TED Talks at Hamline started as a dream in students Mohamed Mohamed and Conner Sudick’s heads two years ago. Today, they are helping 13 speakers prepare for Hamline’s first ever TED event.

One of those student leaders is Junior Raie Gessesse, titled TEDxHamline’s Curation manager. She is tasked with making sure all talks are rooted in the Ignite theme the team decided on.

“We would like to curate an event that is not only meaningful for the speakers but deeply transformative for the audience as well. Igniting the audience into thinking about an issue in a different way, or taking action as a result of a talk is our true hope for this event,” Gessesse said.

Gessesse sat on the committee that decided who the finalist speakers would be. Among those speakers is criminal justice professor Jillian Peterson.

“They’ve [the student executive board] been really communicative about the process, how many applications they got, that there’s going to be a couple different rounds,” Peterson said, “I’ve been really impressed with how it’s been run”.

Peterson’s talk is titled “How We Can All Prevent Mass Shootings,” based on her research at Hamline about mass shooters. She’s been researching this topic with seven Hamline students who have received grants from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“I think the takeaway from my talk will be along the lines of ‘there is more that we can all do to stop violence when we tend to feel powerless about it,’” Peterson said, “but that it’s really all of our collective responsibilities and this new research is highlighting ways we can think about this.”

Peterson will be joined as a speaker by talks from students, alumni and faculty.

Conner Suddick, senior student and Compliance Officer said his only regret about the event is the number of tickets they are able to sell to the Talks. Because Hamline will be participating for the first time and has not sent anybody to the national TED conference, their license agreement only allows for 100 tickets to be given out.

“We’re just doing the best to make sure that we’re as inclusive as possible when given limited resources. We’re hoping in the future that Hamline can send someone to the national TED conference so that we can fill up a whole venue.”

The event will be streamed live to viewing parties in Kay Fredricks room in the Klas Center and East Hall 106 which will both hold 100 people. Suddick noted that the event will be streaming over Hamline’s global streaming service with a custom URL coming soon, so anyone with access to Wi-Fi can hold their own viewing party.

Suddick, who will be Co-Emceeing the event with Gessese, was blown away by the number of applications they received and the diversity of ideas that people from the Hamline community had.

“I want this to happen again and again because there [are] some amazing people in our community, and the genesis of this event was to highlight and uplift the voices that we haven’t had a chance to be heard on this type of platform,” Suddick said.

Visit tedxhamlineuniversity.com for more information. Free tickets will be made available on the website on Feb. 25 at 6 p.m.