TEDxStCloud announces list of speakers for 2021 event

ST. CLOUD, MN – Eight local voices will share ‘Ideas for Spreading’ at the fifth TEDxStCloud. This year’s theme is “Kissing”.

The event will take place on Thursday, October 14, 2021 at the Paramount Center for the Arts from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The independently organized, TED-licensed event is hosted locally to bring the community together to share a TED- like experience. Some of the best talks from TEDx events have been featured on TED.com and garnered millions of views from audiences around the world.

TEDxStCloud 2021 speakers include:

• Annette Atkins – A historian who uses letters, photos, shoes, art, chairs, census records, maps and other artifacts as keys to uncover the past, a past full of wonders and mysteries, d stories and landscapes to explore. It starts from the conviction that opening this door sheds light on the past and the present. Atkins, a former teacher, teaches that our history and our lives are so close to each other that reflecting on one helps illuminate the other.
• James albert – Pastor, leader of social justice and member of the board of directors of ISAIAH MN. Alberts founded Higher Ground Church of God in Christ in 2001. Alberts was a key leader in bringing about the St. Cloud Community Policing Agreement and is focused on continued community development.
• Marie bruno – Artist and owner of the Bruno Press typographic printing company. From his first days in his father’s studio, Bruno learned his love for printing. She took that love to the next level when she obtained a degree in printmaking and took over her father’s shop. She describes her work as the sum of a hand-carved block of linoleum, a combined type wood and metal, and a sharp, wicked mind.
• Charles Eisenreich – Kindergarten to Grade 12 lifelong educator and administrator and former minor league baseball player, Eisenreich has taught and coached at several area schools and served as an assistant principal at Tech High School as well as principal at Tech and Apollo High Schools.
• John harlander – Physicist and designer of optical instruments for astronomy and space physics, in particular for the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, satellite, recently launched by NASA.
• Niloufer Merchant – Psychologist, trauma expert, former SCSU professor. Merchant specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders related to trauma, PTSD, depression and anxiety. It incorporates holistic approaches, honoring the connection of mind, body and spirit. She speaks Gujarati, Urdu and Hindi.
• Pierre Rogers – Expert in automation and integration of robotic systems. Rogers brought over 13 years of leadership in automation and robotics when he accepted his last role in 2019 as Vice President and General Manager of Automation at Central McGowan.
• Robbyn wacker – St. Cloud State University president and academician in gerontology and sociology. Wacker’s passion is to help create conditions that bring out the best in others and to advance the mission of higher education. She’s a first-generation college student whose great-grandparents immigrated to the United States in search of a better life and settled in Colorado as farm laborers in the beet fields.

Tickets are on sale now through the Paramount box office at paramountarts.org.

For more information on TEDxStCloud, visit www.TEDxStCloud.com and follow us on FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter: TEDxStCloud.

About TEDx, x = independently organized event

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of self-organized local events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark in-depth discussion and connection. These self-organized local events are marked TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)

About TED

TED is a non-profit organization dedicated to ideas for dissemination, often in the form of short lectures given by leading thinkers and actors. Many of these talks are given at TED conferences, intimate TED shows, and thousands of independently hosted TEDx events around the world. Videos of these interviews are available free of charge on TED.com and other platforms. Audio versions of TED Talks are posted on Daily TED Conferences, available on all podcast platforms.

TED’s open and free initiatives for spreading ideas include TED.com, where new TED Talk videos are posted daily; TEDx, which empowers thousands of individuals and groups to host local and self-organized TED-style events around the world; the TED Fellows program, which selects innovators from around the world to amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities; The daring project, which generates and funds critical ideas that have the potential to impact millions of lives; TED translators, which outsources the captioning of TED Talks so that big ideas can spread across languages ​​and borders; and the educational initiative TED-Ed. TED also offers TED @ Work, a program that reinvents TED conferences for workplace learning. TED also has a growing library of original podcasts, including The TED interview with Chris Anderson, Work-Life with Adam Grant, Away with Saleem Reshamwala and How to be a human.

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