At TEDxOdenseWomen 2019, we once again shared ideas worth spreading inspired by the American phenomenon TEDWomen in Palm Springs, California.
TEDxOdenseWomen celebrates women’s achievements, sharing success stories from Denmark’s innovators, leaders, and doers who have made a positive impact on their community and/or in their field of work.
This event brought together 5 live unique speakers from Denmark, alongside selected speakers from the global TEDWomen, whose videos were premiered at TEDxOdenseWomen.
TEDxOdenseWomen 2019 line-up
Meg Larrabee Sønderlund
Host
Meg's story
"Every day has the potential to expand your perspective.” Your host for TEDxOdenseWomen is the incomparable Meg Larrabee Sønderlund. American born and bred, across California, New York, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and North Carolina, Sønderlund made the quantum leap across the pond to Denmark in 1970. Here, she puddle-jumped from art studies, marriage, children, and degrees in English and business from SDU. Sønderlund says she has “worked forever” teaching and coaching English, creating her own one-woman translation bureau, and finally nearly a quarter of a century teaching at University College Lillebælt. As a mentor to hundreds of students in global communication, innovation, and entrepreneurship, Sønderlund’s generous spirit, effervescent personality, and kind heart made her the perfect host to guide us through the first ever TEDxOdenseWomen. Now, gingerly stepping into the new vistas of “retirement”, Sønderlund is back and ready to take us to new heights as our guide for TEDxOdenseWomen2019.
“I am so ready for new adventures! What a place to begin – TEDxOdenseWomen2019!”
Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen
Anna-Sophie's story
Anna-Sophie is an author, public speaker, and entrepreneur working to financially empower women. Her interest in finance was sparked when she started investing at the age of 19. However, she quickly realized that investing as a young woman can be a lonely experience. At the age of 22, she therefore founded Female Invest, which has already helped more than 10.000 women getting started in investing. Female Invest is Denmark’s largest investment network for women, and the company is now expanding throughout Scandinavia.
During her talk, Anna will touch upon why it is important to increase female participation and representation in financial markets, how this can be done, and what impact it will have on society.
Julia Evelyn Larsen
Julia's story
Julia is the co-founder of CryptoWomen CPH, a community for women interested in blockchain. She has interned at the Danish Foreign Ministry’s Innovation Department in Germany and has seen first hand how new technology quickly goes from being perceived as transformative to being captured by big corporations, which then dictate its development. Using tech for good and making tech accessible for all are her core focus areas, and her current project is setting up a coding group for women.
Her several years worth of being deeply invested in blockchain technology have led her to speak at events such as Roskilde Festival, multiple tech-conferences, and at Google. This culminated in her master’s thesis on Blockchain for Social Good, for which she won the CBS PRME prize. In her talk she will share these insights with you to clarify how the technology has promise for social impact, but is currently being privatized and under-explored.
Poornima Luthra
Poornima's story
Dr. Poornima Luthra is teaching faculty at CBS, and she is an educator and corporate trainer in the field of human resource management, specializing in teaching courses in diversity & inclusion, international HR, leadership, and teams.
She has over 12 years of teaching experience and has written a number of cases with large MNCs on their journey through managing generational diversity in their cross-cultural workplaces. Poornima is deeply passionate about helping organizations nurture inclusive workplaces where everyone can bring their whole selves to work. She combines her academic experience with her own personal journey of raising two third-culture Generation Z children.
Poornima will be sharing her ideas on developing generational intelligence to nurture age inclusive workplaces, by minimizing the micro-aggressions in the micro-generations of today's organization.
Sofie Woge
Sofie's story
Kamila Kunrath
Kamila's story
Jazz Trio
Performer's story
With Anna Rybacka returning to our stage as the vocalist, this jazz trio will perform their beloved jazz music in tribute to their favourite divas. From Ella Fitzgerald to Lady Gaga, you will be taken on a journey filled with beautiful numbers by bold and brilliant female artists.
#TEDxOdenseWomen #BoldandBrilliant
TEDxOdenseWomen 2019 Partners
Being a part of TEDxOdenseWomen makes obvious sense to us. It is an opportunity for sharing successes from female innovators and leaders. We hope to be able to inspire and be part of creating a belief that we need to take gender diversity to the next level. Together, we can generate strong and competent female leaders!
Mette Holy Jørgensen, Partner at PwC
After 18 years in the center of Odense, Alfred & Kamilla moved locations and settled down by the city’s lovely harbor.
We provide a fantastic location for meetings and conferences. Our team is passionate about creating memorable experiences for our guests, that include not only the venue itself, but also serving delicious food.
We are very proud to host TEDxOdenseWomen 2019, and we look forward to welcoming the guests and providing them with a great experience.
