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I'm trying to connect Africa to the Internet. As the CEO of BRCK, we design the hardware and software platforms to make this happen, starting in our home base of Nairobi, and moving into new markets. In 2010 I founded the iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the technology community, bringing together entrepreneurs, hackers, designers and the investment community. I am also a co-founder of Ushahidi, and have also established afrigadget.com and whiteafrican.com as blogs where I write about creative solutions entrepreneurship and development challenges across Africa. I am is also a general partner in the Savannah Fund, and sit on the boards of Akirachix, the Kijabe Forest Trust, and the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI). You can find me on Twitter at @WhiteAfrican.

Originally from Costa Rica, Erika Bagnarello obtained her MFA in Film Production at Florida State University where she attended as a Fulbright International Fellow. Her work as a Writer andDirector includes documentaries, commercials, Award winning short films and her Spanish language debut narrative feature JANUARY 1ST was distributed by HBO in 2016. As a television writer, she developed a pilot for Warner Bros Television and Akil Productions and has pitched her ideas to different networks such as Disney Jr., Nickelodeon and Apple. In 2018 Erika was selected for Ryan Murphy's HALF INITATIVE directing program and also shadowed on an episode of the first season of MAGNUM P.I. Erika recently finished writing the MARCUS VEGA DOESN’T SPEAK SPANISH, a script based on the book of the same name which explores the theme of identity. This will be Erika’s English language feature film debut as a Writer and Director and will be shot in Puerto Rico. Her focus as a filmmaker is emotional storytelling with a social commentary. Erika is a TED Global Fellow, class of 2010 and she is currently based in Los Angeles.

Erine's the founder of findhelp.org, the leading platform in the US for connecting people in need to social services.

Esra'a Al Shafei is a Bahraini human rights activist and founder of Majal.org, a network of digital platforms that amplify under-reported and marginalized voices in the Middle East and North Africa. This work includes Mideast Tunes, a web and mobile application for independent musicians in the MENA who use music as a tool for social justice advocacy, Ahwaa.org, a discussion tool for Arab LGBTQ+ youth which leverages game mechanics to protect and engage its community, and Migrant-Rights.org, the primary resource on the plight of migrant workers in the Gulf region. Esra’a was a Senior TED Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, and Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow. In 2017, she was elected to the Board of Trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit which hosts Wikipedia. Previously, she served on the Board of Directors of Access Now, an international non-profit dedicated to an open and free Internet. Esra’a is the recipient of the “Berkman Award” from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society for "outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society over the last decade", the Monaco Media Prize, which acknowledges innovative uses of media for the betterment of humanity, and the "Most Courageous Media" award from Free Press Unlimited. In 2014, she received the Human Rights Tulip Prize, awarded annually to organizations or individuals that support human rights in innovative ways. She is the 2018 recipient of the Global Trailblazer Award from Vital Voices. In 2019, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and as a Young Leader by Asia Society.

Essam is a psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist who grew up in Israel in a small Arab Palestinian village in the Galilee. He specialized in child and adolescent psychiatry and graduated from psychoanalytic school. In 2015, he flew to Greece for a humanitarian rescue mission where he co-founded Humanity Crew and has been working with refugees ever since. Humanity Crew specializes in the provision of psychological aid to refugees and people in crises, working to deploy mental health and psycho social support to displaced populations in order to improve their wellbeing, to restore order in their lives, and to prevent further psychological escalation. Currently, he is an avid refugee mental health activist and researcher who has spoken at countless conferences and media outlets all over the world advocating for the importance of mental health support for refugees. In 2016 Essam and Humanity Crew were awarded "The Defenders of Refugee Rights Award" at the 4th Edition of Cities Defending Human Rights in Barcelona. In 2018, he became a WHO mental health expert team member, and a TED Fellow

