Join us on April 3rd at the Jumeirah Creekside Hotel in Dubai for an evening of inspirational conversation under the theme POSITIVE DISRUPTION. Hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation live from their HQ in Seattle at TEDxChange.

Door opens at 7pm – event starts at 7:30 p.m.

What’s Positive Disruption, you ask?
Disruption is usually unwelcome. It represents conflict, chaos, and potential danger. We discourage disruptive behavior in our homes and our societies, often favoring passivity and compliance.
But disruption can be a positive – sometimes vital – catalyst for change. It can challenge old assumptions, ignite conversations, activate authorities and expose new possibilities. Disruption can shed a unique light on difficult issues, giving a fresh urgency and perspective to the challenges of our global community.
To solve the most intractable challenges in health and development, we need positive disruption. It is the path to true progress.

DUBAI SPEAKERS

Dr. Shiblu Shamsudeen : Shiblu Shamsudeen was born and raised in the United Arab Emirates to Indian parents. He was actively involved in community service and volunteer activities and chose a career in medicine and enrolled at the International University of Health Sciences for his MBBS. Shibilu Shamsudeen is one of the co-founders and former President of the Emirates Medical Students’ Society and also a former Regional Assistant to the Vice President for External Affairs in the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations. He has been involved in various projects ranging from Humanitarian Relief, Public Health and Reproductive Health including AIDS in countries like India, UAE and USA. A keen volunteer for participating in social services and actively involved in promoting human rights, public health and reproductive health, Shibilu was also part of the team of doctors at Bombay Hospital, Mumbai where his did his clinical training during the Terror Attacks of 26/11 in Mumbai.

Shiblu is a two time scholarship winner with Women Deliver and is current one of the 100 Young Leaders with Women Deliver 2013 working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and towards the empowerment of women. He hopes to obtain residency in the United States is already involved in various volunteer activities there. His interests lie in Emergency Medicine, General Surgery, Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine.

Mary Mwende: grew up in Mombasa, Kenya. Her mother her inspired her to study hard and Mary earned a place at Starehe Girls Centre and School. In 2006, Mary was one of the first girls to join the Global Give Back Circle, a mentorship program to enable girls to step up. Mary was then chosen to represent the Global Give Back Circle and was on stage with President Clinton in the 2009 opening plenary session of CGI in New York. Mary left CGI with a full four-year scholarship to the American University of Dubai (AUD) and will soon graduate. Mary developed an interest in women education, health and specifically reproductive health. With this, she and other beneficiaries of the Global Give Back Circle started a website to educate girls about critical health information and exchange peer to peer knowledge. http://heysister.org/ In November 20111, Mary spent ten days in Haiti facilitating a knowledge transfer for an organization that mentors at-risk youth. She recently learned that she was one of 100 young leaders (out of 6,000 applicants) selected to receive a full scholarship to attend the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur in May 2013. Last April 2012, Mary was the first African and only the second woman to be elected President of the Student Government at AUD

LIVE STREAM SPEAKERS

Julie Dixon investigates the changing ways we interact with and support the significant social issues facing the world today. As a researcher, adjunct professor, and director of Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication, she works with hundreds of organizations annually, equipping them to more effectively engage people in their work and to share the compelling stories of their impact. She focuses much of her energy on promoting the role of technology in building connections and advancing social solutions. Julie holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Rochester, and a master’s degree in public relations from Syracuse University.

David Fasanya: is a Nigerian-born performance artist residing in Brooklyn, New York. As a poet he has been the Art Initiative Slam Champion, second-place winner at the Urban Word NYC Youth poet laureate slam, and member of the 2012 Urban Word NYC slam team that performed at the Brave New Voices International Teen Poetry Slam in California. His one-man show, “Wet”, debuted at New York Live Arts in December 2012, incorporating elements of dance and theater. He has also mentored at the Bellevue Hospital Care Center. David advocates transparency through his work, knowing that openness is the first step towards self-improvement.

Melinda Gates: Melinda Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along with Bill Gates, she shapes and approves the foundation’s strategies, reviews results, and sets the overall direction of the organization. Together they meet with grantees and partners to further the foundation’s goal of improving equity in the United States and around the world. While involved in all of the organization’s endeavors, Gates believes that empowering women in developing countries to decide whether and when to have a child is a critical driver of her work at the foundation, since this decision can be the source of transformational improvements in the health and prosperity of whole societies. Gates received
a master’s degree in business administration from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 1987. After joining Microsoft in 1987, she was appointed as Microsoft’s general manager of Information Products. In 1996, Gates left the organization, and since then has directed her energy toward the nonprofit world.

Halimatu Hima : was born in Niger, where she served as the first president of the Youth Parliament at the age fifteen. During her tenure, she engaged various stakeholders for national campaigns on girls education, especially on rural areas, among other initiatives. She earned a scholarship to the United World College and Wellesley College, where she joined a small group of students to build Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance. Upon her graduation in 2010, Halimatou worked extensively in rural Niger on child marriage, girls’ education, and youth participation with Unicef. She independently spearheaded microenterprise programs with women. Halimatou – selected in 2011 as one of ” Africa’s 25 top emerging women leaders under 25 for their commitment to service” – is a candidate for a master’s degree in public policy (MPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Catheen Kaveny: is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and is currently a visiting professor at Princeton University. Dr. Kaveny focuses her academic work on the intersection of religion, law, and morality. She is the author of Law’s Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society and the forthcoming Prophecy without Contempt: An Ethics of Religious Discourse in the Public Square. She has also authored more than a hundred articles and essays in both scholarly and popular journals. She is a regular columnist for Commonweal. Professor Kaveny is a member of numerous professional societies and has served on a number of editorial boards in both law and religion. In January 2013, she was elected to the vice-presidency of the Society of Christian Ethics. She earned both her J.D. and her Ph.D. from Yale University.

Salim Shekh and Sikha Patra: Salim Shekh, a boy of 15 years, lives in a polluted slum in East Kolkata, India. Sikha Patra, a girl of 15 years, lives in an Indian slum called Neheru Colony. This dynamic duo has been engaged in eradicating polio from their community, developing a map which they plan to share online with the global audience to make their invisible community visible. Sikha and Salim are child advisors to Prayasam, an India-based NGO that has organized thousands of children in the slum areas to become peer leaders/educators, catalyzing lifestyle changes within their communities. Focusing primarily on preventive health, sanitation, and hygiene, these children are changing the physical and social environment within which they live. Currently they are negotiating with the local government to ward off diseases like dengue. Both Sikha and Salim were speakers at the Skoll World Forum held in Oxford in 2012. They spoke about the active role of the youth as the contributors as well as the change-makers of the society.

Roger Thurow: joined The Chicago Council on Global Affairs as senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy in January 2010 after three decades at The Wall Street Journal. In 2012, he also became a fellow for the ONE Campaign. For 20 years, he served as a Journal foreign correspondent, based in Europe and Africa. In 2003, he and Journal colleague Scott Kilman wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Their reporting on humanitarian and development issues was also honored by the United Nations. Thurow and Kilman are authors of the book ENOUGH: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. In 2009, they were awarded Action Against Hunger’s Humanitarian Award. They also received the 2009 Harry Chapin Why Hunger book award. In May 2012, Thurow published his second book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.

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