5 Things One Man Learned by Showing Up to a TED Conference for Women
The TED stage is home to some of the very best ideas on the internet. As someone who spends a lot of time coming up with ideas (and the rest of his time on the internet), I was excited to hear that a locally-organized, independent TED event was being hosted in my hometown. This must be tailor-made just for me, right? Turns out, not so much. The day was designed to celebrate women’s empowerment and women-led innovation in business, science, art, and technology. A lot of the conversation called attention to the seats at the table that go unfilled by incredibly capable women every day. Those women showed up and found their seats at the sold-out, inaugural TEDxIndianapolisWomen conference. I found a side entry to the event called volunteering.
“You’re sure dudes are allowed to come to this thing, right?” I clarified with a friend before joining up. “Yes,” she assured me, “plenty of dudes will be there. Our message is pro-women, not anti-men.”
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And so began an experience that left my perspective shifted, heart warmed, and mind blown by the stories of overcoming adversity, turning a series of negatives into a series of positives, and learning to remove the word “never” from our collective vocabulary. Below are a few ideas that were shared with me at TEDxIndianapolisWomen that I’d like to share with you. In the spirit of repeating rather than hepeating, credit for these ideas goes to Molly, Tapati, Melissa, Claudia, and Tamika, respectively and respectfully. Thanks for sharing your stories.
01. “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
—Shirley Anita Chisholm, first black woman elected to Congress in 1968
Molly Ford, Senior Director for Global Equality Programs at Salesforce, echoed her shero, Shirley, by bringing her own folding chair (literally and figuratively), not only for herself, but for anyone kept out of the conversation for simply being of a different race, religion, nationality, sexual-orientation, or gender. She urged listeners to advocate for others and amplify the voices of the underprivileged. She advised everyone to speak up when the tables you’re sitting at lack representation of — and respect for — the ideas that come from minority voices. The more the ideas of women continue to show up, the more women will be expected to show up, and so on. Also worth repeating; women deserve to be paid the same as their male co-workers. Here’s looking at you, State of Indiana, ranked 49/50 for gender pay equality.
02. There is no one normal.
Tapati Dutta is a social scientist who has focused on improving community health in India and Eastern Africa for two decades. Her personal story of empathy began early on while caring for her father who suffered from illness, blindness, and depression, before ultimately losing his life to suicide. He once asked her to describe the color green for him. She lacked the words but gained an understanding about communication. Tapati realized that unless you can converse in the language of the person with whom you are speaking, your message carries no meaning. As she came to terms with her own story, she was able to relate to and reach those of society’s most stigmatized and vulnerable populations. Aiding the extremely poor, sitting with sex-workers, and dealing with cannibals, she came to know that there is no one normal. For those experiencing a situation — to them, that is their normal. Tapati identified that in order to help the marginalized, we must first learn our own truths, communicate in the language of those we aim to help, and accept what is their normal—only then can progress begin to be made.
03. You Have Nothing to Worry About.
Melissa Spitz is an artist whose work has been featured in TIME Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Vice. She was named TIME Magazine’s Instagram photographer of the year in 2017 and Magnum Foundation’s Inge Morath Award recipient in 2018 for her project You Have Nothing to Worry About, a series documenting the realities of living and coping with her mother’s mental illness and substance abuse. Melissa first began exploring the difficult side of her family’s story through photography when a professor challenged her to photograph something “private”. The family home was a mess then, so she figured she’d start there. When her mother unlocked her bedroom door and came downstairs to have a cigarette on the couch, Melissa captured the first of what would become thousands of portraits of her mom, sparking a massive social media conversation about mental health and addiction in the home. The project gave Melissa a chance to pause the chaos and look at what had hurt her — to look her monster in the face. Over time, she grew to empathize with the woman she came from, seeing in new light both their differences and their similarities. The experience led Melissa to cathartic epiphanies that allowed her to commemorate her life’s imperfections. Melissa continues to show up in her daily life as a daughter, a sister, a friend, and an artist. “By continuing to show up we celebrate all the things that are meant to stop us.”
04. “Remove the word “never” from your vocabulary.”
Claudia Angeli is an assistant professor at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center. Her work involves activity-based retraining of the nervous system following paralyzing spinal cord injuries; most of which occur in individuals under the age of 30. Their lives are changed forever the moment they wake up in a hospital bed to the news that they will never stand or walk again. Claudia’s mission was to overturn that prognosis, which up until that point was a medical impossibility. Her team performed a proof of principle study that involved implanting an electrode array in the lower spinal cord where the circuitry for standing and walking is located. They hypothesized that if they could re-establish sensation below the point of injury by epidural stimulation, maybe they could then work toward returning mobility through locomotor training. All they had to do now was test every single electrode combination one by one and record the response level. Just as things were getting really boring, Rob rocked their world by wiggling his big toe. Overcoming this incredible hurdle unlocked the next impossible challenge of finding a way to retrain individuals to stand and step on their own. Do yourself a favor and watch Claudia’s talk for footage of those first steps.
05. “Your voice will impact millions”
— Pat Summitt, head coach, Lady Volunteers basketball team
Tamika Catchings has earned nearly every award imaginable within the arena of women’s basketball. The NCAA championship, the WNBA championship, league MVP, not to mention the four gold medals she picked up at four consecutive Olympic games. As far back as Tamika can remember she’s always been the chosen one—as long as she’s chosen to remain on the basketball court. Off the court she struggled to fit in. She didn’t look like the white kids she played soccer with. She wasn’t a boy like those neighborhood kids who laughed at her dream of playing in the NBA. And she couldn’t hear quite as well as all the other kids who didn’t have boxy hearing aids strapped to their heads. Learning at a young age how difficult it was to feel accepted, Tamika settled for being celebrated for each of her many athletic achievements. At the University of Tennessee, legendary coach, Pat Summitt saw through Tamika’s playing small off the court. “Your voice will impact millions.”, Pat said. With that push Tamika got to work rediscovering the voice she had kept quiet for so long. Several trophy cases later, Tamika lives on the other side of sports and her message of encouragement rings in the ears of the next generation through her Catch the Stars Foundation. Today, her inspiring personal story of reaching for her own dreams impacts millions.
This year TEDxIndianapolisWomen celebrated Showing Up. You can show up for Molly by showing up for those who don’t have seat at the table…yet. You can show up for Tapati and Melissa by showing up with empathy for someone in the struggle. You can show up for Claudia by showing up to do the impossible. And you can show up for Tamika by showing up for the next generation. How’s that for some ideas worth spreading?
In closing, I’m glad I was given the opportunity to show up. We can all do more to seek out our own blind spots and do potentially uncomfortable things that allow us to grow and improve. Speaking of improving, encourage your companies to perform an equal pay audit to ensure women are being compensated comparably to their male co-workers.
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Watch Part 1
0: 40:00 Molly Ford
0:01:00 Tapati Dutta
0:1:20 Mariah Ivey
2:14:00 Melissa Spitz
Watch Part 2
01:32:00 Jhanak Dance Group
01:57:00 Claudia Angeli
02:17:00 Kate Lamont
02:36:00 Tamika Catchings