Esther K. Chae is an award-winning actor, published playwright, Korea-Hollywood consultant, inaugural TED Fellow and assistant professor in acting at USC's School of Dramtic Arts. Her work has been covered by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter. Her life in Hollywood was the subject of a Korean Broadcasting Station (KBS) documentary. Chae’s acting roles include Soul (Disney Pixar/Academy Award For Best Animation 2020), Over The Moon (Netflix), NCIS, Law and Order, The West Wing, 24, The Shield, S.W.A.T., Guidance (Hulu) and numerous national commercials; her stage credits include Yale Repertory Theater, La Mama, Mark Taper Forum/Kirk Douglas Theater, East West Players, Harvard/A.R.T., Alexandrinsky Theater (Russia). As a published playwright, Chae created and performed So the Arrow Flies, her internationally acclaimed solo performance. It is about an alleged North Korean spy and the FBI agent who interrogates her and “explores nothing less than the identity of our world today,” quoted from the preface written by Tony award-winning David Henry Hwang. She performed it around the world, on stages such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), Cherry Lane Theater (NYC), David Henry Hwang Theater (LA), October Nights Theater Festival (Italy), Dongkuk Art Theater (Korea) and also on the TED stage. So the Arrow Flies is the first of its kind to be published both in English and Korean by NoPassport Press (US) and by Dong-in Press (South Korea). During the two decades working as a professional multi-hyphenate artist, she has taught and mentored students from diverse backgrounds in a variety of domestic and international academic institutions — from Abuja, Nigeria, to Seoul, Korea. Currently at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, she teaches Intermediate Acting, Physical Theatre, Movement for Actors, Improv for Engineers (Viterbi School of Engineering) and Using Communication to Facilitate Organizational Change (Rossier School of Education). As a published playwright, Chae created and performed So the Arrow Flies, her internationally acclaimed solo performance. It is about an alleged North Korean spy and the FBI agent who interrogates her and “explores nothing less than the identity of our world today,” quoted from the preface written by Tony award-winning David Henry Hwang. She performed it around the world, on stages such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), Cherry Lane Theater (NYC), David Henry Hwang Theater (LA), October Nights Theater Festival (Italy), Dongkuk Art Theater (Korea) and also on the TED stage. So the Arrow Flies is the first of its kind to be published both in English and Korean by NoPassport Press (US) and by Dong-in Press (South Korea). During the global challenges of the recent few years, Chae had the unique opportunity to develop and direct a live VR performance. She directed a scene from her play Ae-ri in Otherland, where Western and Eastern languages and philosophies collide. In this particular scene, Ae-ri (who keeps getting misidentified as Alice) meets Humpty Dumpty, a “languish eggspert,” and the two theatrically battle in linguistic and cultural idioms in English, Korean and Chinese characters. This performance, presented by a bi-cultural and bi-lingual ensemble, was attended by a live global audience using VR headsets, Spatial.io app from smart phones or tablets, and YouTube live streaming. A short excerpt of this multi-camera VR performance, using various technologies, can be viewed here. Chae graduated from the Yale School of Drama (MFA in Acting), the University of Michigan (MA in Theater Studies), Korea University (BA French Literature). She has been recognized with the Martin Luther King Jr./Cesar Chavez/Rosa Parks Visiting Professorship (University of Michigan), Asian Pacific Islander American Trailblazer Award (NYS Governor Patterson) and Korean Wave (Hallryu) Asia Star Award. An avid explorer, she has summited Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), trekked the Himalayan Mountains (India) and Machu Picchu (Peru). Learn more at www.estherchae.com, or on IMDb.com.

Feras Fayyad is a two-time Academy Award-nominated film director, producer, writer, editor, and cinematographer, best known for his 2017 documentary “Last Men in Aleppo” and his recent 2019 documentary “The Cave,” which earned him critical acclaim and numerous awards and nominations, including Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making him the first Syrian director to be nominated for an Oscar, and he also won an Emmy award for best current affairs documentary. Fayyad has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2018 and a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Fayyad's films bear witness to the struggles of his fellow Syrians.

Faisal is a technology and social entrepreneur from Pakistan. He is one of the early innovators of online businesses in Pakistan. Recently, during floods in Pakistan, he lead the flood incident reporting and mapping initiative Pakreport.org. In 2002, he co-founded technology enterprise Cogilent and BrightSpyre. Faisal was finalist in the Nokia's Growth Economy Venture challenge in 2010 and MIT BAP in 2008. Faisal is Country leader at herdict.org ( Berkman Center) and Senior Fellow at TED. Faisal's passion is to scale technology in the developing countries.

Faith Osier, MBChB, MRCPCH, MSc, PhD. Faith is a 2018 TED Fellow and holds a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Humboldt Foundation. She is Vice-President/President-elect of the International Union of Immunological Societies. Her research is focused on understanding how humans acquire immunity to malaria, with the ultimate aim of translating this knowledge into effective malaria vaccines. She is the leader of SMART (South-South Malaria Antigen Research Partnership), a network of researchers that have shared resources to study antibody responses to the malaria parasite in multiple longitudinal cohorts in Africa. Her research group is spread over two continents, at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya and at Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany. She is passionate about the training of African scientists to tackle the health issues the continent faces. Faith trained as a Paediatrician in Kenya and the United Kingdom before turning to the immunology of malaria. She has held substantial research funding from the Wellcome Trust, the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) and the MRC/DFID African Research Leader Programme. Her work has gained international recognition and earned her multiple awards, including the Royal Society Pfizer Award.

Fariel Salahuddin is the Founder and CEO of UpTrade (Goats for Water), a company that targets rural poverty in developing countries by enabling smallholder farmers to use their livestock as currency to purchase otherwise unaffordable assets such as solar water pumps, solar home lighting systems, smartphones etc. The model is based out of Pakistan and has been successfully tested in other developing countries. Fariel started her career as an energy professional and has worked in energy finance, project development and energy policy, advising private sector and government stakeholders in Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and the MENA region. She has a MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs, University of Columbia and a B.Sc. In Economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences. She is a TED Fellow, Summit Fellow, Cartier Women’s Initiatives Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow. Her work has been featured by the BBC, Inc. Magazine, Vikatan Magazine.

Farwiza is an award-winning forest conservationist with a mission to protect, conserve, and restore the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra, the last place on earth where the critically endangered sumatran rhino, elephant, tiger and orangutan still roam together in the wild. Her conservation work put emphasis in strenghtening the role of communities in forest protection, as well as advocating for better policy to protect the Leuser Ecosystem. She is 2023 TIME Impact Award recipient, TIME100next 2022, National Geographic Wayfinder Award Winner, 2022 Mulago Fellow, and 2021 TED Fellow. Farwiza is looking to scale up her work in the landscape, and seeking mentorships, partnerships and collaboration opportunity in the space of climate and biodiversity financing - finding ways to make conservation an economically sensible choice for grassroots communities.

Born in Oregon in 1949, the 3rd daughter of working class parents (mom from Appalachia, dad the son of a Norwegian immigrant tenant farmer). Family lore says dad wouldn't look at me at first, he was so disappointed I wasn't a boy. The first college graduate in my family, I went off to the University of California in the 1960s, an exhilarating introduction to the world of ideas and action. I also met a fellow activist student, a man from newly independent Ghana, and we fell in love. Before marrying, I insisted on going to live in his country without him for a year (the source for my first book). We married in 1972 and raised our first 3 children back and forth between the U.S. and Ghana (we adopted 2 nephews from Ghana in 2002 to raise the number to 5). Gradually, my love of writing, food, travel, and for my adopted family and friends in Africa, and my extreme frustration at the media coverage of African cuisine, led me to found BETUMI: The African Culinary Network (for more about us, see "Story" at www.betumi.com) Currently, I spend my time working on books, articles, presentations, my website, blog, podcasts, research, cooking classes, etc. about African cuisine and food culture, especially sub-Saharan Africa/West Africa/Ghana. MSW from U.C. Berkeley in community org. and social planning, PhD from Penn State in rural sociology w/emphasis on social change and African development.