TEDxSaratogaHighSchool preserves original goals

“It’s up to us to empower and educate our girls to reverse stereotypes, and rather than stopping them from falling, to teach them how to get back up.”

That was one of the memorable lines from a talk that junior Krisha Minocha gave last October on the stage of the McAfee Center. She gave her presentation on women in STEM.

Minocha is just one of many student speakers who has participated one of the school’s annual TEDx events.

TEDxSaratogaHigh organizes its events based on the groups TED, the parent organization, suggests they make: marketing, media, production, curation and finance, said the club’s president, senior Rachel Bakke. Once each task is assigned to a committee head, Bakke and the vice president, senior Ines Picard, lead event planning.

Since TEDx has strict regulations on the type of events carried out in its name, the officers first acquire a license of approval from TEDx. They then search for speakers from the community and school through networking, recommendations and research.

This year, the theme of the event, held on Oct. 20, was “Write Your Own Story.” Seven speakers, including senior Kaitlyn Wang, Minocha and history teacher Faith Daly, shared a variety of stories, from becoming a creative writer to raising awareness of disparity in STEM.

In 2014, a group of robotics students, alumni Edwin Pan, Kabir Manghnani and Nicole Lin, founded TEDxSaratogaHigh. Since then, the club has changed its set design, adopted a more aggressive marketing strategy and invited more interesting speakers, Picard said.

Despite these changes, the club still preserves its original goal — to shine light upon unshared ideas hiding in the community.

“TEDx provides speakers that share innovative, new or interesting ideas that students can then hopefully incorporate in their own lives or gain a better understanding of,” the club’s adviser, assistant principal Kerry Mohnike said.

These speakers also benefit from delivering their presentations. Minocha said she gained confidence and increased support after her talk.

“It was just a really cool avenue to use my voice and be able to share certain facts with people,” she said.

Ultimately, despite its short history, TEDx encapsulates the TED slogan: ideas worth spreading.

“I hope people take away a variety of or a single idea that can improve their own lives,” Mohnike said. “TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, but it’s certainly branched out into all kinds of topics; it’s just for somebody who has a uniqueness about their life that they can share in a very concise way, and I think that’s what our school would like to do.”