The Audacious Project is TED’s collaborative funding initiative to put ideas for social change into action. Today, we launched eight new talks from this year’s cohort, featuring some of the world’s boldest changemakers and their ideas to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges. Collectively this group has secured more than $900 million in funding from the Audacious Project, matching their transformative ideas with catalytic resources. Learn more at AudaciousProject.org, and watch the talks at TED.com/AudaciousProject.
A safe pathway to resettlement for migrants and refugees
Becca Heller, International Refugee Assistance Project
Why Indigenous forest guardianship is crucial to climate action
Nonette Royo, Tenure Facility
How ancient Arctic carbon threatens everyone on the planet
Sue Natali, Woodwell Climate Research Center
Mental health care that disrupts cycles of violence
Celina De Sola, Glasswing International
An election redesign to restore trust in US democracy
Tiana Epps-Johnson, Center for Tech and Civic Life
A transparent, easy way for smallholder farmers to save
Anushka Ratnayake, myAgro
A bold plan for transforming access to the US social safety net
Amanda Renteria, Code for America
The most powerful untapped resource in health care
Edith Elliott and Shahed Alam, Noora Health
The billion-dollar campaign to electrify transport
Monica Araya, ClimateWorks: Drive Electric
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Audacious Project executive director Anna Verghese and head of TED Chris Anderson onstage at TED2019 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The 2021-22 cohort features nine audacious responses to some of the world’s biggest challenges. (Photo: Dian Lofton / TED)
Communities around the globe are grappling with division and uncertainty. Lasting and transformative change on the world’s most pressing challenges will require us to work together and find common ground. At The Audacious Project, we aspire to be a lever for courageous collaboration, supporting those who are reimagining and rebuilding our systems to better meet the demands of this moment.
This past year, the Audacious community has come together to catalyze more than $900 million for nine bold projects. Sourced from our global network, and supported by our team over the past 12 months, these projects hope to create clear pathways to a better future.
The 2021-22 Audacious Project grantees are:
These projects reflect continued collaboration between a group of global partners, philanthropic organizations and determined individuals who believe in the power of pooling significant, long-term resources in service of impact. Our hope is that this inspires others to engage in the work too.
This new cohort joins an existing Audacious portfolio of 29 projects, with over $3.1 billion of philanthropic dollars catalyzed since 2015. Four cycles into this program, the Audacious projects together reveal a powerful truth: the problems we face are not intractable, and the status quo is not inevitable.
We look forward to sharing these new projects with you next week at TED2022 during the Audacious session co-hosted by Academy Award nominee and Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody Award winner Ava DuVernay, and we very much hope you’ll join us in supporting and amplifying their work far and wide.
With gratitude and determined hope,
Anna Verghese, executive director of The Audacious Project
Chris Anderson, head of TED
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Resistance Revival Chorus performs at TED Salon: Free to Dream, presented in partnership with American Family Insurance at the TED World Theater in New York on November 17, 2021. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)
We all deserve the right to dream and to pursue better, richer and fuller lives. In fact, this ideal is often referred to as the American Dream. And yet, the country’s criminal justice system denies many people the freedom to truly dream — even after they have been technically “freed” from incarceration. In an evening of talks, four speakers and a performer challenged the definition of the word “freedom” and laid out new ideas for how to engage in systems change, close equity gaps and reimagine what it means to be free to dream.
The event: TED Salon: Free to Dream, curated and hosted by Whitney Pennington Rodgers, in partnership with American Family Insurance
Opening remarks: Bill Westrate, president and CEO-elect of American Family Insurance, welcomes the audience to the salon.
Music: A soaring musical interlude from The Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women artists and activists who use their voices to amplify freedom, justice reform and the power of dreaming.
Reuben Jonathan Miller speaks at TED Salon: Free to Dream, presented in partnership with American Family Insurance at the TED World Theater in New York on November 17, 2021. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)
Reuben Jonathan Miller, sociologist, writer
Big idea: For the nearly 20 million Americans with a felony record, punishment doesn’t end with a prison sentence. We need to embrace the politics of radical hospitality, where we make a place in society for all people, even those who’ve done harm.
How? When a previously incarcerated person comes home, they return to a hostile world — what Reuben Jonathan Miller calls an alternate legal reality. In the United States, more than 44,000 laws and policies dictate where a person with a felony record can live, what jobs they can hold, how they can spend their time and whether or not they can vote or see their kids. As a sociologist, Miller has spent more than two decades “following the people we’ve learned to be afraid of.” For people like a man Miller calls Jimmy, who was released from prison into Detroit, punishment never ends. Miller explains how the terms of Jimmy’s release required that he find housing, report to his parole officer for weekly drug screenings, complete a workforce development program and get a job — without providing him with any resources or support. His mother wanted him to come home, but he couldn’t even sleep on her couch because landlords can evict families for housing relatives with criminal records. What’s the solution? How do we end perpetual punishment? We need to change the laws, Miller says, but we also need to change our commitments. He points to Ronald Simpson Bey as someone who models the politics of radical hospitality. Bey spent 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and since he’s come home has become one of the nation’s leading advocates for justice. When a 14-year-old boy murdered his son, Bey even advocated on behalf of the boy to ensure that he would be tried as a minor, giving the boy a second chance in life. As Miller says, people like Bey help us imagine alternatives for the formerly incarcerated; they invite us “to help remake the world, so we all belong, simply because we’re fully human participants in a human community.”
