TEDxAnchorage

Speakers

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

• Andre Walton

  André Walton is an inventor, entrepreneur and educator. In his 20s he built businesses around his crazy ideas in medical ultrasound and professional music equipment, turning his inventions into global leaders in their field. He lived and worked in seven different countries and later earned a PhD in social psychology focused on organizational creativity. His first book, Embracing the New Era examines creativity from a unique perspective and explains many anomalies from why brainstorming doesn’t work to why creatives have a higher rate of psychological problems than most. He is a certified, accredited coach and Visiting Professor of Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Newport Business School. In his coaching practice he helps entrepreneurs and business executives overcome burnout through his unique Spherical Thinking process. He is a speaker and jazz musician living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada with his wife, Robin, and has a wonderful time with his granddaughters.

• Anilla Till

  Fulbright scholar Anilla Till shares her Arctic journeys to reframe climate change as a personal and urgent health issue. Blending poetic storytelling with scientific insight, she inspires action by connecting climate, resilience, and global health in a way that resonates across cultures.

• Charity Carmody

  Charity Carmody is a fourth-generation Alaskan, business owner, and community leader. She and her husband, Kris, have four grown children and four grandchildren. Charity founded Carmody Insurance Agency in Anchorage in 2007 and has worked in finance and insurance since 1994. She is also the Executive Director of the Alaska Impact Alliance through her consulting firm, Beautiful Step Consulting, and co-founded Beacon Hill, a nonprofit focused on foster care prevention and family reunification. Charity has received multiple honors, including the Champion for Children Award from the Alaska Children’s Trust, Top 40 Under 40, and Athena Society induction. She is also a published author and public speaker, teaching business at Alaska Pacific University.

• Elise Arsenault

  Elise explores the irreplaceable role of human storytellers in an age of AI-generated voices, drawing from her experience narrating major works like a Madonna biography. She calls for transparency and recognition in the audiobook industry, warning that replacing human voices with AI risks deepening disconnection and losing the empathy that makes storytelling truly powerful.

• Eloheem Ali

  What if the fall of man wasn’t metaphor—but agriculture? FFFHAMS is a provocative, visionary talk that reclaims ancient wisdom to build modern, sustainable communities through food forests, foraging, and anti-fragile systems. A rallying cry for regeneration, not extraction.

• Martha Summa-Chadwick

  Martha Summa-Chadwick, DMA, has attained a national reputation as an educator, presenter, performer, and advocate for the cause of music in therapy. She has performed as piano and harpsichord soloist with orchestras across the country. To help educate audiences in an overview of biomedical music protocols, she has established a series of both chamber and solo concerts. For the past two decades, Dr. Summa-Chadwick has explored various ways to apply music for therapeutic as well as aesthetic ends. She is the Executive Director of the nonprofit organization Music Therapy Gateway in Communications, Inc. (mtgic.org), the author of Trevor the Noteable G.O.A.T. (trevorthenoteablegoat.com – in press), and a frequent guest speaker at national and regional conferences discussing the use of biomedical music techniques for challenged children. She is investigating how music protocols can be automated into software applications to assist persons with motor, speech, or cognition challenges.

• Robert Andersen

  In this talk, Robert talks about SPAM and how it is a result of fragmented digital identities, where data is scattered across multiple platforms. The idea of "identity agents" is to create bots that consolidate your information, giving you control over what messages you receive and eliminating unwanted spam. It’s a potential solution to the chaos of online communication.