On October 3rd I spent the day at TEDxChicago 2026. The theme was “We The People.” Three words, with the weight on “we.” I walked in expecting big ideas about systems and I did, but I also walked out thinking about verbs.
Hope without action is just a wish. Democracy is a verb. Love is a verb. Hope is one too. Let the verb drive your agency.
Ideas from Session 1: Vitality. Look Inward.
- The session opened with an odd question. Not what is hope? but how is hope doing? Like checking in on a friend you haven't called in a while. Hold space for the possible. Derek Lee McPhatter framed hope as permission. Permission to dream, especially from inside the moment that feels hopeless. Everyone has one. Hope, in his telling, is less a feeling and more a practice of harmony and hearing: listening for what could be when everything says it can't. The question he left us with: what is the most hopeless moment in your life? And what did you give yourself permission to imagine on the other side of it?
- Two things can be true at the same time. A talk on caregiving by Pat Tomasulo. When your dreams, goals and ambition become inaccessible because you are caring for someone else, it is soul crushing. Rage, guilt, shame all show up at once. You can love the person and grieve the life you set aside. Holding both is not a contradiction. It is what makes us human.
- Past patterns are not life sentences. Where you came from describes you. It doesn't sentence you.
- The hero's awakening talk by Gita Pullapilly. What makes a hero a hero? They come from a deep wound. Not physical, emotional. The wound creates a need: for love, acceptance, belonging. Think Rocky. The turn comes when the hero lets go of their own need and shifts focus to the needs of others. That is where the superpower shows up. The inversion is simple. If you crave love, give love. If you need belonging, bring belonging to others. Power is built in service, not in the spotlight. A few more that stuck: real heroes don't think they are heroes. Real heroes show up. Again and again and again. A real hero refuses to pass their deepest wounds on to others.
- The session closed on a single idea: start within. We all have a superpower. We just need permission to own it and the courage to act on it.
Ideas from Session 2: Look Outward.
If the first half was about the self, the second half was about the systems we live inside.
- Lawrence “Binkey” Tolefree moved me. Presence is attention given, not taken. Presence is not about commanding attention. It is about how much attention you are able to give the room. We need more open mic moments in life, where we hand someone the mic and simply listen. And if you don't tell your own story, someone else will write it for you. Everyone needs a place to share their narrative.
- Jessica “Jessie” Fuentes was another moving talk. A talk on housing and displacement. Survival mode wears you down until something breaks. Growing up with insecurity makes you familiar with the underdog role, but it doesn't break you. One line stayed with me: my body is catching up to stability. The argument was blunt. What gets measured gets prioritized. What gets lost becomes displacement. Housing cannott be reserved for whoever can outbid. It is more than shelter or a roof. It is the root that lets a child show up to school. And we are all coauthors of democracy, which means we are coauthors of who gets to stay.
- Manuela Zoninsein talk on single-use bottle is novel. The single-use bottle leads to microplastics in our bodies and in our lakes. She had no intention on taking the audience to a guilt trip. It is a design problem. Convenience isn't a property of the bottle, it is a flaw in the system around it. Convenience is a design flaw. This is the product lesson hiding in plain sight. When users keep making the “wrong” choice, stop blaming the user. Fix the system that makes the wrong choice the easy one.
- Everyone has a canvas by Jeffery Beckham Jr. Leadership feels hollow when you were told to choose between it and creativity, because creativity is the source of inspiration. Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity is not. Systems choose proximity and predetermined outcomes, and kids get sorted and classified long before they know what they are good at. The close was a mantra worth stealing: lead before the title. Invest before the return.
What I took away from these talks:
- Hope is a verb. Without action, it is just a wish.
- Two things can be true. Love and grief, duty and loss. Hold both.
- Patterns aren't sentences. The past describes, it doesn't decide.
- Give what you crave. Love, belonging, attention. Service is where the superpower lives.
- Presence is generosity. Measure it by the attention you give, not the attention you get.
- Measure what you can't afford to lose. Unmeasured things quietly become displacement.
- Fix the system, not the person. Bad outcomes are usually design problems.
- Lead before the title. Invest before the return.
- The danger is not thinking too big. It is not thinking big enough.