Laura Fosmire

Try to describe Noah Schultz in just a few words and you can’t help but slip in a few tan­ta­liz­ing details.

He’s a writer and a poet. He has major dreams for Ore­gon and for him­self. For the past sev­er­al years, he’s been incar­cer­at­ed at the MacLaren Youth Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty. Cur­rent­ly at a work study tran­si­tion pro­gram in Flo­rence, he’ll be tem­porar­i­ly released just in time to join our ros­ter of speak­ers at TEDxSalem.

But since he has such a way with words, we thought we would let him do the intro­duc­ing.

How did you come to learn about TEDxSalem? What made you want to get involved?

I was dis­cussing my goal of speak­ing at a TED event with a friend of mine when she men­tioned know­ing some of the orga­niz­ers. I got very excit­ed and asked her if she would be able to con­nect me with them. TED pro­vides the plat­form to deliv­er hope through a pos­i­tive mes­sage, or new idea. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

Tell me a lit­tle more about the sub­ject of your TED talk.

My talk is an infu­sion of poet­ry, my life sto­ry and the wis­dom I have learned from the expe­ri­ence of being incar­cer­at­ed at an ear­ly age. I want peo­ple to walk away from this talk ready to take on the thing they have pushed to the side. Humans are meant to per­sist, sur­vive and reach unimag­in­able lev­els of excel­lence. I hope this talk stokes the inner fire inside of them.

You’re a tal­ent­ed writer, and your work has been show­cased online. What orig­i­nal­ly got you into writ­ing?

Thank you, I feel very blessed to have been well received in that area.

When I was 18, I signed up for a group called Write Around Port­land. This is a non­prof­it locat­ed out of Port­land who was offer­ing their ser­vices to MYCF (MacLaren Youth Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty).

This was where I was exposed to cre­ative writ­ing. We were giv­en jour­nals and spent two hour ses­sions writ­ing to prompts and shar­ing with oth­ers in the group. In this class, I felt like what I had to say mat­tered. The feel­ing writ­ing gave me was like no oth­er. This was the one place I could escape to. It was and is my ther­a­py.

Can you talk more about the expe­ri­ence of being incar­cer­at­ed at 17?

There is a lot I can say about that expe­ri­ence. I am going to save that for the talk. To be incred­i­bly brief, I can say that this has been some­thing that has altered my life path for­ev­er.

What would you most want peo­ple to know about you?

I would want peo­ple to know that I care about them, off the bat. I believe that we are all con­nect­ed through the beau­ty of life. Each one of us makes up a piece of some­thing big­ger. That way of think­ing con­sis­tent­ly influ­ences each of my inter­ac­tions.

I would also want to let them know that I am a very ambi­tious indi­vid­ual who is focused on mak­ing a pos­i­tive impact on the plan­et Earth before leav­ing it.

What are your plans for the future?

When asked this ques­tion my brain usu­al­ly goes into a state over­load. I have so many ideas with writ­ten plans of action ready for imple­men­ta­tion upon my release.

I am an aspir­ing social entre­pre­neur who is pas­sion­ate about the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty, human traf­fick­ing and envi­ron­men­tal issues. At this moment, I am work­ing on devel­op­ing and launch­ing a Kom­bucha busi­ness and pub­lish­ing my first book.

See Schultz and oth­ers speak at TEDxSalem Oct. 3.

The all-day event is $40 for stu­dents and $50 for the gen­er­al pub­lic and includes talks, enter­tain­ment, par­tic­i­pa­tion in recess breaks, hands-on activ­i­ties between ses­sions, plus food through­out the day (break­fast, coffee/tea/water, snacks and lunch), a gift bag and a few oth­er good­ies. Find your tick­ets here.

Sukhsim­ran­jit Singh has a super­pow­er, steeped in an art form, derived from social sci­ence.

He can nego­ti­ate.

Singh does­n’t use this pow­er for evil; he does­n’t bend oth­ers to his will, he does­n’t manip­u­late to get what he’s after. He uses it for good; find­ing com­mon ground, bridg­ing cul­tures, fos­ter­ing peace and har­mo­ny.

It sounds incred­i­bly sim­ple. Easy, almost. But one does­n’t need to look far to imag­ine the glob­al pos­si­bil­i­ties that open up with such a skill. Imag­ine how dif­fer­ent war might look, if only com­pro­mise could be reached. How an empa­thet­ic con­nec­tion could dis­man­tle racism, sex­ism, reli­gious intol­er­ance, fear and hatred.

“Love and com­pas­sion are the most pow­er­ful things with­in us,” Singh says. “But we sub­due them with hatred and judge­ment.”

Singh is the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion with­in the law school at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty, which he joined in 2008. He’s also a full-time mem­ber of the law fac­ul­ty, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Atkin­son Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment, has con­sult­ed for the city of Salem, states of Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia, and has worked in and taught medi­a­tion in 17 coun­tries across the globe.

Legal­ly, he explains, medi­a­tion is all about get­ting past a par­ty’s posi­tion — I’m right, you’re wrong — and get­ting at a par­ty’s inter­ests. As a pro­fes­sion­al medi­a­tor, he lis­tens to both sides to find a mutu­al­ly agree­able solu­tion.

To illus­trate his work, he tells a para­ble about two sis­ters who are fight­ing over an orange.

Both sis­ters want the orange for them­selves. The obvi­ous and fair solu­tion would be to cut the orange in half. But nei­ther sis­ter is sat­is­fied with this, and so the fight­ing resumes.

A medi­a­tor would ask each sis­ter why she wants the orange. One sis­ter says she wants the orange for cook­ing. The oth­er wants the orange for its juice.

So the first sis­ter gets the orange peel, for cook­ing. And the sec­ond sis­ter gets the peeled orange, for juic­ing. Each sis­ter gets their ‘whole’ of the orange.

In his medi­a­tion work, Singh says he likes to take the cas­es that oth­ers find impos­si­ble to solve. To him, every prob­lem has a nego­tiable solu­tion.

“I grew up in a dif­fer­ent cul­ture,” he says (Singh was born in Pun­jab, India, and came to the Unit­ed States in 2004 to be clos­er to his sis­ter). “So I’m able to empathize with dif­fer­ent sto­ries and be flex­i­ble in my think­ing. I like to chal­lenge myself.”

For his TED talk, Singh says he’ll dis­cuss how peo­ple see each oth­er, and how that inter­feres with nego­ti­a­tions; he’ll explain how dif­fer­ent cul­tures inter­act with one anoth­er.

“It sort of gets at the ques­tion of what is cul­ture,” he says. “Cul­ture is omnipresent. It may be more attached to reli­gion or law or fam­i­ly, but cul­ture is an amal­ga­ma­tion. There are lay­ers of cul­ture, and cul­ture changes over time.”

Indeed, lis­ten­ing to Singh’s TED talk may even pro­vide par­tic­i­pants with their own super­pow­ers.

“The per­son you nego­ti­ate with most is your­self,” he says.

See Singh and 12 oth­ers speak at TEDxSalem Oct. 3.

The all-day event is $40 for stu­dents and $50 for the gen­er­al pub­lic and includes talks, enter­tain­ment, par­tic­i­pa­tion in recess breaks, hands-on activ­i­ties between ses­sions, plus food through­out the day (break­fast, coffee/tea/water, snacks and lunch), a gift bag and a few oth­er good­ies. Find your tick­ets here.