TEDxFoggyBottom

Speakers

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

• Aleksandr Yampolskiy

  Dr. Aleksandr Yampolskiy, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Security Scorecard, is a globally recognized cybersecurity innovator, leader, and expert. Since Security Scorecard's inception in 2014, he has led the company with a vision to create a new language for measuring and communicating risk. Security Scorecard is now one of the world's most trusted cybersecurity brands, with tens of thousands of customers —including half of the Fortune 100 and nine of the top U.S. banks-and over 600 employees. The company has earned the Gartner Peer Insight Customers' Choice award and been named a Leader in the Forrester New Wave. In 2021, Yampolskiy was named E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 New York Award winner and Cyber Defense Magazine's CEO of the Year. Before founding the Security Scorecard, Yampolskiy was a CTO at Blog TalkRadio, the largest online talk radio and podcast-hosting platform, where he scaled its technology to over 30 M visitors each month. He was also a CISO at Gilt Groupe, where he managed all aspects of IT infrastructure security, fraud, secure application development, and PCI compliance. Yampolskiy has led security teams at Goldman Sachs and Oracle, among other companies, where he built authentication and entitlement infrastructure for trading. Alex has published numerous articles, won the Public Key Cryptography Conference Test of Time Award for his verifiable random function invention, holds numerous patents, and is the author of the published book "The Perfect Scorecard: Getting an 'A' in Cybersecurity from Your Board of Directors". He holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science from New York University and a Ph.D. in Cryptography from Yale University.

• Cassandra Dahnke

  Cassandra Dahnke is President and co-founder of The Institute for Civility, a grassroots, nonpartisan 501(c) (3) founded in 1997 to reduce polarization by facilitating dialogue, teaching respect, and building practical skills for civil discourse in both public and private life. She is known for a plain-spoken, field-tested definition of civility: "claiming and caring for one's identity, needs, and beliefs without degrading someone else's in the process.” Cassandra focuses on what people can do in real time when conversations get hot-listen across difference, de-escalate conflict, and stay engaged without surrendering core beliefs. Her expertise is grounded in delivery, not theory. Through the Institute, Cassandra has designed and led trainings, workshops, and speaking engagements for civic, educational, nonprofit, faith-based, and governmental audiences across the United States. She also leads Washington, D.C. legislative seminars and student civic-education programs that combine civility training, guided issue research, and direct engagement with congressional offices —turning democracy into something participants can practice.

• Doug Holladay

  The career trajectory of Doug Holladay has been a blend of public service, business, non-profit work, and now teaching and journalism. His bestselling book, Rethinking Success, offers a clear path for leaders looking to bring high purpose and meaning to the commercial experience. He is a co-founder and general partner of two private equity firms, Park Avenue Equity Partners, LP and Elgin Capital Partners LP. While Mr. Holladay continues as an active investor and board member, as well as devoting time to a nonprofit he created with many of the nation's leading lights, Path North, Inc., which helps CEOs and business owners to "broaden their definitions of success' to include purposeful living. As a full-time faculty member, Mr. Holladay holds the prestigious Heinz Christian Prechter Executive in Residence position at Georgetown University, where he teaches MBA students to integrate purposeful living into the business context. Mr. Holladay was formerly a senior officer with the international investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and Company. At Goldman Sachs, he served as founding President of One-to-One Mentoring Partnership (Points of Light), an initiative to bring imaginative solutions to the challenges of at-risk young people. Before joining Goldman Sachs, Mr Holladay held senior positions in both the White House and Department of State. After working under White House Chief of Staff, James A Baker II, Mr. Holladay was appointed by the President to the personal rank of Special Ambassador. In that unique role, he coordinated America's public response to the challenges posed by South Africa and its entrenched policy of partheid before the dramatic release of Nelson Mandela. Mr. Holladay holds degrees from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Oxford University in England, as well as two honorary doctorates from Morehouse College and Nyack College.

• Dr. Natasha Latouf

  Dr. Natasha Latouf, NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow, is a recent Ph.D. graduate from George Mason University studying astrobiology - the study of life on planets outside of our Solar System, known as exoplanets. Specifically, she studies the atmospheres of exoplanets to understand the requirements to detect indications of life on other worlds. Her full project is titled Bayesian Analysis for Remote Biosignature Identification on Earth, otherwise known as the BARBIE project. The BARBIE project will further the development of the Habitable World Observatory (HWO), a next-generation telescope that is designed with the detection of exoplanet atmospheres in mind. Additionally, she researched mentorship practices in physics and astronomy to break down barriers and improve the experience in STEM for all. Natasha serves on the board of The Neuroverse Initiative, co-founded the grassroots organization SPECTRUM, and was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Future Investigator in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology Fellow.

• Dr. Tony Keith Jr.

