Introducing 2023′s cohort

The TED-Ed team is pleased to introduce this year’s cohort of educators selected for the Educator Talks program.

The TED-Ed Educator Talks program provides a professional learning experience to distinguished educators. The goal? To help them develop and share their ideas as TED-style talks.

Get to know 2023′s inspiring cohort and their ideas for changing the education landscape:

Storybook Maze

Founder of Storybook Maze and radical street librarian, Baltimore MD

The idea: Radical street librarians: why we need more of them in our communities and how you can become one.

Bea Rodriguez-Fransen, Ed.D.

Next Lab Imaginarium Director, ASU Enterprise Technology, Tempe AZ

The idea: How decolonizing thought can transform the way educators and students teach, learn, and develop; how these methods work and how you can bring it to your school.

Chezare A. Warren

Faculty at Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

The idea: The K-12 Education system needs a new way of practicing empathy towards Black boys.

Dr. Crystal P. Ward

Founder and CEO of For Our Children, Glenarden MD

The idea: BIPOC LGBTQ+ and gender expansive youth need teachers and leaders who create affirming environments.

Matthew Ebert

Principal of the Crossroads School, Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore MD

The idea: The solution to teacher retention is quite simple: we need to do a better job taking care of the adults in schools.

Mohan Sivaloganathan

CEO of Our Turn, Cliffside Park NJ

The idea: Young people possess the leadership blueprint that can advance today’s workforces and educational institutions. We need only to identify and elevate it.

Randy Seriguchi Jr

Executive Director of Urban Ed Academy, San Francisco CA

The idea: We can address the teacher shortage by increasing educators’ benefits packages and emphasizing community proximity.

Saamra Mekuria-Grillo

CEO of Formation Ventures, San Antonio TX

The idea: We can close the wealth gap and give Black youth access to wealth-building opportunities by providing identity-affirming, purpose-driven entrepreneurial learning experiences earlier on. If we don’t do this, we will never be able to close the wealth gap through traditional education alone.

Stacey A. Gibson

Founder and CEO of Transform the Collective, Evanston IL

The idea: The field of education needs to be re-humanized. To re-humanize is to connect and consciously engage, and the way to sustain that is to be in the steady practice of telling whole truths.

Tanishia Williams Peterson

Inaugural Education Stratification Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, Brooklyn NY

The idea: In order to close the achievement gap, we need to redefine achievement.

Check out TED-Ed’s Educator Talks channel and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss this cohort’s upcoming talks!

Watch past talks here: