About our core team...

Over the past 9 months our all-volunteer team has worked to bring this event to you. We're excited to share with you our exciting line up of speakers and performers, along with a few special TEDtalks.

Diane Michlig - Curator, TEDxSanJoseCA

Gordon Garb - Co-Curator, TEDxSanJoseCA

Gordon is a technologist, a catalyst, a trickster. He likes helping people make complicated technology easy. His career has spanned the range of supercomputers to personal computers, publishing to filmmaking. He enjoys connecting people, companies, and ideas together - his favorite job title, just after "Warrior Poet", and "Cray Dude", was "Technology Evangelist". He is credited in IMDB for software development and as an executive producer. He's been part of the IT Team at the annual TED Conferences for the past ten years. In his spare time he collects hammers and makes silver jewelry.

Phac Le Tuan 

Phac Le Tuan is the founding CEO of Kinemo International, a mobile services company specialized in the fast growing interactive digital signage marketplace, based in Los Gatos, CA. He is also the founding Chair of the Green Tiger Committee within SAVVi (Strategic Alliance of Vietnamese Ventures International), in charge of fostering and facilitating the growth of clean-tech and other sustainable businesses in South-East Asia. Phac is a seasoned technology executive with broad experience in bringing to market innovative and successful products and services in on-line advertising, mobile marketing, enterprise applications and multimedia communications. He led world class engineering teams in the Macintosh System Software Division at Apple, delivering core innovations in ease-of-use at the base of Apple's competitive advantage. His extensive experience was developed leading highly effective multi-cultural teams acquired at Schlumberger, L'Oreal, BP, France Telecom, and a number of small to mid-size businesses in the US and Europe. A regular speaker in conferences, Phac is on the board of advisors for several companies or organizations in Silicon Valley and in Europe. He is also co-author of several US patents in multimedia and communications. Fluent in English, French and Vietnamese, Phac is a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (Paris, France) and completed his doctorate in computer graphics at University Paris VI. Phac Le Tuan is driven by global, socially meaningful projects that can benefit from leveraging science and technology for sustainable development and to make the world a better place.

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Garima Agarwal

Garima Agarwal is an international student from India currently studying business at San Jose State University. She is in her senior year of college graduating in Fall 2010. Her interest outside school and work includes traveling, painting, cooking and meeting new people. She believes in making best of every moment in life and constantly work towards improvement and positive change.

Jack Bordoni - Bellarmine Student

Jack Bordoni has been coming to our CORE Team meeting for the last month helping us coordinate Bellarmine student's and info that we need. Thank you Jack for being such a helpful part of our team.

Kristi Breisch

Kristi Breisch founded ProActive Teams in 2006 as a way to marry her passion for sports with her commitment to create equal access for all in the community. She has nearly twenty years experience in community organizing, marketing, and program management across a broad spectrum of Fortune 500 and non-profit organizations including Hewlett-Packard, Photronics, RDV Sports – WNBA Orlando Miracle, and Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment - Sybase Open presented by Pacific Bell men’s ATP tennis tournament.

A long-time TED follower, Breisch shares the organization’s charter and believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.  Two of her initiatives include creating literate communities by building regional coalitions of literacy programs & professional sports to increase awareness, empowerment & activism; and to spread the good news with a network that promotes what sports organizations and athletes are doing good in community.

Robert Clawson

Robert is a Director of Product Management with 15+ years’ experience in Fortune 50 and startup companies serving global enterprise customers.  He has extensive experience managing the integration of acquired products and customers into existing product lines and customer bases.   He thrives on developing and implementing strategies that achieve business goals for highly complex technical products.  Robert contributes a clear picture of the forest when others are focused on the trees.

A first-time TEDx team member, Robert is passionate about building a sustainable future for people on this planet.  To that end, it is essential that people hear as many good ideas that keep them thinking and being as creative as possible.  TEDxSanJoseCA is a wonderful way to take a step in the right direction.

