TEDxCapeMay

Speakers

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

• Chester Elton

  Author, Leadership Expert

  Chester Elton is a bestselling author, leadership expert, and one of the world’s foremost voices on workplace culture and human connection. Often called the “Apostle of Appreciation,” he has spent over two decades helping leaders build cultures where people feel seen, valued, and inspired to give their best. Chester is the co-author of multiple New York Times and #1 bestselling books, including The Carrot Principle, All In & Leading With Gratitude, and has worked with organizations such as Microsoft, American Express, and the U.S. government. His work explores a simple but powerful idea: how we treat people—at work and in life—is what they remember most.

• Kathryn Landis

  Consultant and Adjunct Assistant Professor

  Kathryn Landis works at the intersection of decision-making and the unseen forces that shape leadership, teams, and everyday life. She teaches at New York University and is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. Her work examines how decisions are made—or avoided—when stakes are high and pressure is real. Through her teaching, writing, and work with senior leadership teams, she observes how people adapt around unresolved choices, how priorities quietly drift, and how responsibility shifts when decisions go unmade. She helps groups name what they have been working around, clarify what truly requires a decision, and understand the downstream effects of delay on outcomes, relationships, and well-being.

• Leon Rainbow

  Muralist

  Leon Rainbow is a nationally recognized muralist, public artist, educator, and founder of Jersey Fresh Jam, one of New Jersey’s longest-running celebrations of hip-hop culture. For more than 25 years, he has transformed schools, neighborhoods, parks, recovery centers, and public spaces into vibrant works of art that celebrate identity, resilience, and belonging. Beginning as a graffiti writer, Leon discovered that walls could do more than display art—they could tell stories, amplify overlooked voices, and bring communities together. Today, his collaborative murals are created through conversations with residents, students, and organizations, ensuring each project reflects the people it serves. A proud member of the Quechan Tribe, Leon believes creativity is one of the strongest indicators of a healthy community. Through his artwork, teaching, and public speaking, he inspires others to see public art as a catalyst for lasting transformation.

• Liberty Denman

  Marine Biologist

  Liberty Denman is a marine biologist, science communicator, and Co-Founder of Kai. Her work focuses on the relationship between people and marine ecosystems, with a particular interest in how knowledge moves between coastal communities, scientists, and decision-makers in the fisheries space. Drawing on experience across commercial and recreational fisheries, conservation and research, education and Ocean literacy, diving and marine technology, she examines how different groups understand and respond to change in the Ocean. Her current work explores how the expertise of fishers can be integrated into fisheries management and conservation using purpose-built technology.

• Nicole Nuttall

  End of Life advocate

  Nicole Nuttall serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Completed Life Initiative. Originally from Oklahoma, Nicole began her career in New York City, where she pursued photography and film before establishing a successful photography business in Fairfield, Connecticut. Nicole believes that the ability to determine when one’s life feels complete—and to do so with dignity, autonomy, and compassion—is a fundamental human right. Her perspective is shaped by deeply personal experiences: as a young adult, she witnessed her grandmother’s decline in a nursing home; later, she supported her mother through nine years of serious illness following multiple strokes and vascular dementia; and she watched her father confront metastatic prostate cancer with courage before his death. Motivated by this commitment to self-determination and compassionate choice, Nicole helped Faith Sommerfield found the Completed Life Initiative in 2019.

• Paula Bontempi, Ph.D

  Professor

  Paula Bontempi is a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography and served at NASA Headquarters as acting deputy director of the Earth Science Division and as a physical scientist and program manager in ocean biology and biogeochemistry. She served as NASA Program Scientist for instrument and mission science, including the Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS), Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP), and the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. She holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography from URI-GSO, an M.S. in Oceanography from Texas A&M University, and a B.S. in Biology from Boston College. She was a co-Chair of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) study on Future Directions for Southern Ocean and Antarctic Nearshore and Coastal Research, and the NASEM Committee for Assessing NASA Science Activation 2.0: Progress, Achievements, and Strategic Recommendations.

• Ryan Abbott

  Law professor

  Ryan Abbott, MD, JD, MTOM, PhD, is Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey School of Law, Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan, LLP, and a mediator and arbitrator with JAMS, Inc. He has published widely on issues associated with life sciences and information technology in leading legal, medical, and scientific books and journals. Among others, he is the author of The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law (CUP, 2020), editor of Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence (Edward Elgar, 2022), and a co-author of International Intellectual Property in an Integrated World Economy (Aspen, 2024). His research has been featured prominently in the popular press. Professor Abbott has worked as an expert for institutions including the United Kingdom Parliament, the European Commission, and the World Health Organization.

• Stephen Trzeciak

  Physician-scientist

  Stephen Trzeciak, MD, is a physician-scientist and practicing intensivist who serves as the Edward D. Viner Endowed Chief of Medicine at Cooper University Health Care and Professor and Chair of Medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in southern New Jersey. A clinical researcher with 150 publications, his work has been published in JAMA, Circulation, and The New England Journal of Medicine, and has been supported by grants from the NIH and AHRQ. His research now focuses on the science of hope—how it works and how it can be built. His work has been featured on CNN, NPR, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and Freakonomics. His mission is to show—through science—how hope improves outcomes that matter.