Carlee Wright

Bas­sam Tarazi is a Change Man­age­ment Consultant…but he wasn’t always. He has a back­ground in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and start­ed his career as a nuclear engi­neer work­ing on nuclear sub­marines in Pearl Har­bor, Hawaii. Born and raised in Con­necti­cut, the 39-year-old now lives in Port­land with his wife, Saman­tha, and dog, Oliv­er. His hob­bies include writ­ing, read­ing, hiking/trekking, swim­ming, bik­ing, and watch­ing his beloved Arse­nal foot­ball club dis­ap­point him. He once con­vinced Fidel Cas­tro to sign his US pass­port with a Sharpie, but that’s not the only risky thing he’s done. Bas­sam has a dynam­ic list of chal­lenges he’s faced, which he will share more about at TEDxSalem VII.

What was your first TED expe­ri­ence? Simon Sinek’s talk was my first stum­ble into a TED Talk (at least from what I can remem­ber)

Do you have a favorite TED Talk? How has it impact­ed your life or per­spec­tive? I’d say it’s that same talk. “Peo­ple don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Simon was one of the first peo­ple to real­ly dri­ve home that idea. Ever since, I’ve always tried to tack­le my “why” in life and to be sure I bring it across in all that I do.

What does this year’s theme “Vision” mean to you? It’s not about what we want to do in the world, but who we want to be. I think we spend too much time think­ing about what we are going to do in life and we for­get to lay the foun­da­tion of who we are going to become. What do peo­ple say about us when we leave the room? When I think of vision, I think about what would go in my eulo­gy, not on my resume.

What do you feel most grate­ful for in your life? That I grew up in the rel­a­tive time of plen­ty. In the his­to­ry of humankind, it is only for the slight­est sliv­er of it that we have the free­doms and time to explore our imag­i­na­tions and this world in the way that we can today. What an incred­i­ble gift that is.

What are some of the most impor­tant lessons you’ve learned in life? How did you learn them? 

You nev­er know when a smile might save some­one’s life. — My mom used to say that to us when we were kids.

“Make every deci­sion the right deci­sion.” When you are left with an either-or choice, just pick one and nev­er look back. If the choice you made does­n’t work out, you can’t look back and say, “I knew it. I should have cho­sen the oth­er thing.” You don’t know that. You could have been dead if you chose the oth­er thing. Learn what you learned in what you chose, dust your­self off and move for­ward. My father taught me that.

Writ­ing isn’t a man­i­fes­ta­tion of what I’ve dis­cov­ered, it’s a dis­cov­ery of what I’ll man­i­fest. Learned this one on my own, try­ing to write. I used to hold ideas in my head think­ing that once I fig­ure them out then I’ll write them down. But it does­n’t work that way. The best part of writ­ing is sit­ting down to write and then writ­ing some­thing you did­n’t even know was in your end. 

In five years you’ll be wrong. I think we some­times get too caught up in our visions for the future that we for­get to see what’s in front of us every day. When peo­ple ask me where do I want to be in five years, I always answer, “Liv­ing inten­tion­al­ly,” because when I go back five years and look for­ward, I’m nev­er where I thought I’d be. We design our ship and load our pro­vi­sions for what we think we will encounter over the hori­zon, but what we inevitably do encounter is nev­er what we expect­ed. So we cer­tain­ly have to choose and pad­dle in a car­di­nal direc­tion in life, but we should always be ready to adapt to what comes from beyond the hori­zon. This has taught me to not put too much weight on any deci­sion. Life will always throw a curve­ball, so it’s bet­ter to act while you can and adapt lat­er.

Tell us some­thing about your­self we could nev­er tell from look­ing at you. I have a stut­ter that I work around every day. One of the hard­est things for me to do is just say my first name when going around the room intro­duc­ing our­selves.

If you could live in the set­ting of any book or movie, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly being involved in the sto­ry, which would you choose? Incep­tion; Imag­ine there was a world where you could enter peo­ple’s dreams?! That would be crazy.

If you could instant­ly become an expert in some­thing, what would it be? Rock­et sci­ence

Go-to karaoke song? The Killers “Mr. Bright­side” 

Where would you go in a time machine? Inside the com­mand mod­ule of Apol­lo 11 on top of the Sat­urn 5, ten sec­onds before liftoff. It was the great­est adven­ture of all time. Would have loved to be a part of it.

TEDxSalem VII

TEDxSalem VII is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and swag. It takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 4, 2020, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Click here for tick­ets.  Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com