Speaker Information

Speaker Bios

• Nailah Harvey
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Nailah Harvey

  Book Editor & Writing Consultant
  UCR Alumni    
  IG: @nharvdotcom
  https://www.nharv.com/

  Talk Title: Words Save Us: The Power Behind Life’s Defining Moments    

  Talk Description:    
  There are moments that have the power to change everything, and often those turning points begin with words. My talk explores how educators, writers, and activists such as Toni Morrison, bell hooks, and W. E. B. Du Bois used writing to spark cultural, educational, and personal transformation. Their words challenged systems, empowered communities, and created new possibilities for change. More importantly, I want the audience to recognize that we possess that same power through our own words and experiences.

  As a fourth-year doctoral student at Howard University, 11x published author, and former English teacher, I understand the intersection of academia and cultural change. I have experienced how words can create moments of transformation. Through writing, I want educators to know that they can transform their expertise into impact, proving that writing itself is a form of activism. Ultimately, my talk shares how harnessing the power of words can shape defining moments within ourselves, our communities, and beyond, reminding us that words save us.

  Bio:            
  Nailah Harvey, M.A.Ed., is an 11x published author, book editor, and founder of N.HARV LLC, a writing consultancy specializing in nonfiction book writing, editing, and content creation. She is dedicated to introducing the broader community to the power of writing competency and helping educators and leaders develop thought leadership through intentional writing. Her signature book, "Book-fluence: How to Write a Book to Position Yourself as a Leader in Your Industry," guides professionals in expanding their influence through authorship.
  Nailah’s author journey began while living and teaching overseas in South Korea, an experience that continues to shape her culturally responsive approach to storytelling and education. In fact, she encourages writers to use travel as a tool for strengthening narrative voice and perspective.

  As a fourth-year Ed.D. student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program at Howard University, future Dr. Harvey is committed to advancing policies that strengthen writing literacy for K-12 students. Nailah has built an online community of over 5,000 writing enthusiasts and remains dedicated to helping others live their words through writing, travel, and lived experience.

• Jovana Isevski
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Jovana Isevski

  English Department
  UCR PhD Candidate    
  IG: @jovana_isevski

  Talk Title: How the Past Lives Through Us        

  Talk Description:
  We often think of memories as abstract, passive records of the past. But what if they are active bioelectric patterns in the body and brain that organize how we perceive, feel, and act in the present? Drawing on neuroscience, developmental biology, and philosophy, I explore how living systems are held together by bioelectric patterns that stabilize the self across scales—from single cells and multicellular organisms to human social identities. In the brain, memories form clusters that complexity science calls “dynamic attractors,” magnet-like patterns that pull neural activity into relatively stable configurations. Some of these clusters correspond to our experience of social identities that shape our habits, emotions, and ways of seeing the world. And yet, acknowledging the power of memory patterns does not mean we are fully determined by them. Exposing ourselves to new environments, relationships, and experiences can gradually weaken inherited patterns and strengthen new ones, allowing us to loosen the grip of past selves that no longer serve us.        

  Bio:            
  Jovana Isevski is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she obtained a Designated Emphasis in Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science. She is also a Health Humanities and Disability Justice Fellow whose interdisciplinary research brings together neuroscience, developmental biology, political philosophy, and speculative fiction to explore how biological and social forces shape memory, subjectivity, and perception. Drawing on biosemiotics and dynamical systems theory, her work examines how bodies and minds become organized through living patterns of meaning and how these patterns influence the ways we perceive, feel, and act in the world. Her research has received several awards, such as the Baricelli Memorial Award, two Emerging Scholar awards by the Common Grounds Research Network, and NSF Travel Award. She has organized Neurohumanities Research Group and Autopoiesis and Systems Thinking at UC Riverside, among others.

• Molly Megee Hankins
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Molly Megee Hankins

  Writer & Transformative Educator at Tetragrammaton.com
  Media, Law & Education    
  IG: @youfoundmolly55

  Talk Title: How Do We Know What To Believe? 
  
  Talk Description:
  The environments we’re in, especially the media environments we’re spending so many hours a day in, is shaping the architecture of our beliefs. As the media circulated in these environments becomes increasingly emotionally manipulative and impossible to verify, inevitably consciousness itself is going to change again in response. To me, what’s helpful is asking other humans for help making sense of new information, and I think we have a much better chance of staying psychologically sovereign if we do.