Nyra Jordan speaks at TED Salon: Free to Dream, presented in partnership with American Family Insurance at the TED World Theater in New York on November 17, 2021. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)
Nyra Jordan, social impact investor
Big idea: Corporations can engage in justice reform by making it easier to hire someone with a criminal record.
How? Corporate commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) often leave out people impacted by the criminal justice system, even though employment is one of the best ways to prevent someone from returning to prison. As social impact investment director for American Family Insurance, Nyra Jordan has pioneered fair chance hiring for people with a criminal record. Under her leadership, the company eliminated any “check here if you have a criminal record” boxes from their job applications and started including programs that train incarcerated individuals in their talent pipeline. Now, she shares four steps to implement fair chance hiring at your company. First, she says, hire based on skills. If a person has the skills they need for the job, then a gap in their resume for time spent in prison shouldn’t matter. Second, make sure there’s a clear path for promotion for justice-impacted individuals. Third, help justice-impacted employees adjust to your corporate culture. And last, include criminal justice education and anti-bias training as part of your company’s DEI strategy to ensure a positive work environment for all fair chance hires. Someone who’s been involved in the criminal justice system can very much be a qualified candidate. “For many reasons, they might end up being your most motivated, most dedicated, most hard-working employees because their stakes are so much higher,” Jordan says.
Brittany K. Barnett speaks at TED Salon: Free to Dream, presented in partnership with American Family Insurance at the TED World Theater in New York on November 17, 2021. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)
Brittany K. Barnett, attorney, entrepreneur, author
Big idea: The freedom journey doesn’t end when someone is released from prison. In many ways, it begins. True liberation must include a vision for restoring, investing in and nurturing the creative ingenuity of justice-impacted people.
How? Brittany K. Barnett realizes that we cannot rely on the glacially slow legislative process, or on lawmakers indifferent to those suffering behind bars. Instead, she champions “sustainable liberation” — a concept by which economic freedom, equity and access to resources and capital opens doors for incarcerated creatives to impact their communities both inside and outside of prison walls. In addition to numerous initiatives investing in the businesses of the formerly incarcerated, Barnett and her clients cofounded the Buried Alive project — a joint effort fighting to free those snared by outdated drug laws. Through these programs, Barnett helps restore the dreams of those whose lives have been shattered by prison. “When we lose sight of the humanity of those we unjustly sentence, we lose sight of all of the brilliance they might bring into the world,” she says.
Nick Turner speaks with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers at TED Salon: Free to Dream, presented in partnership with American Family Insurance at the TED World Theater in New York on November 17, 2021. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED)
Nick Turner, president and director of Vera Institute of Justice, interviewed by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers
Big idea: With the Vera Institute, Nick Turner seeks to transform the “criminal legal system” — referred to as such because the so-called “criminal justice system” does not dispense justice. Instead, this system feeds America’s oppressive legacy of racial injustice, established through centuries of slavery and “Black Codes.” Disguised by euphemisms such as “War on Crime,” rather than fixing social problems, our current legal system preserves racial divides and economic inequities.
How? Democracy can do better than this, Turner says. We must shrink the system, make it less brutal and ensure that there is “some modicum of justice that is provided.” Among other initiatives, the Vera Institute helped overturn the congressionally imposed ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students, which extended to 20,000 students the opportunity to earn a degree. There’s a lot of work to do to build a just justice system, Turner says, but it’s crucial that we recognize the humanity of those caught in it, rather than bow to our fear of violent crime (which police and prisons do relatively little to minimize).
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In her breakout role in Real Women Have Curves, actor America Ferrera played an iconic character who resonated with her true self. Why aren’t there more roles like that? She speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 19, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
“My identity is not an obstacle — it’s my superpower,” says America Ferrera onstage at TED2019.
As an Emmy-award winning actor, director and producer, Ferrera crafts characters and stories that are multi-dimensional and deeply human. It hasn’t been easy — Hollywood wasn’t eager to cast her in full, genuine roles, instead giving her flimsy cliches to play. But we all lose out when our media doesn’t reflect the world, Ferrera says, and it’s the duty of directors, producers and actors to take representation seriously in their casting decisions.
