TEDxUCLA

Speakers

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

• Brett Brewer

  Co-Founder of MySpace

  Brett Brewer is co-founder and Managing Director of Crosscut Ventures, and one of the original architects of the social media era. In 1998 he co-founded Intermix Media, which launched MySpace and sold to News Corp in 2005 for $680 million. He has spent the twenty years since building, investing in, and leading internet companies — which means he knows exactly how the industry thinks, what it's capable of, and what it has refused to do.

• Daniel Estrada

  Senior Custodian + Storyteller

  Daniel Estrada is a Senior Custodian of 15 years at UCLA, a family man of 28 (& counting) and a journeyman of life at heart. Outside of work, he likes to relax outside with family and good friends at the beach or park.

• Jaimie Krems

  Friendship Scientist

  Dr. Jaimie Arona Krems is one of the world's leading friendship experts—an actual friendship scientist whose lab is at the forefront of understanding how friendship works in the brain, what friendship does for us, and why we're failing at it right now. Her research—including an analysis of nearly thirty thousand peer-reviewed articles revealing that science has spent fifty years studying romance while relegating our friendships to the footnotes—is redefining friendship as a matter of human flourishing, public health, and civic necessity.

• Martin Burns

  Martin Burns is the CEO of Bruin Biometrics and has spent 15 years working to make preventable patient harm visible and stoppable before it happens. His work is driven by a personal intolerance for avoidable human suffering and a belief that better information can help healthcare systems act earlier, make better decisions, and protect the safety and dignity of the people in their care.

• Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda

  UCLA professor and University of Chicago–trained political economist Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda has spent decades decoding the intricate currents of trade, migration, and regional integration across the Americas and the Pacific Rim. A scholar with an emphasis on real-world impact, he is a founding director of UCLA’s North American Integration and Development (NAID) Center in 1995 and co-conceiving the $3 billion North American Development Bank in 1994. His strategic counsel has shaped key transnational institutions as well as federal economic oversight, including an appointment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Advisory Board by President Obama.

• Sharad Aggarwal

  Strategist & Negotiator

  Sharad Aggarwal has spent decades in technology, from Big Tech companies like IBM in his early years to senior leadership at Google today, with a focus on strategic partnerships across Cloud, AI & Engineering. Along the way, he's built a specialty most technologists never touch: high-stakes negotiation, leading enterprise deals worth billions of dollars, and turning technical complexity into strategic advantage at the table. A UCLA Anderson MBA alumnus, he serves on the school's Alumni Board of Directors and leads its AI taskforce, and is deeply engaged in giving back to students and young founders.

• Tiffany Barber

  Art Historian

  Dr. Tiffany E. Barber is an internationally recognized scholar, curator, and critic whose work examines race, gender, contemporary art, and visual culture. She is Assistant Professor of African American Art at UCLA, where her research explores art as a form of data consciousness. Bridging art history, performance theory, Black feminist thought, and technology, Dr. Barber inspires audiences to rethink the relationship between data, representation, and cultural futures.

• V. Kelly Turner

  Heat Scientist

  Dr. Turner is a heat researcher and science communicator who has advised federal, state, and local governments on heat policy. As a Professor of Urban Planning and Geography and Associate Director of heat equity research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, she studies how people can thrive in a hotter world. LinkedIn: @V. Kelly Turner, @UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, @UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Personal Website: https://innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/team/v-kelly-turner/ UCLA Luskin Heat Equity Website: https://innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/heat/