TEDxRVAWomen will celebrate invention in all its forms December 5. TEDxRVAWomen, the first independently organized TEDxWomen event in the region, will feature dynamic local speakers as well as a session from the live webcast of “TEDWomen 2013: Invented Here” from San Francisco.
The event will take place Thursday, Dec. 5, 1 to 6 p.m. at Dogtown Dance Theatre in the Manchester District, 109 W. 15th St., #205, and will include a closing reception. Tickets are $35 and available through TEDxRVA.com or by clicking here.
“We’ll celebrate our community’s inventors, visionaries, thinkers and doers — strong and enterprising women who enrich all our lives,” said Katie Benson, the TEDxRVA outreach coordinator.
Local speakers will include:
- Gigi Amateau, author. Amateau’s first book for young adults, “Claiming Georgia Tate,” was published in 2005. “Come August, Come Freedom,” her first work ofhistorical fiction, is a 2013 Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year and received the Library of Virginia’s 2013 People’s Choice Fiction Award.
- Eva DeVirgilis, actress. After DeVirgilis moved from New York to Richmond and took up makeup artistry as a means to pay the bills between gigs, she discovered a new passion: helping women look and feel their best. She combines her talents by documenting the diverse stories of the women who sit in her makeup chair and then bringing them to life onstage.
- Samantha Marquez, inventor, senior at Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School. Marquez developed an innovative process for the self-assembly of living cells in a new structure called Celloidosomes®. Her awards include top prize at the 2012 Intel Science and Engineering Fair, first place at the International Space Olympics in Russia and the 2013 Neuroscience Research Prize at the National American Academy of Neurology Conference.
Actress and writer Eva DeVirgilis
- Christy Coleman, president and CEO of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar. The Center is the nation’s first museum to explore the causes and legacies of the Civil War from Union, Confederate and African American perspectives. Coleman has lectured extensively, consulted with some of the country’s leadingmuseums and is an award-winning screenwriter for educational television.
- Alicia Zatcoff, sustainability manager, City of Richmond. Zatcoff, an attorney, founded and developed the city’s sustainability and energy management program, focusing on improving the economic and environmental performance of city government and making RVA more livable, competitive and resilient.
More information is available at www.tedxrva.com/tedxrvawomen or by emailing women@tedxrva.com. TEDxRVAWomen is one of a series of experiential engagements.