Over and over through her career, America Ferrera heard she was either too Latina or not Latina enough for roles. But what does that even mean? She is Latina — so how could she be the wrong kind? She soon realized that directors and producers weren’t interested in the fullness of her talent but, rather, in filling stereotypes. She pushed back against roles like “Gangbanger’s Girlfriend” and “Pregnant Chola #2” and tried to land roles that were complex and challenging. But for the most part, they just didn’t exist. Directors claimed diversity was a financial risk, that there wasn’t an audience for her voice, or that she was just too brown for their films.
Ferrera tried to become what the industry wanted — straightening her hair, slathering on sunscreen — until she realized that she wanted to exist in her work as her own true self, not the industry’s version of her. Finally, in her breakthrough hits Real Women Have Curves and Ugly Betty, Ferrera brought her authentic self to her work, leading to critical, cultural and financial success. Ugly Betty premiered to 16 million viewers in the US and was nominated for 11 Emmys in its first season. Shows like Ugly Betty gave people around the world their first chance to see themselves on screen — for example, Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai named Ugly Betty as one of her inspirations for becoming a journalist.
“I wanted to play people who existed in the center of their own lives, not cardboard cutouts that stood in the background of someone else’s,” she says, “Who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, how to dream about our futures.”
Across the world, people resonated with the characters and narrative of Ferrera’s work. “In spite of what I’d been told my whole life,” she says, “I saw firsthand that my ‘unrealistic expectations’ to see myself authentically represented in the culture were other people’s expectations too.”
But not much changed. Even though the audience was hungry for more, there wasn’t a slew of new films and shows highlighting diverse narratives. Privately, directors and producers would praise inclusion efforts … but that support didn’t extend to their own projects. The entertainment industry as a whole didn’t seem much different — and to this day, Ferrera is the only Latina to ever win an Emmy in a lead category.
That has to change — and it’s beginning to. There is a rising momentum of inclusive representation in mainstream media and it is vital we keep it going. Presence creates possibility, Ferrera says, and its impact is reverberating and profound. Directors and other authorities in media need to take representative casting out of theoreticals and put it into action.
“Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and beliefs,” Ferrera says, “and see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions.”
Ultimately, if we commit to crafting stories that truly reflect the world we live in, we can create media that honors all of our voices.
Directors and other authorities in media need to take representative casting out of theoreticals and put it into action, says America Ferrera at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 19, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED
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America Ferrera speaks at TED2019
Eric Liu asks us to commit to being active citizens — wherever we are. He speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 19, 2019, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED
The final session of TED2019 was a spectacle. From powerful calls to civic engagement and ancestorship to stories of self and perseverance, the session wrapped an incredible week and soared through the end with an unforgettable, totally improvised wrap-up.
The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 12: Meaning, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson, Helen Walters and Kelly Stoetzel
When and where: Friday, April 19, 2019, 9am, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC
Speakers: Eric Liu, Yeonmi Park, Suleika Jaouad, David Brooks, America Ferrera, Bina Venkataraman
Music: Richard Bona on guitar
Mindblowing, completely improvised wrap-up covering the whole week: Freestyle Love Supreme: Anthony Veneziale, Chris Jackson, Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Arthur Lewis
The talks in brief:
Eric Liu, author and CEO of Citizen University
Yeonmi Park, human rights activist
David Brooks, political and cultural commentator, New York Times Op-Ed columnist
Suleika Jaouad speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us. April 15 – 19, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
Suleika Jaouad, cancer survivor and author of the soon-to-be-published memoir Between Two Kingdoms
America Ferrera, actor, director and activist
Bina Venkataraman, writer and futurist
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Judith Jamison (seated) watches members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 17, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED
To close out day 3 of TED2019, we imagine different versions of the future — from the magical possibilities of deep-sea exploration to the dark future of humanity if something goes horribly wrong. Gulp.
The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 7: Possibility, hosted by TED’s Helen Walters and Kelly Stoetzel
When and where: Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 5pm, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC
Speakers: Judith Jamison, Rob Reid, Nick Bostrom, Ella Al-Shamahi, Victor Vescovo and Hannah Gadsby
Opening: Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform “Wade in the Water” (from choreographer Alvin Ailey’s iconic 1960 work Revelations) and “Cry,” the solo piece Ailey created for his mother in 1971.
The talks in brief:
Judith Jamison, artistic director emerita of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Rob Reid, entrepreneur and cyberthriller author
Nick Bostrom, philosopher, technologist, author, researcher of existential risk
Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi asks scientists to push harder to work in unstable areas. She speaks at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, April 17, 2019, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Photo: Bret Hartman / TED
Ella Al-Shamahi, paleoanthropologist and standup comedian
Victor Vescovo, undersea explorer
Hannah Gadsby, serious comedian
“I broke comedy,” Hannah Gadsby says at TED2019: Bigger Than Us, on April 17, 2019, at Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)
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Judith Jamison + Members of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater