TEDxTehran

Speakers

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

• Christophe Rezai

  Composer

  Christophe Rezai, born in France in 1966, is a French-Iranian composer and musician who has been living and working in Tehran, Iran since 1994. Prior to being a musician, he had studied Hydraulic engineering in Toulouse and Marketing in HEC Paris. Focusing on mixing the Iranian and western music as a musician and composer, he has exploited various styles of music including Medieval, Baroque, Classic, Modern, Pop, Jazz, and Electronic. He has composed music for more than 50 short and long movies, documentaries, theater performances, TV comercials and audiobooks. Christophe has worked with movie and theater directors such as Dariush Mehrjui, Mani Haghighi, Justine Shapiro or Ali Rafii. He has been granted 6 International and Iranian prizes for the best movie soundtracks. As a musician and singer, he founded several musical ensembles such as Nour Ensemble in 2000 with French and Iranian singers and instrumentalists (www.nourensemble.com).

• Gelareh Kiazand

  Filmmaker

  Born in Tehran in 1981, Gelareh graduated from Sheridan college, Toronto in 2003 with honor in Media Arts and her focus on cinematography. Her films as a student toured festivals such as Toronto, NYC Independance, Fajr, and Montreal. During her academic education, she also won a cinematography award for her short documentary at Aspirations Film festival, Canada. This, later, brought her to work in Iran as a film photographer and director of photography (DP) for both fiction and non-fiction films until 2009, earning her two nominations for the best photographer at Fajr film festival, and secondly, for the best cinematographer at Basij film festival. She has held four photography exhibitions and owned the best behind-the-scene documentary at Tehran film festival as well. She has also made some documentaries so far and since 2016, she has commenced her work as one of the women pioneers after the Islamic revolution of Iran in the field of cinematography in film industry.

• Kosar Movahedi

  Artist & Entrepreneur

  Kosar was born in 1995 in Vancouver, Canada. She lived there until she was 6 and moved back to Tehran, there after. She went to school in Tehran and is currently studying architecture at The University of Tehran. Being very passionate and enthusiastic about all things that involve art and design, in the fall of 2014 she co-founded a start up company called Sedagraphy with Alireza Eskandari. With his expertise in software engineering and her passion for design they launched their idea of turning precious sounds into visual forms in spring 2015. Sedagraphy has been mentioned in many different publications such as techtalk.ir, DIGIATO.com and Jamejamonline.ir.

• Lena Vafaey

  Architect & Social Media Entrepreneur

  Born in Tehran in 1988, Lena Lived in London for 3 years between the ages of 5 and 8; thereafter, she moved back to Tehran and stayed there until the age of 18. She was a hardworking student at school but never dedicated 100% of her time to her studies, a reason which might have prevented her from getting admission to a good university in Tehran, however, it enabled her to persue various interests.Lena moved to Vancouver, Canada at the age of 18 in 2007 and attended the University of British Columbia to get her bachelor’s degree in Geotechnical Engineering. Her first interest in exploring cities was developed during her time away as an exchange student. In 2012, she graduated from the University of British Colombia and moved to New York City to commence an architecture program at Columbia University. She then moved back to Tehran and worked at Dayere Design studio for a year. She started working on «Peeyade» project in 2015.

• Lili Golestan

  Artist & Cultural Activist

  Born in 1944, Lili Golestan left for Paris after her secondary school and studied dress and textile designing at the Decorative Art institute in Paris. During that period, she attended some classes of world art history and French literature at Sorbonne university, and during her stay, she also participated in pottery making classes. After four years of living and studying in Paris, she returned to Iran and took up a job as a textile designer at Moghaddam textile factory. Later, she joined Iran’s national television as a dress designer and then, she became the head of children’s TV program. She quit her job after 7 years and afterwards, published her first translation of the novel “Life, War and then nothing” by Oriana Fallaci in 1967. The book encouraged her to translate more novels. She has since published more than twenty books. Between 1981 and 1987, Lili Golestan opened a bookstore called Ketab-e-Iran.

• Mohammad Majidi

  Architect

  Born in 1967 and raised in Tehran, Iran, Mohammad graduated with a Master degree of Architecture in 2002 at the University of Shahid Beheshti in Tehran, Iran. Mohammad founded Bonsar Architects in 1996. Multidisciplinary designer and chief architect of many projects, he always has an eye for criticizing “Process in Design” and participated in many conferences about it. He was the jury member of “The Grand Me’mar Award” in 2013. Over the years after establishing Bonsar, more than 120 various projects have been designed and built which led to several national and international awards. Bonsar won the first place of “The Grand Me’mar Award” for two times, in 2005 for “Furniture Showroom and Warehouse” and in 2014 for the “Chizari Residential Complex” which has been published in different national books and magazines. The awarded project, “Furniture Showroom and Warehouse” has also been published in “The PHAIDON Atlas of 21st Century of World Architecture“.

• Ramtin Monazahian

  Tech Entrepreneur

  Originally from Shiraz, Ramtin completed his Master degree in Finance at the University of Cologne- Germany, where he also studied PhD in Finance. Ramtin is known as an implementer of Online Marketplace Model in emerging markets. He is the Founder & CEO of bamilo, Iran's Largest Online Marketplace. He also co-founded Iran Internet Group consisting of Snapp, Zoodfood, Mozando and Pintapin. Prior, Ramtin spent over +4 years in the UK & Germany working for some of the world's leading Tier1 Investment Banks.

• Sanaz Minaie

  Chef & Author

  Sanaz Minaie, entrepreneur and founder of Sanza- Sania Cultural and Artistic Complex, was born in Arak in 1962. She has commenced her work in Tehran since 1981. Ms. Minaie holds a PHD in business management from The Liberty university in the United States. She is one of the first cooking show producers on national TV, the developer of 14 new standards regarding cooking, pastry, and guest reception for vocational education called ‘Sarashpaz Tallaii’. In 1982 she founded the first modern cooking institute in Iran. In 2012, she registered the technology invention of producing, controlling, and standardizing of the Golden Chef. She has, thus far, written and published 27 cooking books, the first monthly technical cooking and reception magazine, and a cooking encyclopedia. She has also been awarded many prizes and certificates of honor from Iranian and foreign festivals and organizations.