TEDxUWCAC Youth

Speakers

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

• Gweno Gray

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Gweno is a first year student at UWC Atlantic College. She holds the RANK School Leadership Award, and is currently apart of the Moondance Foundation on a Mousetrap Arts and Music Scholarship. She cares deeply for the environment and the humanitarian movement, this is represented through her volunteering work at Bernardos Charity and NARC’s (Neptune’s Army of Rubbish Cleaners), a scuba diving litter collection association. Gweno aspires to study marine science in university and plans on utilising her leadership skills and collaborative mindset to achieve her dreams.

• Katarina Polack Czaplicka Cabezas

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Katarina is a first-year student at UWC Atlantic from France and Bolivia. She has also lived in Haiti, Brazil, the United States, and Belgium, where she observed how people often reduce the world to simple binaries. She is interested in politics and football. Her perspective comes from early experiences in Bolivia, where she realised that complex problems cannot be solved with simple solutions. Through her “Kaleidoscope Method,” she encourages people to understand complexity instead of avoiding it. Her goal is to help her generation think in a more nuanced and accurate way.

• Katrina Fong

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Katrina Fong grew up in Hong Kong and is currently a second-year student at UWC Atlantic College in South Wales. She is passionate about increasing student agency and engagement in education, particularly in the rapidly devalued arts and the oft-misunderstood sciences. She has taught creative writing to students aged 11-18 as a volunteer at Igniting Writing, championed youth voices in museums on the Youth Panel of the Museum of English Rural Life, and co-founded the Frames and Perspectives Film Club at UWC Atlantic. She intends to pursue English Literature at university, as her talk would suggest.

• Kazi Marium

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Kazi spent her life in between states, having grown up in both Bangladesh and Dubai she has developed a multicultural identity. She is currently graduating from UWC Atlantic College in South Wales. Kazi is an aspiring barrister and is an advocate for youth and human rights. As a passionate public speaker, she has represented her perspectives on global stages including the Harvard Model Congress, where she sharpened her ability to translate personal witnessing into political argument. Moreover as an ambassador for Letters To Foster children she has represented the regional struggles of youth at an international level.

• Laura Meijerink

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Laura Meijerink, half Dutch & half Polish, grew up in Belgium before moving to Amsterdam in pursuit of an international education at the International School of Amsterdam, a choice that eventually brought her to UWC Atlantic College in South Wales, where she is now completing her International Baccalaureate. A natural problem solver, with a passion for anything STEM related, she is drawn to how things work, why they hold together, and most importantly, how to create. To her, being analytical is separate from just thinking; it is one of the purest forms of it. In thought and analysis, the brain's constructed reality is put to the test in real time and action, and it makes you question the things around you to a deeper level and reevaluate the world you’ve considered reality.

• Samuel Cerne

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Samuel Cerne is a pianist, DJ, surfer and creative known for blending music, surfing and ocean storytelling into a unique artistic identity. Growing up as both a surfer and pianist, he refused to compromise between his passions, eventually finding a way to merge them through live piano performances by the ocean and immersive piano-DJ sets. He is the founder of Busking for the Ocean, a movement that uses public piano performances to raise awareness and funds for ocean conservation, turning music into a tool for environmental connection and impact. His journey of combining surfing, music and purpose is explored in the award-winning short film Rhythm, centred around the idea of rhythm in both ocean waves and sound waves. Performing internationally as both a pianist and DJ, Samuel’s work explores originality, creativity and the power of embracing the parts of ourselves that don’t always fit into a single box.

• Walney Manjate

  UWC Atlantic Student

  Walney grew up in Mozambique and had this particular friend that showed him that life has more to live. At UWC Atlantic college, he applies all the lessons he has learned to everything he does always adding some spoons full of passion to them, not only in order to help others, but also as a matter of self discovery into his unknown future.