By Rudo Ellen Kazembe ’20
Features Editor
Lake Forest College held its second TEDx on November 3 in the Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel. There were 11 speakers from around the United States and one speaker from a city-state on France’s Mediterranean coastline, known as Monaco. According to Vice President and Executive Producer Zachary Jenkins ’21, “seeing the lights, the stage, the people, all coming together to form something much bigger than anyone could do alone [was] absolutely amazing.”
President and lead organizer of TEDx LakeForestCollege, Hakob Parsamyan ’20, launched TEDx on this campus because he wanted “people to share their ideas worth spreading,” he said. When Parsamyan was 15 years old, he set up a campaign in Armenia that highlighted the “bad effects of TV on children,” he said. Together with some peers, Parsamyan collected more than 4,000 signatures and delivered the petition to the Ministry of Culture in the Armenian government. This resulted in changes being enacted to television programming nationwide.
Not from a high social class, Parsamyan wanted to spread the power of civil society on a global platform. This inspired his first TEDx talk at the TEDxKids@Yerevan event in Armenia. When he planned the first TEDx LakeForestCollege talk with co-founder Hajar Habbal ’20, “it took more than a year of planning,” he said. The idea of “spreading ideas worth sharing” has been resounding with other executive members, such as website manager Koku Donkor ’20. “Every different person has a story…[and] the whole idea of TEDx talks brings different people together from all walks of life to share, which in turn, makes a difference,” Donkor said.
The theme of TEDx LakeForestCollege 2018 was “The Future Ahead.” It had a diverse series of mind-enthralling ideas ranging from “Why Trusting Your Gut is the Best Diet” to “Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: The Most Important Conversation You will have with Your Kids.”
The TEDx speakers themselves had various aims with their speeches. Founder and CEO of Inclusion Nation Michelle Silverthorn wanted to elaborate on why “we need to start having hard conversations about race and gender and [other] differences” in order to “stop trying to be identity blind or colorblind” to “dive deep into why we have biases about each other.” What inspired her to do so were her experiences in America. As a mother of biracial children who can pass for white, she has been seen as their nanny and been “assumed not to be their mum.” She has done a lot of diversity inclusion work at the Illinois Supreme Court Commission.
Nutrition coach Madeleine Karlssorn, who experienced illnesses when she was younger due to listening to other people’s dietary needs as opposed to her own, advocated for the notion that we should “stop getting sucked into all the noise around food.”
Co-Founder Jason Reid was enthralled that TEDx LakeForestCollege accepted his application to have his talk here. His son, who committed suicide 90 days ago, inspired him to do his TEDx talk to “change the trajectory system about suicide” by encouraging people to talk about depression and how it is a disease, not “something you can just shake off.”
Aida Halilovic ’20 was touched by this talk. She said it inspired her to “go around to talk to people to check up on them” and to not just take “yes, I am okay” as an answer.
Dr. Emily Kathryn Harburg, co-founder of Brave Initiatives, elaborated on how her nonprofit organization that teaches girls how to code inspired her to look at “how to build more ethical technology…that helps people to feel more confident.” In her TEDx talk, she said she hoped to spread the message that more “diverse designers” need to build technology that focuses on “empathy [by] thinking about who the user is,” which in turn will end up “bringing us into the world rather than away from the world” to make us feel less “isolated.”
Teodora Ivanova ’22 said the TEDx talks made her “stop and think for just a few seconds about [her] experience” and the ways in which she can “change the world.”
To add onto these enriching TEDx talks, the Inversions Acapella Group harmoniously blended their vocals to “Asimbonanga,” which is an anti-apartheid song that alluded to Nelson Mandela’s experiences when he was imprisoned.
More information about TEDxLakeForestCollege can be found at www.tedxlfc.com.
Rudo Ellen Kazembe can be reached at kazembere@mx.lakeforest.edu.
