Photo: Michael Holmes

What is “TEDxTokyoChange 2013”?

“TEDxChange” was established through a partnership between TED and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is an initiative devoted to ideas worth spreading in the areas of global health and development.

Disruption is usually unwelcome. It represents conflict, chaos, and potential danger. We discourage disruptive behavior in our homes and society, often favoring passivity and compliance. However, under the theme of Global Health and Development and the concept of “Positive Disruption”, TEDxChange views Disruption as a positive – sometimes vital – catalyst for change. Disruption can shed a unique light on difficult issues, giving a fresh urgency and perspective to the challenges of our global community. To solve the most intractable challenges in Health and Development, we need positive disruption. It is the path to true progress.

To approach this theme, TEDxChange2013 was simultaneously held in more than 120 locations around the world – including here in Tokyo. TEDxTokyoChange combined a livestream of the main event held in Seattle, with additional talks by local speakers Nhat Vuong and Emmy Suzuki Harris. This was followed by time for all participants to exchange ideas on the themes discussed in the evening’s talks.

Videos of the talks given at the main TEDxChange event will soon be available on TED.com. In the meantime, please enjoy the livestream recording.

About Melinda Gates – Host of TEDxChange

Melinda Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with Bill Gates, she shapes and approves the foundation’s strategies, reviews results, and sets the overall direction of the organization. Melinda will host TEDxChange from the Gates Foundation campus in Seattle, Washington.

You can read more on TEDxChange on TED.com

TEDxChange 2013 Speakers

Local Speakers

Emmy Suzuki Harris

Founder and Campaigns Director, Change.org Japan

Emmy Suzuki Harris is the Founder and Campaign Director of the Japan team of Change.org. She grew up in Japan before going on to study at Yale. After working at McKinsey & Company, Inc, on the Obama campaign, she joined a team to start up and develop Purpose, a Social Incubator company. She then joined Change.org and from 2012 began to build the Japan team. Change.org is a social platform that enables people to take their ideas of “change” and put them in to practice, through the creation of online petitions. Currently, Change.org consists of 25 million members worldwide and covers a wide variety of areas from ecology and health to human rights and social justice.

Nhat Vuong

Founder and CEO, ikifu.org

Nhat Vuong is the Founder of i-kifu.org, a donation platform for NPOs, and a Global Shaper from the World Economic Forum. Nhat is a second generation Vietnamese refugee who grew up in Switzerland. His visit to Vietnam when he was 15 years old changed his view of the world, as he witnessed the gap between his life and those of Vietnamese street children.

Nhat will share his quest of finding ways to give back to society and his aim for a world where social contributions are a part of our daily lives.

Cathleen Kaveny

John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Theology

Cathleen Kaveny is an American legal of scholar and theologian. She is a John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Theology at Notre Dame Law School since 1995, and is currently a visiting professor at Princeton University.She will offer her unique perspective on reconciling religious traditions and modern life.

Halimatou Hima

Child Protection Division at the United Nations in Niger (UNICEF)

Halimatou Hima is a Masters in Public Policy candidate at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Following an internship in the Women & Population Division at the United Nations Foundation, she worked in the Child Protection Division at the United Nations in her home country of Niger (UNICEF). Her talk will focus on the importance of investing in girls to positively disrupt the course of their lives.

Roger Thurow

Senior Fellow on Global Agriculture and Food Policy, The Chicago Council

Roger Thurow, a journalist and author, joined the Chicago Council in January 2010 after three decades at the Wall Street Journal. For 20 years, he was a foreign correspondent based in Europe and Africa. He will follow with a talk about the role of people and technology in disrupting natural agricultural cycles and the importance of the 1980s Ethiopian famine in shaping his passion and interest in this space.

Julie Dixon

Deputy Director, Center for Social Impact Communication of Georgetown University

Julie Dixon is the Deputy Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication (CSIC), an academic initiative that examines the critical role of communication in fostering engagement in social change. She will conclude with a talk that explores the permanent disruption of social media on the way people get involved in social causes and how this has the potential to gradually shift traditional models of donor engagement across the non-profit sector.

David Fasanya

Youth Poet

David Fasanya is a Nigerian-American performance artist and award-winning youth poet residing in Brooklyn, NY.

Salim Shekh and Sikha Patra

Teenager leaders in community work for children in the slum areas

Salim Sheikh and Sikha Patra, youth educators and teenager leaders in community work for children in the slum areas where they live, are engaged in inspire children while balancing their work with studies. A trailer from the feature film Revolutionary Optimists, about how children are saving lives in the slums of Calcutta, will be shown during the session. Salim and Sikha, two of the children featured prominently in the film, will join onstage for Q&A.