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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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Playwright, actor

Keenan Scott II
Keenan Scott II is a playwright, poet, actor, director, and producer of original work from Queens, New York. His work has been produced at Howard University, Gala Hispanic Theatre, National Black Theater, Woolly Mammoth and the NYC Fringe Festival. Keenan’s critically acclaimed piece Thoughts of a Colored Man has been workshopped and developed at The Arena Stage and the historic New York Theatre Workshop for private readings. The play had its World Premiere at Syracuse Stage for their 2019-2020 season and transferred to Baltimore Center Stage to finish its regional run. Thoughts of a Colored Man found its home at the Golden Theater for the 2021-2022 Broadway Season. Through his production company PROJECT TOYS, the mission is to put black and brown people at the center of diverse stories, no matter the orientation or background, to broaden the spectrum of their existence across multiple genres in an authentic and purposeful way. His latest works The Migration LP and The Return of Young Boy is currently being developed at New York Stage & Film. He is currently developing a series for TV with UCP of Universal, and many other projects at major studios.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

PM of Developer Relations

Kellee Santiago
As President and Co-Founder of thatgamecompany over the last six years, Kellee Santiago developed one of the most prominent brands in independent and innovative game development, pushing the communicative possibilities of video games as a medium. She is currently a partner in IndieFund, which aims to support the growth of games as a medium by helping indie developers get, and stay, financially independent. Kellee graduated from the MFA Interactive Media program at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts where she teamed up with fellow student Jenova Chen on the student-created game, “Cloud.” The game went on to become critically acclaimed, and landed the two a three game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. to develop downloadable games for the PlayStation Network. The three titles, “flOw”, “Flower,” and most recently, “Journey,” were each record-breaking commercial successes, and award-winning titles. Kellee speaks around the world at video game, business, and entertainment conferences on innovation in games, entrepreneurship, and better methods for video game development. In 2010 she became a TEDFellow, and was recognized as one of The Ten Most Influential Women in Games of the Decade. Kellee has also received the 2011 Microsoft Top Women in Gaming award for Business.
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TED Fellows 2016 Cohort

Cofounder, Native BioData Consortium

Keolu Fox
Keolu Fox is the first Native Hawaiian to receive a doctorate in genome sciences, and he is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where is a co-founder and co-director of the world's first Indigenous Futures Institute. Keolu is also affiliated with the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Global Health Program, the Climate Action Lab, and the Design Lab. Keolu's work focuses on the connection between raw data as a resource and the emerging value of genomic health data from Indigenous communities. He has experience designing and engineering genome sequencing and editing technologies, and a decade of grassroots experience working with Indigenous partners to advance precision medicine.
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TED Fellows 2020 Cohort

Medical hacker

Khalil Ramadi
Khalil Ramadi is a researcher, engineer, and scientist at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His research interests center around engineering novel technologies to utilize our nervous system for targeted therapeutics. Khalil is a TED junior fellow, MIT Sandbox Innovation Fellow, and a Koch Convergence Scholar. Born and raised between the US, Spain, and the UAE, I’m passionate about bringing diverse perspectives and background together to tackle complex problems. Khalil served as director of MIT Hacking Medicine, a group dedicated to enhancing and democratizing healthcare entrepreneurship. These programs have spawned over 30 companies that have raised over $250M+ in funding. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics from MIT, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering from the Pennsylvania State University. Khalil is also a guest instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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TED Fellows 2019, 2016 Cohort

Visual storyteller

Kiana Hayeri
Kiana is a Senior TED fellow, a National Geographic Explorer grantee and a regular contributor to The New York Times and National Geographic. She lived in Afghanistan from 2014 to 2022, not only covering the frontline and the dramatic events of war but also capturing a different and alternative narrative of America’s longest war by focusing on everyday life. In 2020, Kiana received Tim Hetherington Visionary award and later that year, she was named as the 6th recipient of James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting. In 2021, Kiana received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for her photographic series “Where Prison is Kind of a Freedom,” documenting the lives of Afghan women in Herat Prison. In 2022, Kiana was part of The New York Times reporting team that won The Hal Boyle Award for “The Collapse of Afghanistan” and was shortlisted under International Reporting for the Pulitzer Prize 2022. In the same year, Kiana was named as the winner of the Leica Oskar Barnack.
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TED Fellows 2020, 2013 Cohort

Filmmaker, architect

Kibwe Tavares
Kibwe Tavares grew up South London, He has always had an interest in Animation from a young age, and takes inspirations from comics, manga and sci fi books. After studying a Masters degree in Engineering, and a second Masters in architecture he founded Factory Fifteen with fellow graduates from the Bartlett School of Architecture. His latest short 'Robots of Brixton' and its accompanying artwork have been exhibited around the world in various film festivals such as Sundance, SXSW. Onedotzero, Arts Electronica, Alpha-ville, The Creators Projec, Africa International Film Festival, Rushes Short Film Festival, and over 50 more. It has won a range of Awards from the RIBA silver Medal to a special Jury prize at Sundance. Kibwe will be a TED Fellow 2013 and giving a talk at next years TED conference on visual story telling. He is currently directing his next short Jonah due out early 2013 which is supported by Film 4, the BFI & Shine pictures
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TED Fellows 2020 Cohort

