TEDxBessies Creek

Speakers

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

• Brenen Blair

  Founder & Host, Ligare Gatherings

  Brenen Blair designs and hosts gatherings that help people connect deeply, whether with their team or among strangers. He is the founder of Ligare Gatherings, a Houston company that brings people together for curated evenings of conversation and play, matched to tables not by similarity, but by how they connect. Ligare hosts public gatherings for individuals and private events that help teams and communities actually bond. His path to the table runs through a religion degree at NYU, teaching high school with Teach for America, a Yale MBA, and a decade at Bain & Company designing organizations and facilitating executives — all of it, in hindsight, training for the same craft: building rooms where people open up. He writes about connection, culture, and human systems at his Substack, on knots and cords. He collects retro video games, hosts game nights in public and at home, and works hard to keep his plants and his dog alive.

• Brigitte Brown Jackson

  Leadership Strategist, Speaker + Author

  Brigitte Brown Jackson is a leadership strategist, speaker, and author with more than two decades of experience walking alongside leaders through disruption, loss, and reinvention. She is the founder of Exponential EduVentures and board president of North Flint Food Market, a Black-led cooperative working to mitigate the lasting effects of the water crisis on a grieving community in Flint, Michigan. Her work sits at the intersection of behavioral science, human resilience, and organizational leadership, bringing a perspective built in the hardest rooms imaginable. Brigitte speaks and trains across corporate, nonprofit, and faith-based sectors, giving leaders the language they need to lead through what they have never been taught to name. She is the host of the Grief Has a Personality podcast and a Detroit-based voice committed to normalizing the conversations organizations have been avoiding.

• Dr. Christina Pipkin

  Educator and School Founder

  Dr. Christina "Pip" Pipkin is an educator, researcher, and founder of FAYE Learning Center. Drawing from her lived experience as the daughter of an incarcerated parent and nearly 20 years in education, her work explores how schools and communities can become powerful systems of belonging that help children and families break generational cycles.

• Jay Clancy

  Learning Thinker & Facilitator

  For more than thirty years, Jay Clancy has synthesized entrepreneurial leadership, street-tested consulting experience, and multidisciplinary research across diverse disciplines, industries, cultures, and human experiences to better comprehend how people, organizations, and societies learn and grow. As founder of two consulting firms, strategic learning architect, facilitator in complex situations, and adjunct university professor, he has worked with Fortune 100 companies, public-sector organizations, educational institutions, startups, and nonprofits around the world. His work explores two enduring questions – “How do we get the most out of life, both individually and collectively?” and “How do we become better at becoming better?” – seeking an integrated understanding of how humans get better at being human. Outside of work, Jay geeks out on EDM (formerly known as Disco), karaoke (not because he can sing), and open mic comedy (hoping one day to be funny).

• Jordyn Brielle Wright

  Public Speaker and Pre-Law Student

  Jordyn is an eighteen-year-old entrepreneur, educator, and pre-law student at the University of Houston whose work has spanned business, youth development, and policy from an early age. Homeschooled through high school, she earned over 30 college credits beginning at thirteen and graduated at sixteen before launching two businesses and a youth entrepreneurship program that reached over two hundred students across Houston. She taught entrepreneurship through and financial literacy, for four years, and was recognized as an NAACP ACT-SO Entrepreneurship first place winner, a Prudential Emerging Visionary, and a Presidential Service Award recipient at thirteen. She is now pursuing a career in public health law and policy.

• Kimberly Brockenbrough, MD

  Board-certified cardiovascular radiologist

  Kimberly Brockenbrough, MD is a physician and board-certified radiologist with over 25 years of experience imaging blood vessels with a CT scanner. She is passionate about diagnosing heart disease before a heart attack or sudden death. She went to medical school at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. She completed her radiology residency at University of Illinois-Chicago. Prior to founding Cardia Vision, Dr. Brockenbrough helped develop cardiovascular imaging services in the Seattle area at Swedish, Evergreen, Overlake, Providence Everett Hospitals and Carle Foundation Hospital in Illinois. She celebrates life at music festivals, like Coachella, with her adult children. She loves walks with her dogs, Winston and Summer. The dogs help educate about heart disease too.

• Sunkanmi Agbomeji

  Healthcare Analytics Leader + Author + Founder

  Sunkanmi "Sukky" Agbomeji is a senior executive, strategist, and sought-after voice on AI, workforce transformation, and data-driven decision-making. He is a Senior Director at a top global strategy firm, where he leads Global M&A Analytics for healthcare and life sciences organizations navigating AI-driven change, advising C-suite leaders on AI and enterprise transformation. He is also the founder of Caippy, an AI career-readiness platform that helps people assess displacement risk and build resilient careers. An award-winning author of Uncomfortably Pivot, Sukky's journey from clinician to acclaimed startup founder to global M&A leader has shown him how intelligence, identity, and success can become constraints rather than advantages when change accelerates. Through his speaking, writing, advisory work, and executive training, he equips leaders and organizations to stay human, curious, adaptable, and grounded, when answers are automated and certainty is no longer rewarded.

• Susan Troth

  Professor, Author, Speaker, Coach

  Susan Troth is an author, speaker, coach, professor, performer, business owner, and recipient of the 2024 US Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for Community Service. She’s admired for her dedication to service, mentoring, and guiding people through personal loss toward healing. Her experience spans speaking at the 69th United Nations Congress on Women, working as a worship minister, worship professor, pastor’s wife, music teacher, performer, conductor, and entrepreneur. A specialist in contemporary vocal techniques, Susan has volunteered in disaster relief, the Red Cross, global service, Bible study leadership, grief coaching, camp ministry, prison ministry, youth and children’s ministries, community hymn sings, choir tours, and even as a pageant judge. As a certified, trauma-informed coach, she supports those coping with grief and loss. Her life and work reflect the power of faith and resilience, and her passion for service makes her a beacon of hope.

• Tilly Lawrence

  Life Scientist, Nurse, Dancer, Salutogenic Coach

  Tilly Lawrence is a life scientist, research nurse, and dancer studying how rhythm and the autonomic nervous system shape human health. She is the founder of Vagal Intelligence™, a methodology that uses movement, rhythm, and co-regulation to help people regulate their nervous systems. Her work in this area began while she was a project manager at Leidos focused on pandemic preparedness and Long COVID, where she orchestrated a drug-free study using vagal nerve stimulation, sound, and music. That study convinced her the body's oldest signals belong alongside pharmaceuticals in how we treat chronic illness. She is also a competitive ballroom dancer, the practice that first showed her what synchronized movement does to the body. Her Sense · Sway · Sync™ framework translates vagus nerve science into something anyone can do, with no equipment, no prescription, and no instruction beyond a shared beat, making it all-inclusive for any ability, age, or cultures.

• Victoria Lioznyansky

  Public Speaking Coach

  Victoria Lioznyansky is a public speaking confidence coach and the founder of Brilliant Speakers Academy®, where she helps professionals overcome public speaking anxiety and speak with genuine confidence, authority, and impact in high-stakes situations. After struggling with public speaking anxiety herself, she discovered that traditional speaking training often overlooks what happens in the brain under pressure. Drawing on her graduate education in computer science and communication, along with her experience as a corporate leader and entrepreneur, she developed an evidence-informed approach to building confidence that helps people communicate more naturally and effectively.