Directory

Step inside the TED Fellows community

Each year, a new group of TED Fellows from around the world, and from every discipline, are welcomed into this international community of remarkable thinkers and doers.

TED Fellows
2024 Cohort

TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Photojournalist, visual artist

Daro Sulakauri

Photojournalist Daro Sulakauri chronicles social and political issues in the Caucasus. By focusing on issues that are considered taboo, such as early marriages and the impact of Russian occupation, she defends against the erasure of Georgian culture, history and borders.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Equity bioengineer

Erika Moore

Biomedical engineer Erika Moore Taylor researches how ancestry and sociocultural data affect disease development. Unlike many researchers, she accounts for diverse populations when building regenerative tissue models to create more equitable disease models

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Visual artist, poverty researcher

Huiyi Lin

Huiyi Lin is an economic policy researcher and one-half of Chow and Lin, an artist duo using statistical, mathematical and computational techniques to address food insecurity and poverty. Chow and Lin combine research, design and photography to raise awareness about global inequality in visually arresting ways.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Medical mythbuster

Joel Bervell

Joel Bervell is a medical student educating people about health care disparities and biases through viral social media content. By sharing stories and studies with his audience of more than one million about the neglect of marginalized groups, he advocates for change in the health care system. 

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Ocean navigator

Lehua Kamalu

Lehua Kamalu is a captain and navigator of traditional Hawaiian ocean-voyaging canoes. She preserves and teaches these ancient sustainable navigation practices by integrating them into digital storytelling and daily life for future generations.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Health systems entrepreneur

Mohamed Aburawi

Mohamed Aburawi is a surgeon and founder of Speetar, a digital health platform reshaping health care in conflict zones across the Middle East and Africa, especially his native Libya. Through this work, Speetar is helping to dismantle barriers to quality care and advocate for health care as a fundamental human right.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Mechanical engineer

Norah Magero

Norah Magero is a mechanical engineer and creator of VacciBox, a cold chain solution saving lives in rural communities. She is working to build an Africa that manufactures and produces its own climate-health care technology.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Chemosensory researcher, nurse

Paule Joseph

Taste and smell researcher Paule Joseph explores how conditions such as COVID-19, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders and substance abuse affect the chemical senses. Her lab combines clinical research, behavioral neuroscience, genomics and molecular biology, offering insights on how taste and smell affect our daily lives.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

AI scientist, entrepreneur

Ramin Hasani

Ramin Hasani is cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, where he helped invent liquid neural networks: a new AI technology inspired by living brains and physics. These revolutionary networks are more flexible and efficient than current AI solutions, shaping the future of machine learning and artificial intelligence research.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Wildland firefighter

Royal Ramey

Royal Ramey is the cofounder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP), a nonprofit providing career opportunities to formerly incarcerated firefighters in California. A 12-year wildland firefighter veteran, Ramey draws on his own lived experience, rethinking job training for the formerly incarcerated and addressing the challenges they face re-entering the workforce.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Composer, artistic director

Sahba Aminikia

Iranian-born composer, pianist and educator Sahba Aminikia is the founder and artistic director of Flying Carpet Children Festival, an annual mobile arts festival and artist residency for refugee children escaping conflict zones.

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2024
Cohort

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Fellows Directory

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TED Fellows 2019 Cohort

Labor entrepreneur

Jess Kutch
Jess Kutch is the Co-Executive Director of Coworker.org, where she is helping build a labor movement for the future that is open to all workers and powered by data and technology. Coworker.org has helped hundreds of thousands of people experience worker-powered change in their workplaces, from winning wage hikes and expanded paid parental leave, to creating better dress codes and scheduling practices. In 2015, Coworker.org hosted the first-ever White House Town Hall on the Future of Worker Voice with President Obama. Jess has 15 years’ experience working at the intersection of technology and social change. Prior to co-founding Coworker.org, Jess lead a team at Change.org in raising the company’s profile around the world and inspiring hundreds of thousands of people to launch and lead their own efforts on the platform. Jess also managed digital projects for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where she pioneered online strategies for the labor movement. Jess is an Aspen Institute Job Quality Fellow, Echoing Green Global Fellow, and J.M. Kaplan Innovation Prize winner. She’s a graduate of Bennington College and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her family.
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TED Fellows 2016, 2018 Cohort

Founder of Callisto

Jess Ladd
I am a TED Senior Fellow and the Founder of Callisto, a nonprofit dedicated to creating technology that combats sexual assault and supports survivors. We’ve created a website that detects serial perpetrators of sexual assault and professional sexual coercion (who commit 90% of assaults). I have worked in the field of sexual health since age 17 as an educator, policy advisor, advocate, and researcher. Before starting Callisto, I worked in the White House Domestic Policy Council and co-founded the Baltimore-based Social Innovation Lab. I have a BA in Public Policy/Human Sexuality from Pomona College and an MPH (and 70% of a PhD) in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. I am passionate about social innovation, technology to reduce and sidestep stigma, and helping people take horrible experiences and use them to make the world a better place.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Co-founder

Jessica Francisca Colaço
Jessica Francisca Colaço is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Brave and iHub, Computer Scientist, Talent Strategist, Musician and Public Speaker. She is a TED fellow and Harambean born and based in Nairobi, Kenya. She is currently the first female in tech and music to release a music single (Momentum) on NFT in Kenya. Recently, she released her EP Metamorphosis in honour of her late mum (Mildred Colaco). She co-founded Brave (HR tech company) based the US and UK with Ibanga Umanah and Daniele Orner-Ginor. Brave (HR tech company) is a SaaS solution that integrates with existing HR vendors, and analyses whatever talent data is available in a company. She was the COO at Amitruck from Oct 2021 – June 2022. She helped the CEO to build a team of navy seals at senior level in readiness for growth. Amitruck is a digital logistics startup based in Kenya. Jessica is a dynamic speaker and has featured on global platforms talking about her work in technology and entrepreneurship. She has spoken at SWSX in 2014 and 2015. She has also given guest lectures at Harvard in 2017 and 2018. She is a Bass Guitarist and has played for various afro-fusion and rock bands in Nairobi. She is now working on creating her own EP as a solo musician . She co-founded the iHub with Erik Hersman in 2010. It was the first tech-hub in Kenya and East Africa. At iHub, she served in various leadership positions for 6 years such as Operations, Strategy, Partnerships, Research advisory, Sales and Business Development She is passionate about how ecosystems arise and evolve over time. She has built various communities in the last 10 years from developers, startups, corporates and investors. She is currently working on her book about the journey at iHub and how it all happened (The intentional serendipity of the tech ecosystem in Kenya). Over the last 7 years, I have held leadership positions in ISOC-Kenya Chapter and ACM-W Nairobi Chapter Chair. I was named one of the top 40 women under 40 years in Kenya’s business scene by Business Daily on 2009, 2011 and 2012 and became a TED fellow in 2009. As a Computer Scientist and Mobile Tech Evangelist, I have organized several Mobile Boot Camps in Kenya as well as the first Facebook Developer Garage in Kenya in 2008 with Leila Janah. My work has been featured by CNN Labs, Wired UK and other mainstream media.
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TED Fellows 2011, 2010 Cohort

Engineer and biodiversity scientist

Jessica Green
Dr. Jessica Green is CEO and co-founder of Phylagen, Inc., a data analytics company digitizing the global microbiome. Jessica previously co-founded the Biology and Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon and serves on the Science Advisory Board at the Santa Fe Institute. She is an internationally recognized scientist whose work has been featured in both mainstream media -- TIME, ABC, NBC, NPR, Forbes, and The Economist - and respected scientific journals including Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a Blaise Pascal International Research Chair, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a TED Senior Fellowship. Jessica received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Jessica Mayberry
Jessica Mayberry founded Video Volunteers in September, 2003, after spending a year training rural Indian women in filmmaking as a Fellow of the American India Foundation. A videojournalist impressed with the rapid spread of inexpensive cameras around the developing world, Jessica believes that video technology can empower the poor (women especially) to find voice. She has extensive experience on the ground in India training communities in video production, and has since evolved Video Volunteers to emphasize capacity building, sustainability and community ownership. Prior to that Jessica worked in television in New York at Court TV, the Fox News Channel, and CNN. Video Volunteers has won numerous awards: An Echoing Green Fellowship, TED Fellowship, the Stern Business School Business Plan competition, the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, a Tech Award, and Development Gateway Award Shortlist. It is this year a finalist for the King Baudouin (of Belgium) International Development Prize. Jessica has spoken about Video Volunteers’ work in numerous settings, including Stanford Business School, the NYU and Berkeley Journalism Schools, and Oxford and Canterbury Universities in the UK. She serves on the board of Free the Children, the world’s largest organization of “Children Helping Children” and on the Advisory Council of Counterpart International. She received her BA in Modern History and Modern Languages from Oxford University in 1999.
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TED Fellows 2022 Cohort

Planet hunter

Jessie Christiansen
Dr Jessie Christiansen is an astrophysicist with the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech, where she searches for, characterises and catalogues planets orbiting other stars. She is the lead scientist on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, and has worked on the NASA Kepler, K2, and now TESS missions to characterize the demographics of exoplanets, and to find and study the nearest planetary systems to Earth – systems that will be perfect for further study with the next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes. She is hunting for Earth 2.0 - and you can too.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Associate Professor - Physics