Activist, musician

Kiran Gandhi
Website: Madame Gandhi is an LA-based artist and activist known for her uplifting, percussive electronic music and positive message about gender liberation and personal power. She began producing music in 2015, after her story running the London Marathon free-bleeding to combat menstrual stigma went viral around the world. She has been listed as Forbes 30 Under 30 in Music, and her 2020 TED Talk about conscious music consumption has been viewed over a million times. “Waiting For Me,” shot in Mumbai, India, won the Music Video Jury Award at SXSW Film Festival in 2021 and her seasonal merch drops have been featured in fashion outlets like The New York Times, Vogue and GQ India. Her third studio album, Vibrations, is slated for release in 2022, following the release of her previous albums Voices (2016) and Visions (2019).
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Founder

Kishi Arora
I am a pastry chef by profession and I spend my day dreaming up ways to tickle, surprise and indulge the taste buds of discerning foodies in Delhi. As your cakesmith, I have conjured up a range of premium cakes, desserts puddings and food in an assortment of exotic flavours. From Shri Ram College of Commerce in India to the Culinary Institute of America, changing geographies changed my career for all times to come – from crunching numbers to whipping up desserts!! I specialize in baking and pastry and was awarded the best international student scholarship with the highest GPA. I moved back from the US two years ago and have since been studying the Indian market and related trends. To begin with, I started as a food consultant. Attention to detail, no compromises on quality and personalized service – run through every aspect of Foodaholics. For me, it’s always been about the creation of sumptuous, unique and visually expressive desserts/food that taste just as fabulous and beyond expectations.
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Vagabond photojournalist + conceptual artist

Kitra Cahana
KITRA'S TED TALK: http://www.ted.com/talks/kitra_cahana_my_father_locked_in_his_body_but_soaring_free Kitra Cahana is a documentary, fine art photographer and filmmaker whose work explores important social, anthropological, and spiritual themes. She has photographed multiple stories for National Geographic Magazine. She is currently directing and producing a series of short Doc films for the CBC. As a documentary photographer, Kitra embeds herself in communities, often for months at a time. She has chronicled the daily lives of teens at a Texas high school, told the story of a Venezuelan cult, followed a group of nomadic youth across the United States. As a fine art photographer and video artist Kitra focuses on the less explicable, often pushing the possibilities of the photographic medium. Her work in this genre deals with themes of the body and spirituality, a topic she took on following her father's spiritual experience following a brain stem stroke.
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TED Fellows 2018 Cohort

Urban landscape architect

Kotchakorn Voraakhom
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Coral reef biologist

Kristen Marhaver
We fight for baby corals because they have very short arms. The Marhaver Lab solves the trickiest puzzles in coral breeding and shares the solutions globally so that everyone can grow more corals, faster. We're a gene bank, IVF clinic, neonatal ICU, and daycare, except for baby endangered corals so of course it's super easy and nothing ever goes wrong. We were the first team to breed endangered Pillar Corals and the first to breed endangered Elkhorn Corals from cryopreserved sperm. (Both were considered impossible but turned out very cute.) We also run the world's largest gene bank of Caribbean coral. Our conservation antics have been featured by NPR, BBC, and other acronyms. Leading the skunkworks, Dr. Kristen Marhaver is a TED Senior Fellow, National Geographic Explorer, World Economic Forum Young Scientist, and Georgia Tech 40 Under 40 honoree. The Marhaver Lab is based at CARMABI on the island of Curaçao and you should definitely visit because it's the island of Curaçao.
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TED Fellows 2017 Cohort

Deaf Advocate

Kyle DeCarlo
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TED Fellows 2009, 2020 Cohort

Ethnomusicologist

Kyra Gaunt, Ph.D.
Innovative Black feminist scholar in digital and embodied ethnomusicology | Professor | Author | Senior TED Fellow | Singer-Songwriter Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. has been a cutting-edge scholar in the field of embodied ethnomusicology for more than two decades. She currently teaches at the SUNY Albany. Her book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, funded by NEH and the Ford Foundation, won the 2007 Alan Merriam Prize from The Society of Ethnomusicology. The book and Kyra’s earlier publications contributed to the emergence of hip-hop music studies, black girlhood studies, and hip-hop feminism. Her current research explores the intersections of music, tech, and violence targeting Black girls shaped ecologically by the "musical Internet" from YouTube to TikTok. Check out her 2022 TED Talk How Black Girls Can Reclaim Their Voice in Music . Kyra earned her PhD from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and presently teaches at University at Albany-SUNY. In addition to scholarship, Kyra is a federally-certified expert witness in cases involving social media, especially FB. Check out her Small Thing, Big Idea episode, "How the Jump Rope Got its Rhythm," which has 7.1M+ Facebook views (that's more views the Adichie's "The Danger of a Single Story" or Byran Stevenson's TED talk). It has also been translated into 28 different languages.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Senator

Kyrsten Sinema
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TED Fellows 2015 Cohort

Visual artist

LaToya Ruby Frazier
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s artistic practice spans a range of media, including photography, video, performance, installation art and books, and centers on the nexus of social justice, cultural change, and commentary on the American experience. In various interconnected bodies of work, Frazier uses collaborative storytelling with the people who appear in her artwork to address topics of industrialism, rust belt revitalization, environmental justice, access to healthcare, access to clean water, workers’ rights, human rights, family, and communal history. This builds on her commitment to the legacy of 1930s social documentary work and 1960s and ’70s conceptual photography that address urgent social and political issues of everyday life. Frazier’s work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions at institutions in the US and Europe and her work is held in numerous public collections. LaToya Ruby Frazier is a 2015 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient. In 2024 The Museum of Modern Art will exhibit the largest survey on her artwork and practice May 12, 2024 - September 07, 2024.
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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.