Speaker Announcement

Yesenia Gallardo: Save the planet, eat an insect

November 27, 2016 By Stefanie Knowlton

While crickets, grubs and insect eggs might not top your list of snack foods, they pop up in cuisine around the world, and they just might be the key to a greener planet.

“It just makes a lot of sense,” said Yesenia Gallardo, a TEDxSalem speaker, environmentalist and insect entrepreneur.

“The sustainability and the nutrition is there.”

Insects are energy efficient, so they convert whatever they eat to mass much more quickly, she said. For example, it takes two pounds of feed to get one pound of food from insects compared to 25 pounds of feed for one pound of beef, she said. There are similar savings in water and land.

Gallardo understands that insects aren’t for everyone. For those willing to try, it seems that crickets are the easiest to stomach.

“I don’t think they’re the most delicious insect out there,” she said. “They are the gateway bug.”

An even easier sell might be sampling powdered insects, which are added to energy bars, chips, cookies and other snack foods.

Eating insects wasn’t a gastronomic stretch for Gallardo, a Salem native. She spent her summers in Oaxaca, Mexico, and many of the region’s dishes include insects. One popular dip, made with ant eggs, tastes like bacon-flavored mushrooms, she said.

She used to raise crickets in an indoor micro-farm. She sold her tiny, tiny livestock to food manufacturers, but it was too hard to climate control the space.

Now the Yale University graduate is working a different angle: cricket poop. Not for food, but for fertilizer. It’s a renewable resource that doesn’t deplete natural ones straining under the demand for soil amendments.

“It has so much potential,” she said.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem IV

Tickets are on sale now for Salem’s annual TEDx event Saturday, January 7, 2017. Tickets are $50, $40 for students. The all-day event includes talks, performances, refreshments, lunch and a swag bag. 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.us.

Karen Holman: Punk rock chemist to speak on new anti-cancer drug

November 15, 2016 By Saerom

Karen Holman is a punk rocker, radio DJ, and a chemistry professor and researcher. She lives deeply in all three of those identities.

But at TEDxSalem, Holman’s scientist side will be on display.

Holman was always interested in science as a little girl, she said, and it was her non-ending question of “why?” that landed her in chemistry.

“I wanted to know what was happening to the molecules,” she said.

Holman, whose specialty is in metals, will share about the discovery of metal-based anti-cancer drugs. She hopes to make the science behind this discovery approachable for audiences of all backgrounds, to learn about the barriers medical science face in becoming accessible to patients, and become energized about scientific discovery and innovation.

Holman’s science career began at Willamette University, as an undergrad, and she also ended up at Willamette to establish her teaching career.

It was through that journey that she became a college radio DJ and became interested in alternative, metal and punk rock music. While in California for graduate school in the ’90s, Holman saw an all-girl punk band, which inspired her to play in bands of her own. You may recognize her as the guitarist for the City of Pieces, for example. But after all these years, she is just now in her first all-woman punk band called Hot Sheets.

Holman’s experience as a radio DJ also inspired her to eventually found KMUZ, Salem’s community radio. She hosts two shows on it, and will soon start a third later this month.

Jerry Braza: Sowing the seeds of mindfulness

November 6, 2016 By Stefanie Knowlton

This picture was taken in Homer, Alaska where Braza is helping leaders create a more mindful community.

TEDxSalem speaker Jerry Braza plants the seeds of mindfulness one conversation, one seminar and one community at a time.

When he talks his words fall slow and steady. His eyes stay fixed on the person in front of him. There is nowhere else to be but here, right now.

In Homer, Alaska, Braza taught hundreds of educators, health-care workers, mental health providers and parents the benefits of mindfulness and how to create that stillness within. Once they heal themselves, he said, they can heal the community.

Braza is an ordained dharma teacher in the lineage of Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh, spreading mindfulness at retreats, seminars, workshops and classes. But mindfulness didn’t always come naturally to the retired Western Oregon University professor.

“I was always in a rush,” he said about his life 35 years ago.

“I always felt anxious. I felt like I was always late. I was with someone, and I was not really there.”

He remembers skipping pages when he read books to his kids at night because he felt like he didn’t have the time.

Braza started to take classes on meditation and mindfulness. He traveled to India, China, Vietnam and Thailand to study. Then he mixed in his Catholic roots of contemplation and developed a secular mindfulness practice that he now shares.

One simple way to practice, he said, is to linger longer on something beautiful. We often focus on negative things. Instead gaze on something of beauty such as leaves on a sidewalk, the moon, a flower or someone you love. Stay with that image for a full 10 breaths.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 …

Catch Braza at TEDxSalem this January to find a little more peace in your life and your community.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem IV

Announcement: Welcome, speakers of TEDxSalem 2017!

May 16, 2016 By Carlee Wright

One of the hardest jobs the TEDxSalem team has is selecting speakers, especially when, like this year, we receive almost 50 well-thought applications on inspiring, controversial and informative topics.

