TEDxStillwater

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Martha Pietruszewski

  Social Entrepreneur

  Martha Pietruszewski is a thinker, writer, and motivated by great ideas. She also recently graduated from the Carlson School of Management, at the University of Minnesota. Martha never set out to be an entrepreneur, she just wanted to make the world a better place. Throughout her time at the University of Minnesota, she realized that in society, there are a lot of stigmas and harmful ideas about lots of things. In late 2015, she launched Nesel Packs, a company that created the world's first sensory friendly backpack. She helped create this product to help crush stigmas - namely, the stigma surrounding autism and sensory processing difficulties. When she isn't doing that, she works as a business analyst at a consulting company, or is exploring the pizza scene in Minneapolis.

• Patty Schachtner

  Death Investigator, Advocate & Educator - St. Croix County Medical Examiner

  St. Croix County Chief Medical Examiner, Patty Schachtner is a Death Investigator and Co-Founder of the Suicide Prevention Task Force of St. Croix County, Wisconsin. Patty thinks it's about time we talk about death.

• Shelly Boyum-Breen

  Advocate for Girls & women in Sports, Accidental Children's Author

  Shelly Boyum-Breen is the Founder and past-President of Foundation IX, a non-profit that increased the rate of girls’ participation in sports and fitness by providing grants to underserved girls in Minnesota. The program was merged with the Ann Bancroft Foundation where Shelly serves on the Board of Directors. She also saw a gap in children’s literature and took action to fill it by creating the children’s book series Shelly Bean the Sports Queen for which Boyum-Breen earned a National Girls and Women in Sports Day Breaking Barriers Award. “Sports helped pave my path in life but I never could find books that represented me. Girls and boys deserve an athletic female role model in their books and Shelly Bean the Sports Queen is exactly that!” Boyum-Breen resides in Plymouth, MN.