Tracy Foster

Tracy Foster is the owner of Tafgraphics Design & Photography Studio. She is a graphic/web designer and illustrator who has worked with small and medium size businesses for the past 7 years. She is a passionate networker and encourager of people. She and her husband work together in their business and also homeschool their 3 young children. Tracy has facilitated a weekly leads group inside the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce for the past 2 years and has been an active Board Member of the Jubilee CEOs Business Ministry for the past 6 years - she loves to help educate clients and business owners. In her "spare time" she likes to ski, knit and hike.

Adam Helweh

Adam Helweh is the founder and principal of Silicon Valley based interactive design, digital marketing and social media consulting agency Secret Sushi Creative . His experience is an eclectic mix of human services work, technology, multimedia, design, and branding. Adam also wears a few additional hats as the advisor for two technology Silicon Valley start ups and as a board member of the Social Media Club Silicon Valley. He is passionate about exploring how technology and social media are impacting the way global communities are engaging with each other.

Nadine Janker

Nadine Janker graduated from California Polytechnic University with a B.S. in Business Administration concentrating in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Her professional experience includes internships at Target Corporation and an NGO Youth Development Program in South Africa.  Recently she worked as a financial consultant at Triage Consulting Group which specializes in the Healthcare Industry. In her spare time, Nadine enjoys yoga, hiking, and traveling.  She is honored to be a part of the TEDxSanJose core team.

Don Loomis

Don enjoys exploring, meeting others, learning, and making things.  He currently is a software engineer at Apple, helping create great systems which enable people to do great things.  Don travels with the freedom to experience life as it is.  With his bicycle carrying all he needed, Don pedaled to the east coast, spending time in deserts, mountains, and cities, meeting others and encouraging them to follow their dreams.  Backpacking is how he experiences areas not accessible by wheels.  Don helped raise and encourage four children who now also enjoy life in their own ways.  Don surfs the world of ideas, sharing and developing those which can make life better for all of us.  It is a privilege to him to be part of the team bringing TEDx to San Jose.

Rocky Mullin

Rocky Mullin, TEDxSanJoseCA’s Technical Director, has been a college trained (UCSC 1992) theater arts professional off and on all his life. In particular a rigger, sound designer and technical director for projects such as Cirque du Soleil, The Tandy Beal dance company, and The New Pickle Circus. Rocky is a production volunteer for the Entertainment Gathering and TEDMED. His offstage professional life has run a diverse path, with projects ranging from one of the earliest web workers at one of the first web production start-ups (Organic 1994-2001) to installing home theatre systems for Neil Young with his company Vanadium. Rocky is part owner of Taylor’s Tonics, a sixteen year Burning Man participant, a live ambient musician for weird blinking lights and a working club/event DJ (dj caliban) with the Cloudfactory.

Hong Nguyen-Phuong

Years before coming to Silicon Valley, Hong was born in Saigon and grew up in places like Rio and Paris. For more than 15 years Hong has worked on technology partnerships, and business operations and processes. Over the past 3 years he has started to focus on energy and sustainability. He cooks recreationally and loves local farmers’ markets. He skis recreationally and keeps an eye on issues of global warming. Hong swears by Sam Morishima at SnoZone.

Julie Silverman

Julie Silverman has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Linguistics from La Trobe University, Australia, and is passionate about human language.  She pursued this passion in research teams in Giessen University in Germany, and Cambridge University in England, spanning psycholinguistics, child language development, acoustic phonetics, and spoken language technologies.  Along the way she also acquired training as an Executive Administrator, and a language teacher.  In the U.S., she contributed to both research and products in AT&T Bell Labs, NYNEX Science and Technology, and Apple.
 
Julie loves stories and ballads, and they will usually cause her to stop and listen, regardless of whatever else she is doing.  A digital camera, purchased on a trip to Ireland, has resulted in photography becoming a serious pastime.  A picture is, after all, worth a thousand words (even though it takes 10,000 times the disk space).

Vince Tarpey

Vince Tarpey joined the CORE Team in February. He retired in January 2011. His tag line for years has been ” a black belt in business development and sales.” 

Latest Blog Posts

Serious, Surace and TedxSanJoseCA — posted by t3dxideas was updated on 03/06/2011 03:22 PM by t3dxideas
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Dr. Kim Silverman by Garima Agarwal — posted by t3dxideas was updated on 02/24/2011 04:02 PM by t3dxideas
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