It was not an easy task to narrow down the selection, but after much deliberation, we are proud to introduce the class of TEDxSalem 2017.

Alia Braley | Director of Programs at the Albert Einstein Institution
Gina Ochsner | Award winning author and writer in residence at Corban University
Jerry Braza | Former professor, Buddhist teacher, author and consultant
Karen Holman | Chemistry Professor at Willamette University and punk rocker
Kathryn Cellerini Moore | Artist In Residence
Megha Joshi | Student and inventor
Nick Symmonds | Olympic Athlete, Outdoor Enthusiast, Writer and Entrepreneur.
Rebecca Maitland-Courtney | Creative community thinker and activist
Renee Mitchell | Multimedia artist, teacher/facilitator, community advocate and creative revolutionist
Teressa Raiford | Contemporary Civil Rights leader and community organizer
Vanessa Timmons | Executive Director, Oregon Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence
Warren Binford | Associate Professor of Law at Willamette University, Director of the Clinical Law Program
Yesenia Gallardo | Co-owner of Poda Foods

As the months leading up to TEDxSalem 2017 unfold, you will be hearing more about them and their topics, so stay tuned.

Speaker fights for social justice on and off the clock

September 3, 2015 By Stefanie Knowlton

CM Hall a proud native Oregonian committed to equality and social justice and a fierce Words With Friends player. She is also a 2015 TEDxSalem speaker. — CM Hall is a proud native Oregonian committed to equality and social justice and a fierce Words With Friends player.

Being a sign language interpreter gives you a window into the most intimate details of people’s lives and can put you on the national political stage. Just ask CM Hall, a 2015 TEDxSalem speaker.

She served as a member of John Kerry’s senior staff during his run for president in 2004, including making sure ASL interpreters signed every speech. She has also interpreted for President Obama. Five times.

“That’s a pretty good gig if you can get it, right?,” she said.

If it sounds like she’s trying to recruit interpreters, it’s no accident. She helped launched a national campaign to inspire the next generation of ASL interpreters to help fill a shortage.

Now she works as project coordinator of the Western Region Interpreter Education Center at Western Oregon University. She teaches DeafBlind Interpreting and LGBTQ Studies.

When Hall discovered ASL interpreting in college, she was drawn to the gestures. It reminded her of theater because it embodied a conversation, but it was the social justice piece that hooked her for good.

“When I started to learn about Deaf culture, it sparked my social justice bend. This isn’t about a community with a disability,” she said. “This is about a community that is linguistically and culturally oppressed.”

Despite dedicating more than 23 years to learning the language and earning awards for her advocacy, she still recognizes that she’s an audist, someone who behaves or is treated as if they’re superior based on the ability to hear. If you’re a member of the hearing community, she said, you’re an audist. You can’t help it.

That doesn’t stop her from fighting for equal access.

For example, she coordinates a mentorship program that matches seasoned interpreters with new interpreters in 11 states and territories to boost quality access for the Deaf community. She also fights in little ways. In July, she started a change.org petition to add the ASL “I Love You” emoji to mobile texting applications. She said she feels lucky to do the work that she does.

In her free time, she advocates for the LGBTQ community. Yes, she does social justice for fun, too. Currently she chairs the Equality PAC for Basic Rights Oregon. To learn more about Hall’s life as a sign language interpreter, LGBTQ advocate and self-described queer, catch her TEDxSalem talk Oct. 3. Get your tickets at tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com.

David Craig: Understanding our world through birds

August 27, 2015 By Saerom

In city life, you may not see many wild animals. A cougar sighting is commonly a subject of a local news story — and much conversation.

But birds? They’re everywhere. Maybe they’ve nested on your property or they’re eating feed your neighbors throw out. Maybe they wake you up earlier than you’d like, chirping near your window.

How often have you wondered why a bird is in your neighborhood, versus another part of the world? How often have you wondered what the bird’s story is?

David Craig, a professor of biology at Willamette University, has built a career around asking and answering these questions.

Craig has been interested in the world around him and the creatures that live in it since he was a child. He says most children are, and many grow out of it. Craig never did.

Craig says answering the questions of why birds settle where they do and where and when they migrate can answer a lot of questions about ourselves and our world.

“I think understanding our place in the natural world is always important,” Craig said. “There’s a long history of birds being able to tell us really quickly about the environment before people have to make decisions that are going to affect people.”

Ospreys and eagles were the ones who told us DDT, a pesticide, was harmful, Craig said, when their eggs stopped hatching and their population declined. We later learned that DDT was causing cancer in people, he said.

In recent years, hobbyists have been contributing to scientific knowledge by taking photos of birds with tags that scientists elsewhere have put on them and helping them track them through the Internet.

The new technology and new twist on birding is attracting a younger generation of birders, Craig said.
Want to learn more about how you could get involved? You can see his talk at TEDxSalem on Oct. 3 at the Salem Convention Center. Get your tickets at tedxsalem2015.eventbrite.com.

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