TEDxPortsmouth

Speakers

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

• Abdi Nor Iftin

  Abdi Nor Iftin's story was featured on the acclaimed This American Life episode “Abdi and the Golden Ticket.” Today, he is a writer, speaker, and advocate for free expression, immigration, and human connection across cultures. Through his work, Abdi explores what it means to belong, to speak freely, and to hold onto hope in the darkest moments. In this talk, he shares the hidden recordings and experiences that helped him survive Mogadishu — and ultimately led him to find his voice in America.

• Bridget Shannon

  Bridget Shannon is the owner of Nowadays Flowers, a cut flower farm and floral design studio cultivating joy, beauty, and connection. The Nowadays team creates garden-inspired weddings and events across New England, pops up around town with Clover the delightful vintage flower truck, and leads educational workshops. Bridget is a former Intuitive Eating Counselor and is certified in therapeutic horticulture. Through their Flourish program, Nowadays supports mental health and emotional well-being through flowers. What began as planting a few dahlias during the pandemic has grown into a mission centered on hope, healing, and the transformative power of tending beauty.

• Cameron Miner

  Cameron Miner is charting a path to preserve human agency in the Age of AI. A parallel entrepreneur and 30-year technology veteran, his track record includes working on the SRI research team whose DARPA-funded work became the da Vinci surgical robot, pioneering wearables at IBM Research, developing the strategic research framework for neural-input AR wristbands at Meta (and earning a patent in the process), and founding the Digital Twin Working Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He currently serves as Head of Innovation at Frontier Industries, where modular AI data centers and nuclear energy converge. Holding an M.S. in Engineering from Stanford — where he studied human-centered innovation under IDEO founder David Kelley — and a B.S. in Physics from MIT, Cameron is a technologist trying to make technology disappear.

• Cheryl Elizabeth Field

  Cheryl Field is a nurse, speaker, and three-time international best-selling author who helps families make sense of a system that often feels impossible to navigate. She shares practical guidance for caregivers online as Advocate Nurse Cheryl. With more than 30 years of experience spanning clinical care, healthcare leadership, quality, compliance, and reimbursement, she brings both bedside credibility and big-picture insight to one of the most urgent issues in healthcare today. Cheryl is the author of Prepared! A Healthcare Guide for Aging Adults and serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for Caregivers Support Global, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting caregivers worldwide. Her work bridges policy, caregiving, and real-world healthcare decisions, making her a trusted voice for people caring for those they love.

• Dr. Marie Elizabeth Ramas

  Dr. Marie-Elizabeth Ramas is a family physician with 15 years of experience caring for patients across the full spectrum of life — from birth through end of life, in clinics, hospitals, and homes. As a doctor for largely non-English speaking and underserved communities, she has spent her career at the intersection of public health, advocacy, and whole-person care. A lifelong New Hampshire native, Dr. Ramas has been a voice for health equity and primary care access at the local, state, and national level. She practices what she preaches: she has a family doctor, and she thinks you should too.

• Jessica Bolker

  Professor Bolker is an evolutionary and developmental biologist who got distracted by philosophy. Educated at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, she is an award-winning faculty member at the University of New Hampshire and the originator of the Fictional Species Project as a core assignment for evolution students. Whether you think science is fascinating, boring, or too hard, this talk is for you.

• John St. Pierre

  John St. Pierre is an entrepreneur, investor, and the author of The 100 Million Dollar Journey. After losing the company he had built to $55M, he rebuilt, patiently and deliberately, a portfolio of companies that today generate more than $100 million in revenue. He is the co-host of the Entrepreneurs United podcast and coaches founders scaling to $100M who feel caught between growing a business and building a life. He calls that discipline “Patient Ambition”: a life designed in decades that shapes the decisions you make every day.

