TEDxNorthwesternUQatar

Speakers

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

• ADAN ALI

  Adan is a Northwestern graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism and Strategic Communication. He attended the Medill School of Journalism at their campus in Doha, Qatar. He has a knack for automotive reporting and enjoys consuming and producing visual stories. Adan's reporting muscle is stimulated by developments in mobility and he is inclined towards non-political investigative journalism and advertising.

• Alena Kishmaraia

  Alena Kishmaraia, a life coach based in Doha with a background in psychology, focused on the concept of “looking for an enemy,” whether driven by hatred toward a specific group or society on the other side of the globe during the pandemic or targeting one’s self in other contexts. “I want the audience to feel safer and freer in this world, to start seeing the world not as a number of threats but as a set of opportunities,” she said and shared short exercises and thought-provoking questions to enable the audience to reflect on their outlooks on the world.

• ARNAV RAMAN

  Arnav Raman, an international economics major at Georgetown University in Qatar, discussed his experience with hardships and adversities in India, his home country. He shared stories about communities cooperating to overcome hardships during the pandemic but added that media coverage of such efforts is lacking. “It is unfortunate that in our times, bad media makes more headlines and is more appealing to people than good media,” Raman said of negative vs. positive coverage.

• SAM MEEKINGS

  Sam Meekings is an internationally-renowned poet and novelist, and a scholar of creative practices and processes with a special focus on digital and intersectional creative writing.