Jijo P Ulahannan
Short Term Visitor Fellow, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai. Education Technology Consultant providing assistance to innovative online and offline teaching methods. Columnist and blogger on Science, Technology and Education. Writer and Speaker on Science, Technology and Future Careers. Researcher with experience in Nanophotonics, Computational Physics and Science Education. Presently involved in interdisciplinary research in Science Education and Entrepreneurship in Agriculture. Delivered more than 100 talks in these fields. Founder member and curator of the Collective for Open Data Distribution - Keralam (CODD-K), a citizen science movement.
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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Filmmaker, cultural innovator

Jim Chuchu
Jim Chuchu is an artist and musician living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. He forms 1/4 of alt-pop outfit Just a Band.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Founder, Rare Genomics

Jimmy Lin
Jimmy Lin, MD, PhD, MHS, has devoted his life to defeating cancer. As the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Oncology at Natera (NASDAQ: NTRA), he is leading development of new diagnostic technologies to detect cancer DNA in the blood years before current methods. Dr. Lin is also a 2016 TED Senior Fellow and Founder/President of Rare Genomics Institute, the world's first platform to enable any community to leverage cutting- edge biotechnology to advance understanding of any rare disease. Partnering with many of the top medical institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins, RG helps custom design personalized research projects for diseases so rare that no organization exists to help. Previously, Dr. Lin was the Director of Clinical Genomics at the National Cancer Institute at the NIH as well as a medical school faculty member at the Washington University in St. Louis. He led the computational analysis of the first ever exome sequenching studies for cancers with Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins, including breast, colorectal, glioblastoma, melanoma, and pancreatic cancers. He has spoken at 8 TED and TEDx events, Aspen Ideas Festival, the Brookings Institute, Milken Institute FasterCures, among others. He has numerous publications in Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Genetics, and Nature Biotechnology, and has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the Huffington Post. He has spoken at these TED events: TED 2012, TEDActive 2014, TEDxMidWest, TEDxMidAtlantic, TEDxBaltimore, TEDxRenfrewCollingwood, TEDxGatewayArch, TEDxTaipei.
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TED Fellows 2013 Cohort

Designer, inventor, entrepreneur

Jinha Lee
Jinha Lee is a Korean designer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is co-founder and chief product officer of Spatial, a metaverse for creators and artists. Prior to founding Spatial, At MIT and Microsoft, Jinha developed SpaceTop, a pioneering 3D AR computer that allows people to reach inside the screen. His project ZeroN - a physical pixel that levitates and moves freely about, allowed people to physically manipulate 3D data. These projects became viral and brought him to the TED stage in 2013. An advocate for inclusive design, he co-designed Bradley Timepiece, an innovative tactile wristwatch for the blind. Bradley Timepieces was one of the most successful projects on Kickstarter’s design category in 2013 and was awarded with Red Dot Design award. At Samsung, he led the redesign of Samsung Smart TVs, turning them into a platform for collaboration and artistic data visualization. In 2015, he was promoted to be the Principal designer and appointed as head of Interaction Group at age 27, making him the youngest Group Leader in corporate history. Jinha was named one of the "35 innovators under 35" by the MIT Technology Review, and one of the "32 greatest living designers" by Fast Company, and was named a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. Born in Seoul, Korea, Jinha has a Master’s degree in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT (Media Lab) and completed his undergrad with a bachelor’s in Electronic Engineering from the University of Tokyo.
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TED Fellows 2011 Cohort

Jodie Wu
Jodie Wu is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Global Cycle Solutions (GCS), a company focused on providing access to transformative technologies through a last-mile distribution network of over 500 village entrepreneurs. GCS was recently acquired by Greenlight Planet, where Jodie now works as the New Markets lead to grow the business from its current reach of 7M families and 60 countries across the globe. Fluent in Swahili, an engineer by background, and an entrepreneur who dove straight into social enterprise at 22 years old, Wu brings unique expertise to the field having lived and worked in Tanzania since 2009. Her 80-person Tanzanian team has delivered life-improving solar lanterns, clean cookstoves, and agricultural tools to over 100,000 families. GCS is setting a new “global community standard” in Tanzania, providing products and a level of service that rivals Western markets, as well as creating tremendous opportunities for cost savings and income generation for its customers. As a champion of collaboration, Wu has facilitated small-scale manufacturing of 15,000 sheet metal agricultural tools in developing markets, advised dozens of fellow entrepreneurs entering the Tanzanian market, and consulted for various international energy companies to bring new services to rural villages. Wu was named one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s America’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs in 2010 and Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2011. She is also a 2010 Echoing Green Fellow, 2011 TEDGlobal Fellow, 2012 Ashoka Emerging Innovator, 2013 D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellow, and 2016 C3E Award Winner for International Leadership. Jodie holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

medical inventor

Joe Landolina
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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Medical mythbuster

Joel Bervell

Joel Bervell is a medical student educating people about health care disparities and biases through viral social media content. By sharing stories and studies with his audience of more than one million about the neglect of marginalized groups, he advocates for change in the health care system. 

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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Transport entrepreneur

Joel Jackson
Joel Jackson is the founder and CEO of Mobius Motors, a venture building low-cost high-function vehicles for Africa’s mass-market. Before Mobius, Joel worked on business strategy with an internationally acclaimed social enterprise in rural Kenya. It was here that he first experienced the challenges facing millions of people throughout the continent without access to appropriate forms of transport. Joel also worked as a management consultant, advising top Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies across Europe and North America. In addition to the TED Global fellowship, he is also the recipient of the Echoing Green fellowship, a global social enterprise fund and has presented Mobius’ vision at several worldwide forums, including the UN. Joel is a graduate of Imperial College with a first class honours degree in Computer Science.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

Joey Ellis
To make things short, let me say this. I was born in America, made in China, was then alive in Doha for many years but ended up in Juarez soon after, died from heartbreak and now was just reincarnated in Nepal. I make stop-motion animated music videos but to get where I am I have done a lot of crazy stuff along the way. Including but not limited to, life size ice sculptures in the Beijing summer heat, colossal trees made out of porcelain, underwater bike structures that turn into coral reefs and last but not least, pottery. I'm also a trained object conservator that specializes in plastic deterioration. My thesis was on artificial Xmas trees. Most recent work: https://vimeo.com/151272047 "I create works illustrating that within the boundaries of culture, politics and self-expression there are possibilities for individuality - not dwelling on the limitations, but what can be utilized within them. For me living abroad, lacking local blood, my status will always be a foreigner. Yet, I am no different from any artist, wherever they might be, whose aim is to set out a moral and adorn a tale; mine, a story of how a young man raised in Upstate New York can be influenced by, and influence, a culture other than his own, forming a language that bears repeating." I live and work extensively throughout Asia but currently reside in Kathmandu, frequenting Doha, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jingdezhen, Indonesia, India and Juarez, Mexico as well as some random seedy airport lounge in-between.
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Fellows Talks

We’ve organized Fellows talks into curated playlists to make it easier to find content you’re interested in.

TED Fellows impact at a glance

Change that gets noticed

200M

200M people impacted by Fellows work annually

451M

451M TED Talk views

2,234

2,234 articles published by/about Fellows per year

1,303

1,303 speaking engagements each year

234

234 businesses launched

The groundbreaking work of a TED Fellow does not stay in the shadows. Each year we study the impact Fellows have on their respective fields, as measured by tangible forms of recognition. Here are some highlights from the past few years.

Our purpose

What makes a TED Fellow?

TED Fellows are some of the brightest, most ambitious thinkers, future-shapers and culture-shakers from nearly every discipline and corner of the world.

Whether it’s discovering new galaxies, leading social movements or making waves in environmental conservation, with the support of TED, Fellows are dedicated to making the world a better place through their innovative work. In 2024 the program will shift to a nomination-based application process.

Qualifications

We look for the proximate emerging leaders working on-the-ground on world-changing ideas -- the doers, makers, inventors, technologists, filmmakers and photographers, musicians and artists, educators, scientists, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and human rights activists. Here is what we look for in a TED Fellow:

1

Emerging leaders. We focus our efforts on individuals who are in the earlier phases of their career, those who have a track record of excellence but have not received a numerous other fellowships and accolades. We search for those who are not already on the global stage.

2

Originality and authenticity. We look for proximate leaders with a unique approach to solving humanity’s greatest challenges. We look for the people working on-the-ground on world-changing ideas, putting ideas into action.

3

Kind, collaborative character. We look for individuals who have an early track record of great work in their field. We look for individuals from all disciplines, who have collaborative, kind personalities. Many Fellows claim that the community of other Fellows is the most valuable aspect of the fellowship. We try to nurture this collaborative spirit in the community.

4

Poised to grow. Since this is not a granting fellowship, we look for individuals who would best be able to use the TED community and this opportunity as a launching pad. The TED Fellowship is best for candidates who are prepared to grow with TED’s forms of support: amplification, network-building, communication training, professional development coaching and mentoring.