identity despite being a minority. She hopes to help Asian Americans redefine their identity that many, including herself, has struggled with growing up. Mei hopes that once Asian-Americans can change how they view themselves, the community will become more comfortable with themselves and they will have the confidence to raise their voices.

Anjana Iyer is a senior at Saint Francis High School. She has been an avid reader and a curious observer from a very young age. She often questioned and analyzed the characters in her favorite books or movies and enjoyed studying human behavior in school science projects. As a result, she is very interested in psychology. She also enjoys listening to film scores and loves learning more about her favorite composers’ musical styles. Her passion for both psychology and film scores have allowed her to dig deeper into each field and ask questions about the possibilities in medical research that come from a combination of the two. Anjana also enjoys dancing and watching films in her free time and is a member of her school’s varsity debate team.

Anjana Iyer

Catriona Black

Catriona Black is a junior at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory in San Francisco. She represents her school on the varsity soccer and lacrosse teams and has played sports from a young age. Growing up, she struggled with the conflict of how she can be considered an athlete and yet still be regarded as feminine. Through her talk, she wants to share her story of how she overcame this dilemma using role models from the athletic world that inspired her. She hopes to make people aware of the necessity of a broader definition of what it means to be feminine.

Ce-Lai Fong is a junior at San Ramon Valley High School and a writer for Affinity Magazine, a social justice publication. Ce-Lai’s journey with bullying has caused her to be passionate about helping others and it pushed her to embrace living as the most authentic version of herself. By sharing her story, Ce-Lai hopes to inspire others to live as the truest versions of themselves.

Ce-Lai Fong

Leah Graves is a Sophomore at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Leah self identifies as a “highly sensitive person” and has struggled emotionally to understand what that means for her. Her own difficulties with her emotional development prompted her to tell her story and share what helped, and hindered her on the journey.

Leah Graves

Nicole Kim

Nicole Kim is a junior at Saint Francis High School who loves music, literature, and animals. She is a first generation immigrant who came to America with her parents in 2001. Living in the diverse and multi-ethnic Bay Area, Nicole has had the privilege of experiencing and observing different families and communities. From her personal experiences, she has learned that being an immigrant is an inextricable part of your identity and goes beyond food, language, media and culture. Nicole has never shared the stories she will be telling to a larger audience and she is both very excited and nervous to do so! She hopes that her talk will be of value to everyone, whether or not they are an immigrant. In her spare time, Nicole enjoys going on walks with her dog, running, listening to podcasts, and watching Korean talk shows.

Alex Yeh

Alex Yeh is a junior at Lick-Wilmerding High School who loves the arts, reading, and nature. Because he almost lost his best friend to peer pressure, he wants to show how few things are more important than good friendships. He’s learned that meaningful lifelong relationships are a priority over rushed romantic ones, and he hopes that others can learn this too.

Emily Fukuda is a junior at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory, where she has branched out into all things Visual and Performing Arts. Prioritizing friends and family over everything else, she wants to share her story to warn others how peer pressure can easily manipulate and destroy meaningful relationships. Through her experience, she hopes others can learn the value of friendship.

Emily Fukuda

Tiffany Cabrera

Tiffany Cabrera is currently a senior at Saint Francis, Mountain View. She has a love for all things creative and spends much of her free time teaching herself skills such as video editing, user interface design and digital photography. In her talk, she will discuss her deep love for learning and how other students can also take initiative over their own education.

Purva Joshi is currently a sophomore in high school and she has witnessed firsthand how it feels like to be a young adult in a world where there is always something to be afraid of. But now she shares the story of how a simple change in perspective allowed her to control the seemingly insurmountable power of fear.

Purva Joshi

Aishani Aatresh

Aishani Aatresh, a freshman at Saint Francis High School, has loved leading, learning, and talking forever; she “taught” her stuffed animals as a toddler and was often reading or asking questions. As a teenager, only the scale of these activities has changed as she continues to play soccer and pursue music, along with other endeavors on and off campus. Aishani’s allergies to cashews and pistachios have also been with her from a young age. Her experiences with her allergies have surprisingly contributed to her life, driving her curiosity and otherwise unfathomable projects, especially for science fairs. Though she loves almost every subject at school, she currently aspires to work or teach in computational biology or biotechnology.

Arrian Ebrahimi, a junior from Saint Francis High School, has long been exposed to a diversity of religious and cultural influences; however, rather than follow one of these as his path in life, he has forged his own path in faith. In his talk, Arrian will explore a new way of looking at faith and discuss how this new view of faith unites us all. Arrian is an advocate of his beliefs, having been a student speaker at his school's interfaith prayer and having spoken at a protest he helped organize. He is also a Varsity member of his school's cross-country and track teams, a board member of his school's International Club, and a lover of learning foreign languages.

Arrian Ebrahimi

Naliyah Martinez-Truso

Naliyah Martinez-Truso is a senior at San Lorenzo High School in San Lorenzo, California. She is deeply passionate and extremely dedicated to the work of peace and advocacy and has dedicated much time and energy toward spreading this through clubs she has created on campus including Youth Consciousness, and the intersectional feminist club, as well as her involvement in the Black Student Union. As a leader at the Mosaic Project, she has learned and taught the three keys to peace: empathy, assertiveness, and listening. Her work of transforming society's self-perpetuated pyramid of violence into a pyramid of peace has led her to curate this talk from her eye-opening experience. She hopes that you all take a piece of it with you.

Max Ptacek is an 8th grader at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, California. He loves all things technological and mechanical, and he has always loved the concept of VR. His passion for video games led him to join his friends in creating their own game. In his talk, he and his friends will talk about empowering kids through code, how schools are teaching kids coding wrong, and how that can be fixed. He hopes he can inspire children and adults alike to try their hand at coding.

Max Ptacek

Brian Underwood is currently an 8th grader at Hillbrook School. He has always had an interest in science, technology and coding, and has become even more interested with the releases of virtual reality headsets. In his TEDx Talk, he and his friends talk about empowering students through coding and what schools could do better to inspire kids to code. In his free time, Brian enjoys programming, water polo, and hanging out with his friends.

Brian Underwood

Ben Makarechian is an 8th grade student at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, California. For the last two years, his passions have been playing sports, exercising, and computer programming. In his talk with Brian Underwood and Max Ptacek, he describes how his own experiences with programming were enhanced by connecting it to his passions. He and his group also outline how they hope others can enjoy learning to code by connecting projects to an existing passion.