TEDxPortofSpain Announces our First Batch of Speakers

As anticipation builds for this year’s conference centered around the theme of Connecting, we are thrilled to announce our first batch of speakers for TEDxPortofSpain 30.11.13 at the Central Bank Auditorium. Over the next few weeks we will be announcing more speakers, but we wanted to let you know that tickets will be available for reservation from September 25th at 9:00am through our website. Tickets will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Wayne Kublalsingh

For over ten years, university professor, writer and activist Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh has worked tirelessly to promote authentic economic development. In 2002 he organized the University of the West Indies Symposium on land use options for 77,000 acres of land and infrastructure on the West Coast of Trinidad, which was about to be abandoned due to the closure of Caroni (1975) Limited and the historic sugar industry. From 2006 to 2008 he worked with communities at Chatham and the South West Peninsula to prevent the state from allowing the ALCOA aluminium smelter at Chatham; similarly with La Brea and South West Peninsula from 2006 to 2010 to prevent the state from proceeding with the Alutrint aluminum smelter.

From 2009 to 2011 he worked with residents of Pranz Gardens and environs to prevent the building of Essar Steel a steel manufacturing complex that was proposed to be built in the proximity of communities in Claxton Bay. He also worked with residents of Claxton Bay and the fishermen of the Claxton Bay fishing port to stop the building an industrial port on the Claxton Bay Mangrove System. He worked with residents of Savonetta Village and environs to prevent the state from building CARISAL, a caustic soda company, to be built on lands outside of the Point Lisas Industrial Estate.

From 2011 to the present, he has been working with residents of Debe to Mon Desir to prevent the state from building a highway in the Debe to Mon Desir area. To this end, he chose to act by embarking on a hunger strike for 21 days in 2012, from November 15^th to December 5^th. This strike resulted in an independent review of the Debe to Mon Desir Highway. He is currently sitting in a vigil outside the Prime Minister’s office in an attempt to encourage the state to abide by the independent review. He works for the protection of viable economic, social and ecological spaces and for the practice of authentic economic development.

 

Stacy-Marie Ishmael

Stacy-Marie Ishmael lives at the intersection of finance, media and technology. Currently, she works as a product manager at a technology startup in New York. Selected by Business Insider as one of the thirty most important women under 30 in technology in May 2013, one of her nominees commented or her unusual status in the technology industry, “The reason I’m nominating Stacy is that she is that most unusual person – a woman of color in tech who is brilliant at explaining why it’s so important that we design technology for everyone, and not just women, but women who do not live in the middle-class world of most of us who read publications like Business Insider.

She spoke at WNYC’s recent Women in Tech panel at the Greene Space – she always makes me look at things in a new light. That day she pointed out that we are leaving out a huge number of poor women who could be hugely helped by technology, if only developers would design something for them.”

Ishmael describes herself as a “technologist, problem solver, team builder, teacher, and writer”. She lectures part-time at the Tow Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, and her experience spans digital and social media, technology, and financial markets.

A dynamic and tenacious advocate for women and other minorities in the workplace, she is a sought-after speaker and panelist on issues ranging from mentorship to financial services.