TEDxPaceAcademy

As an Organization, TEDx is

a grassroots initiative, created in the spirit of TED’s overall mission to research and discover “ideas worth spreading.” TEDx brings the spirit of TED to local communities around the globe through TEDx events. These events are organized by passionate individuals who seek to uncover new ideas and to share the latest research in their local areas that spark conversations in their communities. TEDx events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks, and are organized independently under a free license granted by TED. These events are not controlled by TED, but event organizers agree to abide by our format, and are offered guidelines for curation, speaker coaching, event organizing and more. They learn from us and from each other. More than 3000 events are now held annually.

At Pace Academy, in the fall of 2019,

Michael Fu '21 approached his English teacher, Robert Kaufman, about the idea of potentially organizing a TEDx event at Pace Academy together. Neither Fu nor Kaufman knew what co-organizing TEDx entailed, but since both had an aspiration to put on a TEDx event to promote ideas worth spreading, they began planning the first TEDxPaceAcademy event for the spring of 2020. Covid-19 pushed the inaugural event entitled, "Challenging the Status Quo", to the spring of 2021. After the success of the first event, Kaufman began organizing the second TEDxPaceAcademy event ("The Force of Words") for the fall of 2021 with Emma Beth Neville '23 and Marit UyHam '23. Claire Jiang '25 and Davis Rice '23 co-organized the third event ("The Game Behind the Game") with Kaufman in the fall of 2022. And Martin Andra-Thomas '24, Harper Auchincloss '25, and Kate Grice '25 co-organized the fourth event ("Do I Dare?") in the fall of 2023. Thanks to extraordinary support from Fred Assaf, Chad Wabrek, Scott Sargent, Eric Forslund, and many others, TEDx has been able to continue improving and making a new program with different speakers each year.