  Tony Keith Jr., PhD, is an award-winning poet, author, and educational leader from Washington, DC. He is the founder and CEO of Ed Emcee Academy, an educational consulting agency that integrates poetry, spoken word, and Hip-Hop culture into learning experiences that strengthen literacy, identity development, and leadership. A higher-education scholar and practitioner with deep community-based roots, Dr. Keith's work is grounded in research on Hip-Hop Educational Leaders and culturally responsive pedagogy, with a focus on empowering young people and transforming the conditions for learning and engagement in schools, libraries, museums, and community organizations. Dr. Keith is the author of How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and Knucklehead: Poems (HarperCollins), and his writing and performances have reached audiences locally and internationally, including stages such as the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Theatre. He is a multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and frequently collaborates with educators and institutions to design programs that blend rigorous learning with creative expression. As a TED host, Dr. Keith brings a dynamic, youth-centered presence and a deep commitment to storytelling as a catalyst for community, imagination, and social

• Elizabeth O'Donnell

  Elizabeth O'Donnell is the founder and executive director of Aaliyah in Action, a nonprofit organization advancing compassionate, equitable support for families after pregnancy and infant loss while working to improve perinatal bereavement care systems nationwide. Elizabeth's work is rooted in lived experience. In 2020, her daughter Aaliyah was born ill after what appeared to be a healthy pregnancy. In the days that followed, Elizabeth encountered profound gaps in bereavement support, workplace protections, and institutional recognition of baby loss, revealing how often grieving families are rendered invisible by the systems meant to support them. Motivated by both grief and responsibility, Elizabeth founded Aaliyah in Action to ensure families receive tangible, trauma-informed support during the earliest and most vulnerable moments of loss. Since its founding, the organization has supported thousands of families across the United States through hospital partnerships, bereavement care packages, and provider education focused on culturally responsive care.

• Glenn Kirschner

  Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner explores the vital role the rule of law plays in our daily lives and the survival of American democracy. Moving from the mundane choices of everyday life to the critical defense of constitutional rights, Kirschner highlights the power that ordinary citizens hold when they choose to stand firm for the rule of law. When it comes to defending our democracy, Kirschner reminds us that the time to plant our feet is always now.

• Joe Wang

  Joe Wang is a technology executive who operates at the intersection of systems, people, and change. Over the last decade, he has built and led large, complex organizations across Fortune 500 companies and venture-backed startups, working in domains that include aerospace, semiconductors, automotive, energy, and restaurant tech. What often catches people off guard is how he arrived there. Born in Harbin and raised across three countries and more cities than he can easily count, Joe grew up constantly adapting to new cultures, environments, and ways of thinking. Long before his professional career began, change was the constant, and learning how to observe, listen, and make sense of unfamiliar systems became second nature. Today, Joe is known for his presence: an uncommon intensity paired with deep listening, a sharp memory, and a tendency to ask questions that slow conversations down just enough to matter. He cares deeply about relationships and responsibility, at work, with his teams, and at home as the father of five. He believes creativity is a virtue, persistence is underrated, and progress belongs to those willing to stay engaged when things get tough. Joe currently serves as the Vice President of Sales at Tektronix, a company whose technologies sit beneath many of the world's most ambitious innovations. His work lives upstream of progress, at the hard-technology layer that enables breakthroughs in AI, space, and new energy, long before they reach the spotlight. He brings to the TED stage a rare perspective from where innovation is not only imagined, but built.

• Kris Anderson Moore

  Kristin Anderson Moore, Ph.D., is Senior Scholar and Past President at Child Trends. She is a social psychologist and has worked at Child Trends for more than 40 years. She studies trends in child and family well-being, positive youth development, education and employment programs, teen pregnancy and parenthood, family structure, poverty, and the effects of public policies and programs on children. She has worked to share knowledge with practitioners, funders, journalists, and policymakers. Dr. Moore has helped develop constructs and measures for numerous surveys, including the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten and Birth Cohorts, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 197 Cohor, the National Survey of Children, and the National Survey of Children Heath. She was a founding member of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and currently serves on the Upstream Program Committee. She has been a member of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Advisory Council and served on the Census Scientific Advisory Committee. Dr. Moore headed Child Trends as President from 1992 to 2006, before she chose to return to full-time research. She has published more than 160 journal articles and books, as well as numerous research briefs and blogs, and is widely cited.

• Nathalie Blais

  Nathalie Blais is the Founder and CEO of Coach Academy and an IF Master Certified Coach whose work focuses on how people think, connect, and lead. Her central idea is both simple and disruptive: connection is not an assumption —it is a skill. At a time when communication is increasingly reactive and transactional, she challenges people to reconsider how influence is built and how change actually occurs. She argues that coaching skills are connection skills, and that coaching has become the language of influence, inclusion, and meaningful exchange. Rather than fixing or directing, her work emphasizes creating the conditions for insight, responsibility, and growth —an approach that has shaped how leaders, educators, and coaches engage across systems and cultures. Blais holds a Master's degree in Psychology from Harvard and has logged more than 50,000 hours in facilitation, learning design, research, and education development. She is the architect of multiple ICF-accredited coach education programs and has trained thousands of leaders and coaches worldwide. A contributor to Forbes Coaches Council, her research explores fear, motivation, grief, compassion, and connection. Her forthcoming 2027 book examines why human-centred connection is becoming a critical skill in an increasingly automated world.