TEDxLufkin

Speakers

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

• Alexandra Silva Labarr

  Alexandra Silva Labarr is a speaker, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and founder of Xandra Marketing & PR and TPN Community, a global networking organization empowering leaders to build meaningful relationships and create opportunities. Known as the “Networking Queen,” she is the author of Show Up Scared, Show Up Scared: Teen Edition, and The Power of Networking. After losing both of her parents as a teenager, Alexandra transformed unimaginable loss into a life devoted to helping others rewrite the stories fear has been telling them. Through her signature message, “Fear Is Data,” she challenges audiences to stop letting yesterday’s experiences dictate tomorrow’s possibilities. Her work reminds us that fear isn’t a stop sign—it’s data. And the life you’ve been waiting for begins the moment you choose to show up scared.

• Cheantel Adams Ph. D

  Dr. Cheantel Adams is an educator and leader with nearly thirty years of experience across America and Abu Dhabi, UAE. Throughout her career, she has both lived and led growth, change, and human potential in individuals and organizations. As a mother of two sons and a lifelong learner, Dr. Adams brings both professional experience and personal reflection to her TEDx talk, "Knowing Without Works: Still Stuck." Her talk explores the space between awareness and action, inviting us to consider what becomes possible when we release what was to make room for what can be.

• Demetress Curl-Harrell

  Demetress Curl-Harrell, a Lufkin, Texas resident, is a dedicated community leader and CEO of Hospice in the Pines, where she has served since 1993. Married to her husband, Demetrius, for nearly 38 years, she is passionate about empowering others through education, leadership, and service. A former adjunct instructor at Angelina College for 17 years, Demetress has inspired countless students and audiences as a keynote speaker across healthcare, business, and civic organizations. Through her work supporting those experiencing grief and loss, she continues to bring hope and healing.

• Jason Sousa

  Jason Sousa is a high performance coach, speaker, and former first-round professional soccer draft pick. He spent the last decade studying why talented, driven people still get stuck, and now works with athletes and leaders in organizations including Yale, UC Berkeley, and USA Fencing. His work challenges the belief that the answer is always more discipline, motivation, or proof. Nothing is missing. Something is in the way. He helps people identify the protection patterns shaping their confidence, decisions, and identity, and take back authority from the guard beneath them

• Jeannine Rashidi

  Jeannine L.Rashidi is a 2x TEDx speaker, Doctor of Ayurveda specializing in mental and emotional wellness, bestselling author of Abundance Beyond Trauma, and creator of the EDHIR® Method™, a transformational framework that integrates neuroscience, trauma-informed care, and Ayurveda. For more than two decades, she has helped thousands move beyond survival, build emotional resilience, and reconnect with their authentic selves. Through powerful storytelling and practical wisdom, Jeannine inspires audiences to discover that lasting transformation begins the moment we move beyond survival and come home to ourselves.

• Josef Stetter

  Josef Stetter is the founder and CEO of Cultural Transformation Systems, an author, speaker, educator, and former recruiter who has helped more than 12,000 people rebuild their work stories. After nine career changes and 18 jobs, he learned firsthand what happens when workplaces measure output but fail to see the human being behind it. His work challenges leaders to replace headcounts with humanity and use AI as a mirror, not another system that makes people invisible. His TEDx talk, Humans, Not Headcounts, asks one urgent question: What happens when technology gets faster, but our ability to see people does not?

• Laura Lopez

  Laura Lopez is an entrepreneur and international speaker. Over the past 15 years, living and rebuilding her life across four continents, she noticed the same pattern each time: every comeback made her more certain she still had something left to prove. Over the past 5 years, while working alongside high achievers and leaders, she has seen that same need to prove hiding behind lives that appear successful from the outside. Her work explores how the identities we learn to perform can quietly shape the lives we create. Her TEDx talk, Nothing Left to Prove, asks what becomes possible when we stop performing our worth and start living from it.

• Michael V. Crismali

  Mike Crismali is a devoted father, a keynote speaker, a published author, and the founder/owner of Legacy Word Services, LLC. Drawing from his own personal experiences with struggle, accountability, and transformation, Mike now uses his voice to help others find clarity, hope, and the courage to move forward. His message is rooted in the belief that our lives are not defined by what happened to us, but by what we choose to do with it. Today, he brings that message to the TEDx stage with a talk about finding clarity when closure never comes.