TEDxLeith

Speakers

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

• Anthony Emebo

  Anthony Emebo is a PhD candidate at Edinburgh Napier University researching the effects of social media on well-being, a digital marketing professional with over eight years of industry experience, and a Grow with Google Lead Coach who has trained more than 20,000 entrepreneurs across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His talk argues that influencer burnout isn't a niche problem affecting a handful of online personalities - it's a window into something much bigger. The influencer model, he argues, has quietly become the template for modern work itself. Family-run cafés film reels at dawn. Independent retailers learn algorithms to survive. Freelancers build personal brands from their flats. Visibility is no longer optional, it's expected. Anthony makes the case that we are all being asked to turn identity into performance, and that the real alchemy lies in transforming that pressure into something sustainable, human, and genuinely ours.

• Greg Sanderson

  Greg Sanderson is the founder of Smart School Councils, a charity that has spent over a decade redesigning how participation works in schools - supporting hundreds of thousands of young people across the UK to make student-led decision making part of everyday school life. A former Leith resident, Greg's thinking about participation and community was shaped in part by the neighbourhood itself. His talk introduces the concept of Democracy by Default - arguing that democratic inequality isn't a motivation problem, it's a design problem. When institutions rely on opt-in participation, the loudest voices win by default. Greg makes the case that healthier democracies begin not at the ballot box, but in how we structure participation long before anyone ever votes.

• Hannah Carmichael

  Hannah Carmichael is a friendship and connection coach who helps adults build authentic, reciprocal relationships - and one of the few people approaching the loneliness crisis as a skills problem rather than a personality one. Before coaching, she spent sixteen years in public policy, including as Deputy Director for Early Years Childcare at the Department for Education, and was awarded an OBE for her work with vulnerable populations. Her talk, The Alchemy of Awkwardness, makes the case that we've been thinking about awkwardness all wrong. Rather than a sign that something has gone wrong, awkwardness is a sign that something is actually happening - that we're showing up, caring, and in the game of real connection. Hannah argues that the path to genuine friendship doesn't go around discomfort. It goes straight through it.

• Leisha Beardmore

  Leisha Beardmore is a global expert in Gender-Based Violence, Mental Health, and Human Rights Law, and a Research Fellow at Stanford University. As a Senior Consultant to the United Nations, they have spent fifteen years listening to young people across the world about technology-facilitated violence - and what they've heard consistently challenges what adults, professionals, and policymakers assume. Drawing on research with children and adolescents across 15 countries, Leisha's talk brings their voices, findings, and concrete recommendations to the TEDx stage - and asks us all to start listening to the people most impacted.

• Lydia Kostopoulos

  Lydia Kostopoulos is an emerging technology advisor who helps organisations imagine new competitive futures for themselves. She is also the author of Imagination Dilemma - a book arguing that in an era of AI-led disruption, our greatest competitive advantage is the one thing AI can't replicate. Her talk, Humanity's Moat Against AI, takes that argument head-on. Drawing on examples from across history and science, she makes the case that imagination, curiosity, passion, compassion, and courage aren't soft qualities to be nostalgic about - they are the defining human advantages of our time. Rather than asking how we compete with AI, she asks a better question: what becomes possible when we stop trying to match it, and start leaning into what only we can do?

• Nat Baldwin

  Nat Baldwin spent fifteen years as a high-achieving professional, building a career in intellectual property and insolvency and leading high-profile cases involving household names like Thomas Cook and Bolton Wanderers. By every external measure, he was succeeding. On the inside, he was drifting. It took a personal crisis, therapy, and a sabbatical across Southeast Asia, Everest Base Camp, and Europe before he realised that escape wasn't the answer - self-knowledge was. Now an ICF-qualified coach working with lawyers, accountants, and consultants, his talk makes a case that reframes the burnout epidemic entirely: the problem isn't overwork. It's spending years responding to other people's expectations instead of making intentional choices about your own life. The solution isn't to blow everything up. It's to stop drifting - and start deciding.

• Nick Murray

  Nick Murray is Director of TecTonic MVMT and an innovation programme designer who has spent over a decade building entrepreneurial and leadership programmes across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond - working with organisations including Techstars, Barclays Eagle Labs, and Startup Grind Scotland. Alongside that work, Nick has spent years asking why ancient thinkers like the Stoics and Aristotle already had practical answers to burnout, rejection, imposter syndrome, and conflict - and why we keep rediscovering them the hard way. His talk, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Problems, argues that humans still arrive as Version 0.1, forced to relearn the same lessons every generation - not because the wisdom is outdated, but because the translation is broken. Nick makes the case that we don't need new answers. We need better ones.

• Rafael Tsantes

  Rafael Tsantes is a Glasgow-based designer and learning technologist who grew up in Athens, trained in theatre, retrained into communication design at the Glasgow School of Art, and built a career in the creative industries without financial backing or traditional entry routes. He now runs a purpose-led design studio focused on mission-driven organisations. His talk pushes back against the polished success narratives that dominate creative and tech industries - arguing that for people without safety nets, career-building isn't a heroic journey. It's a survival design problem. Rafael makes the case that "failure" is not the opposite of success - it's a signal about power, privilege, and access, and that design thinking is not a creative luxury but a political tool for navigating systems that were never built for everyone. Part personal story, part practical framework, his talk offers something rarer than inspiration: a realistic map for people who have to hack their way in.

• Rosie Dalling

  Rosie Dalling coaches C-suite leaders at TikTok, Visa, Citi, M&S, and the UK Parliament, teaching confidence as a practical leadership skill, drawing on a background in global advertising and professional theatre at the Donmar Warehouse. But her talk doesn't begin in a boardroom. It begins when her puppy goes missing in a village where she's a stranger. Within hours of posting online, hundreds of people mobilise: neighbours, retired detectives, volunteer search teams. What follows becomes the foundation of her work with leaders - and her talk, The Invisible Network Waiting to Help You. Rosie argues that most of us are sitting inside networks we've never learned to activate, and that the ability to ask clearly, communicate humanly, and trust people you've never met isn't soft skill. It's the most powerful leadership tool most of us have never been taught.

• Taylor Wilson

  Taylor Wilson has spent over 25 years as a professional singer, actor, and voice teacher across the UK and internationally. At 26, she nearly lost it all when significant vocal damage forced her off the stage. Returning to performance, she discovered that rest hadn't restored what she'd lost, and set out to understand why. That search transformed her practice entirely. Now one of only five Master Trainers in Scotland in the science-based Estill Voice Training model, Taylor's talk challenges one of our oldest assumptions about voice: that it's a gift. She argues that voice is a system - shaped by biology and behaviour, not talent or identity. When people understand the mechanisms shaping their voice, they gain agency - and with agency comes the ability to be heard with clarity, confidence, and intention.

• Vignesh Vyas

  Vignesh Vyas is a mental health Occupational Therapist and Filmmaker who has developed a practice sitting at the intersection of both - Therapeutic Filmmaking, a method that blends occupational therapy with the unique storytelling power of film. His work has been recognised with a Highly Commendable Project award at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards and the Behind the Scenes Champion award at the InsideOut Awards for using filmmaking to improve mental health in care settings. Vignesh's talk begins with a simple reframe: most of us think changing the world is impossible but if films could even help shift just one person’s life or their views or give them hope - then that means they have succeeded in creating real world change. His talk makes the case that unlike other art forms, film has a unique ability to help people not just reflect on who they've been, but direct, script, and inhabit who they want to become.