TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

women

Singer-songwriter Kristen Grainger to host TEDxSalem VI

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Kris­ten Grainger will take the stage Jan. 5 as the first woman to host TEDxSalem, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

She’s an award-win­ning singer/songwriter in the band True North and a long­time com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gist in Ore­gon pol­i­tics and high­er edu­ca­tion.

Despite writ­ing speech­es for two Ore­gon gov­er­nors, one attor­ney gen­er­al and three uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dents, she said she is not a speech giv­er so TEDxSalem will be a refresh­ing change of pace.

“I am excit­ed, flat­tered and up for the chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly since, hav­ing viewed pri­or hosts’ videos, I know that have some big shoes to fill. I’m also proud to be the first female host for a Salem TEDx event.”

We offer you a Q and A with Grainger to get to know her before the big day.

 

What was your first TED expe­ri­ence?

My long-time friend and sis­ter-in-law is a physi­cian and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and was part of a TED talk spon­sored by the Gates Foun­da­tion about world health. (She shared her doc­u­men­tary “Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Opti­mists” about find­ing hope in the slums of Kolkata.)

That was my first expo­sure to TED. It was mem­o­rable because, well, it was a fam­i­ly mem­ber on a world stage, issue-wise. The total effect of all of the pre­sen­ters in that new con­text was mind-blow­ing.

 

Do you have a favorite TED Talk? How has it impact­ed your life or per­spec­tive?

Rox­ane Gay’s Con­fes­sions of a Bad Fem­i­nist and oth­ers — the inter­face between the speak­er and the lis­ten­er is pow­er­ful and the for­mat is acces­si­ble and con­ducive to learn­ing. I gained greater aware­ness of spe­cif­ic issues and broad­ened my own perspective/world view.

 

Ever thought of doing your own talk? What would it be about? 

Not real­ly before now. If I did:

  1. Why does col­lege cost so much?
  2. How Women Lead
  3. It’s In Me, and It’s Got to Come Out: Cathar­tic Song­writ­ing

 

You are on the board for The­atre 33. I am curi­ous to know more about what that is.

It is a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing region­al play­wrights vet and improve new works. The­atre 33 pro­vides pro­duc­tion resources to pro­duce plays as works in progress. The play­wrights get feed­back from a live audi­ence and use that info to improve or mod­i­fy their work mid­stream. This is of huge ben­e­fit to the cre­ative process.

 

When did you start the band True North? What is your lat­est project?

I co-found­ed the band with Dan Wet­zel in 2005. We just released our fifth album, which debuted at #1 in Jan­u­ary on the nation­al folk charts, and it’s still in the top 25. Two tracks on the album won the Wild­flower music fes­ti­val song­writ­ing con­test in in Dal­las, TX last May.

 

What does RE (this year’s theme) mean to you?  

I love that it is total­ly with­out a pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion and sub­ject to inter­pre­ta­tion — it leaves the field wide open, an intel­lec­tu­al grab bag, if you will, of top­ics, sto­ries, issues, and per­spec­tives.

 

Any­thing else that might be inter­est­ing to add?

Cau­tion: I did not com­mit to leav­ing my ukulele at home, because RE could also be inter­pret­ed to mean “Refresh­ing­ly Enter­tain­ing [Host].”

 

Name: Kris­ten Grainger

Age: “Old­er than Bran­di Carlile; younger than Sheryl Crow.”

Edu­ca­tion: BA in English/Creative Writ­ing from Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton

Job Title: Spe­cial Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent for Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives at Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty

Home­town: Boston, MA

Fam­i­ly: Hus­band: Dan; Step­son: Jake; Daugh­ter: Sam and Son-in-Law: Evan

Pets: Dog, Cody

Favorite movie: “RBG” (today, any­way!)

Favorite song or artist: “Skele­tons” by Rick­ie Lee Jones

Hob­bies: Music, music, music. Also hik­ing, fish­ing, read­ing, movies, and fam­i­ly stuff.

Favorite book: “Pos­ses­sion” by A.S. Byatt

What do you want to be when you grow up?: Pro­fes­sor Karen Hol­man, obvi­ous­ly. Doesn’t every­one??

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. 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.

Hebah Hasan: Overcoming your past to follow your future

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It was a sim­ple ques­tion from her daugh­ter that prompt­ed her to open up about her past.

Hebah Hasan’s fam­i­ly often gath­ered around her hus­band to hear sto­ries from his child­hood. One day the daugh­ter point­ed out that she rarely shared any sto­ries from hers.

“She asked me, ‘Did you do this as a lit­tle kid? Did you [dance] bal­let, did you do gym­nas­tics, did you do music?’” said Hasan, 32, moth­er of two and a speak­er at this year’s TEDx Salem VI.

“Actu­al­ly no, I didn’t do any of that,” she said.

“It was a dif­fer­ent time and a dif­fer­ent place,” she said.

Hasan grew up in Sau­di Ara­bia.

