Theme: Voicing The Foundation of The Future

Shyam and Oscar undertook this project because they believe that the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow and they wish to offer those with fresh perspectives and ideas, the chance to spread their thoughts to the world.

With TEDx's motto of, “Ideas worth spreading," this will be a platform provided to youth from many different schools who wish to spread messages to their communities and beyond, with a direct focus on "Voicing the Foundation of the Future".

Pickering College
16945 Bayview Ave.
Newmarket, Ontario, L3Y 4X2
Canada

Aaditya Mishra

Grade 11 Student at Mithibai College

Aaditya Mishra is a high school junior from Mumbai, India. He is passionate about writing and public speaking. He has been freelancing for more than 1.5 years and is currently a senior content writer at a US-based AI company writing articles. Aaditya's articles and poems have also been published in national newspapers and magazines. Over his high school career, he has hosted and compared various school events and won elocution prizes. He is also competing in the international business competition 'BlueOcean Competition'. His passion for speaking and writing has led him to find and volunteer in the body positivity club-helping students with body shaming issues. Aaditya's topic focuses on highlighting how freelancing can help students especially high school students by giving them prior exposure and how he monetized my passion for writing into something profitable that he enjoy doing every day. I believe if I can do it you can too!

Annika Yang

Grade 12 Student At Bayview Secondary School

Annika Yang is an avid creative writer, musician, and twelfth-grade student at Bayview Secondary School. Alongside passion projects like novel-publishing and competitive debate, she is currently working through her graduating year of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, recognized worldwide for its rigid requirements and workload. Through her four year experience in an academically-tense community, she has become readily familiar with the harms plaguing intense emphasis on educational excellence, as well as its surrounding mindset. Having seen both the ups and the extreme downs of her classmates’ mental health, Annika aims to speak out to teenagers in like situations in a way that is intimate and approachable, in order to grant solidarity to students who feel gutted by their unreachable academic expectations.

Christina Wang

Grade 12 Student At St. Clements School

Christina Wang is a grade 12 student at St. Clement’s School who strives to be a polymath at the intersection of biology and art. Her works include building a curriculum of 100+ medical illustrations for mothers in Rural Northern Nigeria on how to take a life-saving pill. Additionally, she’s made a collection of 15 works about biology topics, like gene-editing, memory recall, and the skin microbiome. Her personal work leads her to start her organization, Krebs Institute, which leads events across Canada connecting artists and scientists to make artworks about biology research papers. From winning international technology hackathons to being a UI/UX designer at StartPlaying Games (a Y-combinator company), and debating for five years, she’s learned the value of interdisciplinary thinking in problem-solving. Her topic will discuss how art can make complex scientific knowledge accessible to audiences who are alienated by age, the difficulty of topic, illiteracy, and culture.

Evan Shay Kothari

Grade 11 Student at Crescent School

Evan Shay Kothari is a Grade 11 student at Crescent School. He is a competitive baseball, hockey and golf player, a provincial and national champion in several business competitions, avid debater, and leader of various clubs at Crescent School. Over his high school career, Shay has volunteered and worked at pharmacies and other health initiatives, summer camps to teach children the game of baseball, and as a math tutor. Further, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote a white paper to the Government of Ontario outlining how integrating artificial intelligence into a nationwide application could modernize the current contact tracing methods. Through many of his interests mentioned above, Shay has recognized the importance of practical goal setting and its impact on achieving success when executed correctly. His topic, regarding the importance of the number 90, is about identifying a common approach to achieving goals transferable between the different disciplines of life.

Jessie Li

Grade 11 Student at Pickering College

The idea of perfection is very complex and it is very common for one to question why society is heavily emphasizing the importance of this negative subject. Yet, instead of focusing on this broad niche of being perfect, Jessie wishes to uncover the underlying truths of differences through the number 0.6. As a competitive athlete, amateur baker and artist, Jessie has been able to observe how a gap in scores or measurements can impact one’s final result. She firmly believes that these differences and results are what make us human and whole. No one can be perfect. Through Jessie’s own encounters with imperfection, she argues that no matter how small a difference is, it can always leave a huge impact.

Shixuan Li

Grade 10 Student at Walter Murray Collegiate

Shixuan “Nini” Li is a Grade 10 student at Walter Murray Collegiate. She is a passionate musician, dancer and a national level debate and public speaker. She is strongly aware of how contrasting opinions and unhealthy communication has been causing increasingly more people to fight about pressing matters. Believing that discussion of deep, philosophical theories brings people together despite the possibility of possessing different opinions, Nini wishes for her audience to discover healthier ways of dealing with conflicting ideas through discussion of her speech in its aftermath, ultimately leading to the result of better communication and happier people. Therefore, she has decided to explore the possibility of the world being non-existent through the eyes of quantum physics and modern technology. Nini is ecstatic to say that she will continue to investigate her growing passion for both social and natural sciences for the rest of her life.

Thomas Bianco

Grade 10 Student At Pickering College

Thomas Bianco is a sophomore at Pickering College, an aspiring engineer, and an inventor who is passionate about 3d printing, VR&AR and drone technology. He has worked on projects in these technologies such as building a VR game, building an autonomous Drone and building his own 3D printer. In this talk, he displays how the 3d printing industry is rapidly developing and that it is becoming mainstream. He also outlines his experience with the technology and how it has impacted his life.

Victoria Zalewski

Grade 11 Student at Pickering College

Victoria is a Grade 11 student currently attending Pickering College. She participates in her school community through the Y.A.O. club, as a school ambassador, and through representing P.C. in many school events as a volunteer. Victoria likes to spend time outdoors also volunteering at her local community garden and farmer’s market. Not only is she passionate about writing and public speaking, but about finding safe, effective ways to spread our voices. Through her speech Victoria explores the damages the true crime genre and community have caused on the lives of consumers, victims, and law enforcement. She examines how easy it is to amplify the wrong ideas on the internet. Victoria is excited to share her topic and to get to speak to you!