TEDx event hopes to inspire students to pursue their passions

October 15, 2018 — by Megan Chen and Karen Chow
tedx

Students and Adults will speak at the school's annual TEDx event.

The next TEDxSaratogaHighSchool event is composed of five speakers who will speak about overcoming obstacles to chase their dreams.

It will take place Saturday in the McAfee Center from 5-7 p.m. Tickets are $8.

The speakers consist of three professionals and two students from diverse backgrounds. Student speakers include senior Kaitlyn Wang and junior Krisha Minocha. AP US History teacher Faith Stackhouse-Daly, entrepreneur and CEO of Deepfactor.ai Kiran Kamity and author of “The Illuminator” series Alina Sayre will also speak at the event.

This year’s theme is “Write Your Own Story.” The speakers will share how they did not let hardships stop them from continuing to strive for their goals.

Wang will be speaking about how poetry allowed her to step out of her comfort zone.

“I try to avoid public speaking as much as possible, but recently, I’ve been trying to push myself to speak up more,” Wang said. “What pushed me to speak at the event was that I’m more afraid of regretting not doing it.”

Wang recalled times when she attended the speaker series and thought that there was no possibility she could stand on stage and do the same thing.

“I was really frustrated that I couldn’t give class presentations the way I wanted to,” Wang said. “Hearing people speak at Speak Up for Change and watching a lot of TEDTalks, I wanted to do that just once.”

As the event nears, Wang admitted that she is both excited and terrified, and is busily preparing her speech and slideshow.

The event is also required to show TEDTalk videos along with the speaker series under the TEDx Program. TEDxSaratogaHighSchool is organized independently of the company TED through a free license granted by TED.

The school’s club members work together on different committees to make the event as successful and professional as possible.

“We hope that through the speakers’ talks, the audience will be inspired to pursue passions which they might not typically pursue, and also be inspired to take on new ideas,” said senior Michelle Vu, the club’s co-head of curation.

Other members of TEDxSaratogaHighSchool include co-Presidents Rachel Bakke and Ines Picard, Head of Media Isaiah Vivera, co-head of marketing Isabelle Rieken and Kitty Huang, and head of production Harman Chawla.

 
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