There, women were not to cause trou­ble in school, she said. They were seen as wives and com­pan­ions to men, not col­leagues, she said. Women were not to inter­rupt men and were not allowed to sec­ond guess the teacher, she said, some­thing that would prove very dif­fi­cult for the nat­u­ral­ly pre­co­cious and inde­pen­dent Hasan.

She recalls being reg­u­lar­ly neglect­ed and ignored in her class­es grow­ing up. She also remem­bers the emo­tion­al abuse she would reg­u­lar­ly take at school. One par­tic­u­lar­ly humil­i­at­ing moment was when she had ques­tioned one teacher’s math prob­lem and had been forced to stand on one foot in the cor­ner for the remain­der of the class.

Despite the hard­ships Hasan endured, she went on to grad­u­ate from high school and com­plete her edu­ca­tion in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence. Today she works as a soft­ware engi­neer at Garmin in Salem.

Hasan is not look­ing for pity. Look­ing back on her strug­gles, she knows that they played a role in mak­ing her who she is now, she said. That’s the part of the les­son she hopes her daugh­ter hears and not the pain or the fear, she said.

“I don’t want to dis­cour­age her, it made me who I am,” Hasan said.

She will share her sto­ry on the TEDxSalem stage to pro­vide empow­er­ment, she said, and per­spec­tive.

“I would like them to look at things from a dif­fer­ent angle,” she said.

It’s a per­spec­tive she says she wants to share most of all with her son and daugh­ter.

“I want to do it for my kids, they inspire me.”

 

 

Name: Hebah Hasan

Age: 32

Edu­ca­tion: Degree in elec­tri­cal and soft­ware engi­neer­ing, com­put­er sci­ence from Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty

Posi­tion: Soft­ware team leader at Garmin Avi­a­tion

Home­town: Riyadh, Sau­di Ara­bia

Fam­i­ly: Hus­band, son and daugh­ter

Pets: Lots of pets grow­ing up, includ­ing a lizard, par­rots, bun­nies, cats and dogs, most­ly from her father who would ran­dom­ly bring them home, “just from pet store or friends or wher­ev­er.” “He got the weird­est pets ever.”

Hob­bies: Hik­ing, camp­ing, being out in nature; learn­ing gui­tar and piano

Favorite movie: Brave­heart, star­ring Mel Gib­son. “When he shout­ed, ‘Free­dom!’ How impor­tant this is [for him], to the point that he will fight for it to the end of his life.”

Favorite song: “Remem­ber This,” by NF and “The 4th Branch” by Immor­tal Tech­nique

Favorite books: Mys­tery books, espe­cial­ly the writ­ings of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

 

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. 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.

How TEDxSalem ended up with a majority woman speaker roster

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The most impor­tant task for the orga­niz­ers of TEDxSalem is curat­ing inter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing and fun talks — the essence of a good TEDx con­fer­ence. And tru­ly awe­some talks are insep­a­ra­ble from the speak­ers’ iden­ti­ty.

Rep­re­sent­ing diverse abil­i­ties, cul­tur­al back­grounds and gen­der iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is key to putting on a well-round­ed event. Some of these goals came eas­i­er and more nat­u­ral­ly than oth­ers.

“Since we start­ed TEDxSalem, we have always strived for more diver­si­ty in our speak­er line-up. We want TEDxSalem to rep­re­sent a spec­trum of races, thoughts and ideas and we dreamed that one day we might have an event that was half male and half female,” co-cura­tor Bri­an Hart said. “Some years find­ing women proved very dif­fi­cult, not many were apply­ing and our efforts to reach out to some of the amaz­ing women in our area were not pan­ning out. Rather than get­ting frus­trat­ed, it was a chal­lenge that we took on with Mox­ie, we knew we could do bet­ter.”

This year, the seeds we have been plant­i­ng over the past three years, reach­ing out to women that we admire and want to show­case, seem to final­ly be sprout­ing. Out of 13 speak­ers, 11 of them are women.

“What was once a dream of hav­ing a 50/50 ratio has been sur­passed by a woman dom­i­nat­ed line-up,” Hart said. “We could­n’t be more thrilled.”

How did this hap­pen?

Well first, we built rela­tion­ships with poten­tial women speak­ers that did not pan out in pre­vi­ous years, but sev­er­al of whom agreed to speak this year. Sec­ond, we hap­pened to pick most­ly women in our blind (as in no names or bio­graph­i­cal data) selec­tion process from our appli­cant pool. Com­bine the two process­es togeth­er, and we end­ed up with 11 women.

And trust us, these women are doing some amaz­ing work out in the world and they very much need to be heard — not for their sake, but for ours.

Achiev­ing the per­fect bal­ance may not be pos­si­ble, but tak­ing spe­cial care to rep­re­sent the tra­di­tion­al­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed is a goal that is worth the effort. Feel free to keep us account­able, but real­ly, help us expand and deep­en our reach into diverse com­mu­ni­ties.

Do you know of a per­son of an under­rep­re­sent­ed group who would be a great future TEDxSalem speak­er? Please reach out to us at info@tedxsalem.us. Because the rela­tion­ship we build today may lead to a new rev­o­lu­tion.

TEDxSalem-IV-women

 

 

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.