THUNDER BAY — Connecting for Change was the theme on Saturday, during the TEDxLakeheadU 2025 held at The Outpost.
TEDx has a goal of sparking conversation, connection and community.
“We have around 100 guests joining us with our sponsors and partners and speakers. We gather here to come up with new ideas, innovation around how to connect better and how to bring good change to our community,” said Faraz Khorsandi, event lead and president of Lakehead University Student Union.
TEDx hasn’t been in Thunder Bay since 2019, and prior to that, 2015, he said.
“You can see how many years there were no TEDx's in Thunder Bay. We're excited to have it after six years and we can also see the excitement that we got from the community members and students attending today.”
TEDx is an individually organized TED event which stands for technology, education, and design, Khorsandi said.
“It’s people coming up the stage, they do different talks and they bring new ideas and innovation in different disciplines and it has its own guidelines and rules and regulations.”
Khorsandi said there are 11 speakers total. Five local speakers, two from the United States, one Calgary and three from Toronto.
The theme, Connecting for Change, was created by Khorsandi.
“When I came here as an international student in 2022 . . . I could see so many disconnects within major stakeholders of the city. There is a force in people that they don't want to embrace change, and for me, it was an issue," Khorsandi said.
Dr. Kris Alexander, associate professor of video game design and educational technology at Toronto Metropolitan University, said he was thankful to be invited to Thunder Bay.
“For the talk today, I spoke about how artificial intelligence can level up the way that we as educators teach, and I gave four specific stories on how I taught that, it could be used across elementary school, high school, online instruction and post-secondary education,” Alexander said.
The vibe of the crowd was welcoming and warm, and everyone was paying attention, he said.
“The one thing I wanted the crowd to take away, was that most of the folks that are saying negative things about artificial intelligence and education, are people that are trying to get other people to not try. My hope was to get parents, teachers, teacher training institutions, especially students to try.
“I gave specific examples to show them ways in which they could try,” Alexander said.
Albert Brulé, CEO of United Way Thunder Bay, said he was impressed by the organization committee for the effort put into this ‘magical’ experience.
“The theme of Connecting for Change resonates really closely with me in the work that I do at United Way, and so it's a real honor to be able to speak today a little bit about how people can come together to address issues of poverty,” he said.
Brulé hopes this is the start of more opportunities in the future.
“It really is so inspiring. We have local speakers, which is amazing, and we have these folks from across Canada and the US who have come to Thunder Bay to share their expertise, their ideas to help motivate and inspire all of us here in this community,” he said.
Brulé’s presentation was called ‘United for Good: Better is Possible.'
“What I really want to convey to the audience is that when we come together as a community, when we really apply ourselves and take the initiative and work as a community, we can make things better and we can address some of the most challenging problems facing Thunder Bay and the region.
“Whether it's homelessness, food insecurity, youth substance use, whatever the challenges are, we can make a difference and we have to,” Brulé said.
Ben Wise and Darren Chiu, both co-founders of Captivate, talked together at TEDxLakeheadU 2025.
“Our topic was all about the Ecology of influence and how you can use that to connect for change, which was the theme of the whole event,” Wise said.
It was so much fun, Chiu said. “Very engaging crowd. We could actually see their response. We could actually see everyone smiling.”
“We hope that people who are trying to drive change have a better skill set or tool kit to go and do that now. When people are trying to convince somebody to do something or to change or do something differently, we give them all the rational reasons, and that, as the research shows is extremely ineffective.
"If people take away one thing, it starts to appeal on an emotional level and on a human level, instead of just spouting data and facts and logic,” Wise said.