  Bio:            
  Molly is an attorney-turned-writer who spent 10 years in the music business before pivoting to non-profit work with a highly diverse client roster, ranging from Skrillex and Vice to Templeton World Charity Foundation and Institute of Noetic Sciences. Currently she writes for Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton.com and facilitates transformational education programming for young people impacted by homelessness. Her projects have always focused on the cutting edge of pop culture - whatever new and wild is happening science, art, music, or media is usually where she's focused. In 2010 she co-founded her first media, ticketing and merchandising company Digilove, an electronic music platform she successfully exited in 2013. After the pandemic forced her out of the music business in 2020, she worked with Posthoc Salons as a content writer, event producer and community manager of an international group of founders, academics, journalists and artists hosting salons in LA, New York and London.

• Moncell Durden
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Moncell Durden

  Associate Professor of Practice
  USC Kaufman School of Dance
  IG: @moncelldurden    
  https://www.moncelldurden.com

  
  Talk Title: The Moment We Move        

  Talk Description:        
  The environments we’re in, especially the media environments we’re spending so many hours a day in, is shaping the architecture of our beliefs. As the media circulated in these environments becomes increasingly emotionally manipulative and impossible to verify, inevitably consciousness itself is going to change again in response. To me, what’s helpful is asking other humans for help making sense of new information, and I think we have a much better chance of staying psychologically sovereign if we do.

  Bio:            
  Moncell Durden is an embodied dance historian, educator, choreographer, and cultural researcher whose work centers Black American social dance traditions and their global influence. He is an Associate Professor of Practice at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and the founder of Intangible Roots, an educational and cultural platform dedicated to preserving, teaching, and contextualizing African diasporic movement practices. With decades of experience as a performer, lecturer, and consultant, Durden has taught at institutions including USC, Drexel University, Bennington College, Wesleyan University, and Yale School of Drama. His interdisciplinary approach, what he calls Ethnocorporealogy - bridges dance anthropology, musicology, neuroscience, philosophy, and cultural history to examine how rhythm and movement function as embodied systems of memory, identity, communication, and survival. Through lectures, movement, and research, he continues to challenge and expand contemporary understandings of dance as both cultural practice and intellectual knowledge.

• Dr. Ethan Castro
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Dr. Ethan Castro    

  CTO EDGE Sound Research
  UCR Alumni    
  IG: @ethancastromusic
  https://www.edgesoundresearch.com

  Talk Title: AI is a Toddler – Building a Nervous System for Physical AI    

  Talk Description:        
  Why can a toddler adapt to the physical world more naturally than some of the most advanced AI and robotics systems we’ve built? Watching his daughter learn to walk made Castro question what we consider "intelligence". She wasn’t just “thinking” harder. She was building and refining a working model of the world in realtime that allowed her to succeed in the new task of walking, even though she had not been explicitly "trained" to do so. EDGE Sound Research experiences a similar problem inside live sports, where computers must understand literal chaos through sound, vision, tracking, and uncertainty. Maybe the answer to useful AI is not a bigger brain, but something closer to a nervous system: a way to connect intelligence to the real world, and checking common sense before acting.

  Bio:    
  Dr. Ethan Castro is a hard-of-hearing music producer, songwriter, engineer, keynote speaker and inventor with Tourette’s Syndrome and ADHD. He serves as Chief Technical Officer of EDGE Sound Research where his patented inventions are elevating content experience by global brands such as Apple, Disney, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Fox Sports, NBA, NHL, and more. He is a regular contributor/presenter AES, NAMM, CTA, and other standards committees.

Speaker Applications

Applications are now CLOSED for TEDxUCR 2026: Turning Points.

Speaker application

Who Should Apply to Speak?

TEDxUCR welcomes speaker applications from across the University of California, Riverside community.

We encourage proposals from:

UCR Faculty and Researchers
Scholars and educators whose research, discoveries, or perspectives offer new ways of understanding the world.

UCR Staff and Professionals
Individuals whose work, leadership, or experiences reveal important insights about innovation, community, and impact.

UCR Students
Undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students who have developed ideas, projects, or personal insights that can inspire others.

We are particularly interested in speakers who can share a clear idea, story, or insight connected to a turning point, a moment that transformed their thinking, work, or understanding in a meaningful way.