TEDxNYU

On the Brink: Meet our Speakers

Wazina Zondon, an Afghan raised in NYC, is a sexuality educator and trainer who focuses on intersectional identities. In addition to speaking to the connection between homophobia and islamophobia, Zondon is the co-writer and co-performer of Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love, a personal storytelling performance about queerness, faith, love and family. Wazina also co-hosts Follow that Flannel, a fun yet informative sexuality podcast.

Abby Lyall is a junior studying Finance and Information Systems at NYU Stern. Last summer, she held a research position at the school’s Information Systems Department where she explored the progression of automation and its impact on business and the economy. Abby currently works for the venture capital firm, Quake Capital, where she helps student entrepreneurs raise money for their ventures. She also writes a monthly technology column in brUNch Magazine, a publication targeted at millennial women. She believes in learning by doing, taking the road less traveled, and using technology as a force for positive change.

Nastassja Schmiedt and Lea Roth are millennial digital knowmads in pursuit of happiness and freedom. They are the co-founders of Spring Up, a multimedia artivist collective transforming conflict and imagining a future of liberation for all. Within their creative hivemind, Lea serves as mythematician and Nastassja as imaginatrix. Their first book, Millennial Sex (Education) harnesses the power of storytelling to cultivate a culture of consent. Lea and Nastassja are engaged to be married and have two wonderful cats, Wilhelm and Audre (@dapperpaws). They live in the cloud, but can often be found in their home bases of Miami, Denver, and Tuscany.

Alejandro Crawford, Senior Consultant at Acceleration Group, helps leaders of mission-driven businesses, CBOs, funders and governments to seize “acceleration moments” to increase their impact on the markets and communities they serve. He develops actionable strategies that enable leaders to get ahead of change, prove new models, create and measure impact, and turn around organizations. A frequent writer and speaker on how to equip people to produce solutions of their own, Crawford is professor of entrepreneurship for the Bard MBA in Sustainability. He has created an array of frameworks, platforms and courses for clients and campuses in impact-oriented strategy, entrepreneurship and growth. He earned his BA from Cornell and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Recent NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate, Phillip Gladkov is an Artist and Filmmaker dedicated to challenging the way we view and interact with our world.
He is currently working on a feature documentary film by the name of "5". The film is a journey through all four seasons, from the monumental natural landscapes of New York State to the heart of one of the biggest metropolises in the world.
You can see more of his work at phi-art.com
And more about the film at afilmcalledfive.com

Jayeeta Basu started her own research group at NYU in January of 2015. Exploring questions such as: why do we remember only a fraction of the things, places, events, or people we experience? How do our previous experiences stored in the brain as memories shape the perception of ongoing sensory experiences? The Basu laboratory’s research aims to examine mechanisms of learning and memory in the mammalian brain. Dr. Basu believes that science, like art, is a medium for creative expression. Her lab participated in the Ligo Project where artists in residence create their own graphical and musical renditions of the research happening at the Basu lab. As a founding member of NYU NeuWrite, Jayeeta is also passionate about fostering knowledge about the brain in the non-scientific community and bringing the next generation of young curious minds to the frontlines of scientific discovery.

Hannah Donovan likes fun, and she’s been putting this to work making digital products in music and entertainment tech for over the last decade. Hannah is a designer, product leader, entrepreneur and speaker. Most recently, Hannah has been the general manager at Vine. Before that, she led the team at Drip, a music start-up acquired by Kickstarter, was VP Design at Ripcord, a product incubator funded by MTV, and co-founded the song-sharing service, This Is My Jam. She has also worked on independent projects at The Echo Nest and was part of the original team at the early music-tech company, Last.fm, where she led design. She’s addressed audiences across the world, speaking for conferences, universities and companies. Her work and words have been featured in media such as the Guardian, New York Times, Forbes, Variety, and the Today Show. She’s a classically trained cellist who loves hip-hop, as well as a classically trained graphic designer who loves patterns. She also loves tigers, but isn't classically trained to handle them. Yet.

Hamdan Azhar is the founder of PRISMOJI, a data journalism lab dedicated to meaningful storytelling about politics, society, and culture. He was previously a data scientist at Facebook where he designed experiments to measure ad effectiveness. Prior to that, he was the national statistician on Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign. Hamdan's writings on drone culture, emojis, and religion in America have been published in outlets including VICE, Forbes, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. Hamdan holds a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Michigan, a bachelor’s in economics from Penn State, and spent one year in the neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago.