Though it was a dim and rainy Sunday morning in Durham, Reynolds Theater glowed with the insights of 12 pioneering community members speaking at TEDxDuke 2025: Eye of the Beholder.
The room, while it had some vacant seats, overflowed with lessons from this year’s speakers — among them physicians, entrepreneurs and even Durham’s mayor.
TED — which stands for technology, entertainment and design — is a community dedicated to sparking conversation, pursuing knowledge and driving meaningful change. TEDx events, like the annual conference at Duke, are privately-organized gatherings which follow the TED format and mission.
Through the approximately 15-minute talks, the speakers told stories from diverse domains. But in their takeaways, the orchestra of speakers achieved harmony.
Takeaway: Uplifting others can uplift us too
Durham mayor Leonardo Williams invited audience members to close their eyes and imagine a saunter through a grocery store, meditating on the everyday interactions through which community can emerge.
“Be nosy,” Williams implored, suggesting that being curious about the subtle decisions of those around us can help build community.
In one such community-building experience, Williams recounted visiting a group of community members evacuated due to a carbon monoxide incident — and finding them hungry.
Williams went to his wife, Zwelibanzi, with whom he operated Zweli’s restaurant. They rallied the Durham community, and served about 50,000 meals with the help of over 400 volunteers, ensuring the community members were fed until they could return home.
This experience empowered Williams with an opportunity to serve and an important lesson: that “it is easier to care for one another than to tear each other apart.”
Williams ultimately reminded the audience to “be nosy, be nice and be patient” in order to form “a community in action.”
William Elmore — a business owner, advocate and formerly-incarcerated individual — and his mother Bessie Elmore, executive director of Straight Talk Support Group, spoke about William Elmore’s shift in perspective on his journey to receiving parole. As William Elmore’s mother “flooded” him with literature on imagination, fortitude and endurance, he began viewing himself as a “visitor” in prison who was prepared to be free.
While William Elmore adopted this shift in perspective, he asked his mother to help other incarcerated individuals navigate the law. In doing so, Bessie Elmore was able to found a support group and invite lawyers, senators and therapists to speak — which in turn empowered her and her son. William Elmore was subsequently released on parole in 2015.
Shep Moyle, Trinity ‘84 and senior lecturing fellow in the Fuqua School of Business, spoke about his time as a Duke undergraduate, where he says he was mentored personally by then-University president Terry Sanford.
He explained that after the family-owned company he ran experienced economic hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic, he reflected on what truly brought him joy — realizing that it was not money or power, but instead coaching, teaching and mentoring.
“Happiness is what you give to others. Joy is what you feel when you do [give to others],” Moyle concluded.
Takeaway: Our attention can solve the world’s biggest problems
Antonella Di Ciano, a conservationist and second-year graduate student in the Sanford School of Public Policy’s Masters of International Development Program, reflected on the importance of the Amazon rainforest. She cited its vital impact on the global climate, claiming that it produces 20% of oxygen humans breathe and contains 20% of the world’s fresh water.
However, according to Di Ciano, the rainforest is threatened by what she called an “organized” network of “environmental crime,” including illegal mining, deforestation, drug trafficking and human trafficking.
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While she recommended that the audience only buy coffee, chocolate and flowers with a “Rainforest Alliance” certification to ensure that the products do not harm the Amazon, Di Ciano explained that these steps are not enough. Instead, she argues, we must also pay attention to threats to the rainforest and talk about them until they are “impossible to ignore.”
Trinity senior Skylar Hughes, a former CNN fact-checking intern, spoke about disinformation, which she described as false information intended to deceive. Hughes described a phenomenon in which media consumers become “numb” and apathetic to “lies” when they are repeated frequently.
In response, Hughes called on the audience to pay attention to the subtle harms of disinformation. She advocated for an approach called “weird-checking”: a process of leveraging “social acceptance” by calling out disinformation as against “social norms.”
Alexander Winn, Trinity ‘23, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spoke about the devastating personal impact that anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder, has had on his family. Winn emphasized the importance of awareness of the condition, which he described as “the deadliest mental illness.”
He called on the audience to destigmatize discussions of conditions like anorexia nervosa, which he said “thrives in the dark,” and to take action by demanding solutions and pushing for further research on the conditions.
Takeaway: It’s important to shift our perspective
Jinqiu Guan, assistant professor of the practice of dance, spoke about how each individual’s unique movements can provide insights into their life experiences. She highlighted a dance that she conducted with her father while wrapped in ribbon — which quickly became tangled — symbolizing the “convoluted, non-linear and oftentimes messy process of knowledge transmission and cultural inheritance.” According to Guan, the dance enabled her father to open up and share stories and memories he never had before.
In Guan’s talk — which also featured a dance performance — she highlighted the mutual understanding that movement and dance can provide. In one demonstration, she recounted seeingthe world through the eyes of her one-year-old son by emulating his erratic movements.
Shree Bose, Medical School ‘23, spoke about a common misconception that cancer is a “monolith,” or that all kinds of cancer have a similar gravity.
Instead, she explained that cancers operate in a wide variety of ways. She highlighted that the key to novel cancer treatments is to evaluate — from a number of perspectives known as “hallmarks” — how exactly cancer cells differ from healthy cells.
“We’re not looking for one cure,” Bose said. “We’re looking for hundreds of cures, and we’re finding them.”
Adar Schwarzbach, Trinity ‘24, a software engineer, spoke about his journey as a member of the Duke wrestling team. When he made the difficult decision to quit the team, he gained an entirely new perspective on how he could spend his time — stumbling upon a passion for building software tools. Through this process, Schwarzbach learned the importance of taking responsibility and committing fully to whichever path he takes in life.
Takeaway: Empathy and collaboration are key
Kasper Kubica, Trinity ‘17, co-founder of the antiperspirant brand Carpe, described his journey to creating a successful product — which required pivoting persistently and designing over 60 prototypes.
Kubica explained that to create the ideal antiperspirant formula, Carpe had to engage experts across industries who saw “further down the path” than they could on their own.
“We have built an incredible thing … not alone, but together with so many incredible people,” Kubica said.
Henry Rice — professor of surgery, pediatrics and global health at the School of Medicine and the Duke Global Health Institute — spoke about his work providing medical care to communities in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.
He described complicated interactions between economics and healthcare, citing how in some cases, requiring medical treatment increases the risk of experiencing poverty. Rice called for thoughtful policy-making that accounts for the complicated and long-lasting economic impact of healthcare on disadvantaged communities.
Sam Bayer, an entrepreneur and “negotiation educator,” shared a framework for conflict resolution which centers awareness, empathy and collaboration. To Bayer, by changing how they approach conflict, people can reimagine how they approach the world.
Michael Austin is a Trinity junior and managing editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.