• Kate Scarcella

  Kate Scarcella has spent more than 25 years helping organizations recover from some of their most challenging technology failures. A cybersecurity architect, advisor, and speaker, she has worked with Fortune 50 enterprises, served on IBM's Security Board of Advisors, and chairs the CI/CD Cybersecurity SIG at the Continuous Delivery Foundation. After the loss of her partner Jill following more than 35 years together, Kate discovered that the principles she used to restore compromised systems offered an unexpected framework for navigating grief and profound change. Her work explores what technology can teach us about trust, restoration, and rebuilding when life can no longer be returned to a previous version.

• Keith Wasserman

  Keith Wasserman is a multi-disciplined artist, musician, filmmaker, and creative facilitator whose work explores symbolism, synchronicity, mindfulness, and the beautifully chaotic nature of the human mind. Blending vulnerability with humor and philosophy with absurdity, he creates work that invites deeper reflection and authentic connection. Through art, public speaking, and community engagement, Wasserman encourages people to cultivate a healthier relationship with creativity, consciousness, and themselves—not by escaping the mind, but by learning how to meet it. See more at www.collagemania.art

• Michael Palace

  Michael Palace is an environmental scientist and professor at the University of New Hampshire whose research combines remote sensing, drones, field ecology, and geospatial science to study environmental change across Arctic, tropical, and temperate ecosystems. His work has been supported by NASA, NSF, USDA, USAID, USGS, DOD, and DOE. He is also an electronic musician and field recordist whose creative work explores the intersection of sound, technology, and the environment.

• Shawn Walsh

  Shawn Walsh is an author, strategist, and retired U.S. Army Colonel whose work in logistics, energy, and sustainment helped shape U.S. and allied military doctrine. During more than 25 years of military service, he held command and staff assignments worldwide, including Bosnia, Iraq, Germany, Korea, and the Pentagon. Following his Army career, he led initiatives focused on strengthening energy resilience and modernizing critical federal infrastructure. A graduate of The Citadel and the United States Army War College, Walsh is a Bronze Star recipient with more than four decades of leadership experience. Through writing and public speaking, he explores leadership, service, responsibility, and the moments that shape human character. His book, Proud to Serve, is scheduled for release on September 11, 2026.

• Shawn Walsh

  Shawn Walsh is an author, strategist, and retired U.S. Army Colonel whose work in logistics, energy, and sustainment helped shape U.S. and allied military doctrine. During more than 25 years of military service, he held command and staff assignments worldwide, including Bosnia, Iraq, Germany, Korea, and the Pentagon. Following his Army career, he led initiatives focused on strengthening energy resilience and modernizing critical federal infrastructure. A graduate of The Citadel and the United States Army War College, Walsh is a Bronze Star recipient with more than four decades of leadership experience. Through writing and public speaking, he explores leadership, service, responsibility, and the moments that shape human character. His book, Proud to Serve, is scheduled for release on September 11, 2026.

• Steve Turner

  Steve Turner is the founder and CEO of Bring Back the Trades, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit dedicated to restoring respect, opportunity, and awareness around America's skilled trades workforce. With more than 36 years of experience as a small business owner in the auto and marine upholstery industry, Turner saw firsthand the shortage of skilled workers and the declining emphasis on vocational education in schools. The movement began with four words that woke him up at 3 a.m. — he put them on a hat, contractors and tradespeople around the country asked for their own, and the hat became a national scholarship campaign. Today, Bring Back the Trades funds scholarships and works to inspire the next generation to pursue meaningful, hands-on careers in industries essential to America's future.

• Tricia Rose Burt

  Tricia Rose Burt is an acclaimed storyteller and host of the award-winning podcast No Time To Be Timid, now in its fifth season. She spent her early career in public relations before leaving at 34 to cash out her retirement savings, move to Ireland, and become an artist. In her 40s she wrote and performed a one-woman show; in her 50s she stepped onto the stage with The Moth. Her work — across writing, performance, and audio — explores what we lose when we stay safe, and what becomes possible when we finally don't.