2021 Speakers
The theme of our fifth annual TEDxEmilyCarrU event is Recognize. To us, Recognize means thinking critically about what we see around us. It starts with examining the messaging around us and recognizing underlying assumptions, bias and stereotypes. Only when we stop and notice these aspects can we begin taking action to reform them. It’s a cycle of listening, identifying, reworking and learning. When you look at the world with critical eyes, there’s no telling how much you will recognize.
Allyson Pippin
Allyson Pippin is a consultant, professional trainer, and quality advisor currently in the process of writing a self-help book on how to assist business owners on recovering from post entrepreneurship.
Allyson currently resides in San Diego, California, but is a native of Washington, D.C. with years of entrepreneur experience as a franchise owner of a fast-casual restaurant, and business owner of multiple investment properties. She owned and operated a restaurant in Maryland for which she hired over 26 full-time and part-time employees but is still in the process of recovering and re-building.
Allyson earned an MBA from Averett University and a B.S. from Towson University. Additional business ventures include E-commerce stores on Amazon, super-host for Airbnb and future book author.
Ernesto Peña
Ernesto Peña is a Mexican designer, researcher and educator with expertise in Information Design and Digital Humanities. His experiences of migration between countries, languages, industries and disciplines has given him a taste for interstitial spaces of knowledge. In the last few years, the exploration of these spaces has taken him to study points of encounter between aural and visual media through the lens of digital data. The progress of such explorations have led to several academic presentations and publications on the topic. Fortunately, these explorations are far from over.
Athomas Goldberg
Athomas Goldberg is a 20-year veteran of the computer graphics and video game industries specializing in real-time interactive animation and behavior- based AI systems. He has worked for several major game developers, including Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the architecture and development of the character animation system currently in use across all of EA’s sports and action titles, as well as Relic Entertainment, Microsoft Studios, Oculus VR, and Epic Games. He continues to provide animation expertise on character-based interactive entertainment and education projects through his company, Lifelike & Believable Animation Design.
He is a founding member of Pepper’s Ghost New Media & Performing Arts Collective, where his new media performance practice seeks to marry the visual expressivity of real-time computer graphics technologies, including motion capture, procedural animation, stereo 3D projection and virtual / augmented reality with the emotional immediacy of live performance techniques drawn from theatre, dance, circus arts and Bunraku puppetry.
Moni El Batrik
Raised in Canada yet brought up between two very unique cultures, Egyptian and Polish, Moni has developed a character full of creativity, curiosity, precision, diversity and drive. From film and tv to fashion, product design and architecture, Moni has managed to leave a trail of inspiration in her footsteps. Since receiving her Bachelor of Design at Emily Carr University 2020, she has continued learning Advanced Architecture and Urban Planning at the Institute of Catalonia, working towards receiving her Master of Ecological Architecture and Bio-Cities. Powered by ethics and motivated by extraordinary technologies, Moni welcomes a new lifestyle for humans to live a remarkable life in union with nature.
I respectfully acknowledge that I live and work on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
Amberlie Perkin
Amberlie Perkin is an Artist and Art Educator. She has a passion for teaching and reaching youth through art and building empathy and connection through shared creative experiences.
Amberlie has an interdisciplinary practice including painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture. Her artwork investigates place, nature, memory, and wounded ecologies. Amberlie is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts Degree at Emily Carr University. Through curious and embodied engagement with the natural world, her aim is to create a vernacular for grief using the language of nature. The central question of her thesis is: How does artmaking manifest the transformative nature of grief- expressing the simultaneous tensions of loss, absence and longing with those of hope, memory, and regeneration?
Terry Calderbank
Terry Calderbank is a Vancouver-based engineering professional in the field of robotics and automation. Terry holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. His past work includes undergraduate research into robotic grape picking and he currently works with a team developing collaborative robotic assistants to meet the rising demand for labour in the baking industry. Terry is passionate about technology education, creative design, and communicating his experiences related to the challenges in training robots to do traditionally human labour and the impact of his work on employees and industry as a whole.
Stephanie Carter
Stephanie Carter is a Vancouver based creative entrepreneur and illustrator who works with agencies and brands to communicate through the voice of illustration.
After spending 15+ years in the illustration industry Stephanie knows how illustration can bring concepts to life in marketing and communications. Illustration can add mood and impact that can truly engage the viewer in a different way than photography.
Stephanie has worked with many Fortune 500 companies including Time Inc., Honda, Microsoft, Starbucks, Huffington Post, The Royal Canadian Mint and Canada Post. She is a two-time winner of the Lotus Award for “Best Illustration in Advertising”.
In addition to Stephanie’s illustration business, she is the owner of www.imagezoo.com a stock illustration company representing over 400 artists worldwide. Stephanie is also the creator of an art licensing brand under the pseudonym Lily Ashbury with a range of products including stationery, fabrics and gift items.
Stephanie has also taught at both Emily Carr and Capilano University.
Kathryn Wadel
Kathryn Wadel is an interdisciplinary artist living on the Katzie First Nation and the Kwantlen First Nations territory, in British Columbia. She graduated with a BFA degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She combines traditional with digital media and fosters community engagement to explore contemporary relationships between art, culture, science and social practice. Kathryn’s work has been featured in various exhibitions and festivals in British Columbia and has works in private collections across Canada.
As part of her pedagogical practice, Kathryn teaches art programs. She facilitates and encourages art-making as a creative process through socially-engaged material play.