UC Berkeley’s TEDx Committee, itself a part of Berkeley student group RCSA, hosted TEDxBerkeley 2024 on January 20th at Zellerbach Hall. The event, the fourteenth annual TEDx conference at Berkeley, featured a diverse array of speakers whose talks were disparate in their focus and presentation, and yet all unified around the year’s theme: the butterfly effect. Some speakers had a connection to Berkeley (one current professor spoke, as well as an alumnus who got his PhD here), while others did not. What they all had in common was their insight into how small, seemingly insignificant factors had impacted their own stories.
The initial half of TEDxBerkeley 2024 centered around the idea of “dynamic systems.” The first speaker on the program, Tu David Phu, an award-winning Oakland chef, delivered a talk that blended highly personal anecdotes on his own upbringing as a first-generation Vietnamese-American with references to his current culinary success. Chef Phu’s elaborations on the rich culinary heritage of his family included a story of how his mother used salmon scraps brought home by his father for her garden, which gave it “the nutrition that it would need” to grow various ingredients for the family kitchen. He then connected this resourceful use of the “other 30%” of a fish that isn’t sold to sustainability, highlighting the environmental benefits of making full use of food products.
Following Chef Phu, model Aaron Rose Philip gave a talk titled “A System of Inequity: Fashion for Every Body.” Philip shared her experiences as a transgender woman with cerebral palsy in high fashion, reflecting on her challenges in the industry as well as her triumphs. Next, Sky Nelson-Isaacs spoke about perspective and the concept of synchronicity. Nelson-Isaacs, a physicist who aims to “establish a connection between synchronicity and physics using rigorous research methodology,” made extensive use of visual aids to show the connection between a pixel-like coding language and a black-and-white image of skyscrapers, which demonstrated the concept of synchronicity.
The halfway point of the conference was punctuated by a short intermission and a jazz-fusion performance from singer-songwriter Amae Love. This performance led into the latter half of TEDxBerkeley: titled “taking flight,” it centered around personal actualization sparked by the butterfly effect. Berkeley geography professor Clancy Wilmott kicked this section of the conference off by speaking on how she created a new map of the San Francisco Bay Area in collaboration with indigenous leaders from around the Bay. Professor Wilmott employed beautiful visual aids showing the progression of the map from nothing, to a work in progress, to a completed work of cartographical art imbued with cultural significance.
Following Wilmott was Manjusha Kulkarni, an activist who co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit that combats hatred against the AAPI community. Kulkarni gave visceral, personal anecdotes of the anti-Asian racism she experienced firsthand in her youth, including an incident in which her mother was denied a job as a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama. She went on to explain the founding of her organization Stop AAPI Hate, and its necessity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After Kulkarni was Olympic sprinter Natasha Hastings, who gave another deeply personal talk. Hastings lamented the way athletes are viewed by some as “superhuman,” explaining that they experience mental health issues like anyone else. She explained that part of the reason that athletes may be less likely to seek help is because of the stigma people in these fields have against being “weak.” Hastings also spoke about representation, noting her preference for a therapist who shares her background as an African-American woman.
TEDxBerkeley 2024 concluded with a powerful talk from Berkeley alumnus Benjamin Oakes. Oakes, the founder of a genetic medicine company, spoke on CRISPr gene editing and how it can fix heart disease. He explained that his own father suffers from heart disease, and that this has propelled him to create medical solutions for congenital heart defects. Oakes went on to emphasize that one single edit of a gene can lead to a “revolution” in the body that, in animals, is demonstrably capable of reducing the rate of heart disease by up to 50%. Oakes’ speech, the last one of the conference, directly tied back to the original theme of the butterfly effect.
The event concluded with a round of applause for the event’s organizers and was followed by a reception hosted in Lower Sproul Plaza that was open to speakers as well as audience members.