Brian Matzen, owner of Alfred & Kamilla
In-kind support
TEDxOdenseWomen Team 2019
Steffie Limère
Head organizer and co license holder
Steffie's story
Steffie is the head organizer and co-license holder for TEDxOdense. She started as a TEDx organizer in 2014, where she ran a university TEDx event: TEDxEAL. After 2 great TEDxEAL editions she and Adam decided to take it to a city level, and so TEDxOdense was born. In 2018, she saw the need for a TEDxOdenseWomen event, creating the first TEDxWomen event in Denmark. Besides TEDx, Steffie runs her own event company, Unfolding Events, where she works as a freelance event manager and works on events such as Thinkers50, Schunk Expert days and new initiatives in the city such as FuckUpNights Odense.
“Why TEDxOdenseWomen and not TEDxOdenseMen a lot of people ask me. When women win, we all win. By shining an extra spotlight on women’s achievements, I hope we can inspire more women to turn into role models. This event is important for me as I am a woman myself and I need this for me. I need more female examples.”
Monika Kosman
Head of Marketing
Monika's story
Monika has been involved in TEDxOdense since its very beginning, where she volunteered her time to help with event management and marketing. That’s when she discovered her passion for social media and her flair for event management. She loves to travel and juggle many projects at the same time, currently combining starting up her own marketing company, freelancing in event management, and leading the Marketing Team of TEDxOdense.
“I have decided to join TEDxOdenseWomen, because I resonated with the idea of celebrating women’s achievements, as opposed to focusing on the negativity that often derives from women’s struggles. I see TEDxOdenseWomen as a conversation starter and a platform for showing fantastic examples of how we can move beyond the focus on gender. My personal goal is to be able to simply put a spotlight on people doing great things to celebrate women and their achievements, that made a positive impact on their community or field of work.“
Aneta Anna Duda
Marketing and Design
Aneta's story
Aneta has been involved in TEDxOdense for three years, where she joined as a volunteer to help with graphic design and marketing for the event. Aneta is creative and passionate graphic designer. Although her passion is graphic design, Aneta has a Bachelor degree in Innovation & Entrepreneurship and currently studying Master degree in Social Entrepreneurship and Management.
“Few years ago, my mom came up to me and said that she will speak at the TEDxWSB conference in Poland. They loved her school concept she created and I was proud of her. I saw the opportunity to be a volunteer at TEDxOdenseWomen and decided that it would be an amazing way to inspire people by celebrating women’s achievements, that influenced their work field. I believe that we can encourage more women by bringing role models on the TEDxOdenseWomen stage.”
Kimberly Bent
Speaker Management
Kimberly's story
Kimberly has a Master’s degree in International Security and Law from the University of Southern Denmark, and is committed to making a difference in people’s lives through her passion for justice, human rights, and the law. Driven by her curiosity for learning, she loves to share ideas and innovative solutions about how we all can contribute to making the world a better place for everyone.
“I have been in love with TED Talks since 2006. When I saw an opportunity to volunteer for TEDxOdenseWomen, I couldn’t resist wanting to be a part of what inspires people, changes them, and keeps them moving forward. I am excited to be part of a platform for the second year running that supports brilliant women presenting their ideas to a wide audience.”
Elisabeth Renée Foged Sejbak
Copywriter, Marketing
Elisabeth's story
Elisabeth holds a BA in psychology from SDU and is currently studying for her MA as well. She was born and raised in Odense, so she is a true city local. She currently works for a health research center, and in her spare time she’s a semi-professional dancer and amateur musical-enthusiast. Her interest in copywriting and language was cultivated through a devotion to fiction. She spent a year studying in the US and speaks and writes Danish and English equally fluently.
“I joined TEDxOdenseWomen because of my love for TED and TEDx in general and because the idea of celebrating women resonated with me. I’m a firm believer in equality between all genders and find that highlighting achievements of women is a road to better understanding, inspiration, and further great work.”
Ioana Lazarescu
Speaker Management
Ioana's story
Ioana is a communication professional with a cause: helping people put meaningful talks into the world. She joined TEDxOdense in 2017 with this precise purpose. Ioana also runs her own speaker coaching start-up, the Speaker Coaching Diaries (https://www.speakercoachingdiaries.com/) - a development of her decade-long experience with communication and language training and her activity in TEDxOdense.
“I have often wished I could be a boy for a day, out of pure curiosity, yet always knowing I would still want to be a girl again the next day. I joined TEDxOdenseWomen because I dream that I will live to see the day when such a thought is not only doable, but also unexceptional - the day when being a boy or a girl is unimportant and uninteresting, to everybody else except perhaps oneself. But until that day comes when we can all move past gender issues, the conversation needs to be had.”
Christina Dee
Graphic Designer
Christina's story
Currently working as a freelance graphic designer and photographer, with clients in the UK, Denmark, Spain and Portugal, Christina loves simple design and the use of photogrpahs in her work. She loves to work on different things every day and learn new programmes to satisfy her clients needs. She also loves to capture the work her clients do in photos that she then uses within their projects together. In her mind building relationships is the fundament to good business practice.
“I joined TEDxOdenseWomen team at the last minute, having been to TEDxOdense earlier this year I was very excited to get involved with the event and the awesome team behind it. It is a great opportunity to build more relationships within the city and be a part of something exciting.”