SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – A wildfire tech founder, an adventure photographer and a magician are among seven speakers who will take the stage Saturday, Oct. 3, for TEDxSouthLakeTahoe: Beneath the Surface at Lake Tahoe Community College (LTCC).

The event runs from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Duke Theatre on LTCC’s main campus, One College Drive. This year’s talks look at what people carry below the surface, from the pressure on those who seem strongest to the small moments that help someone recover and reconnect.

Tickets are $75 for general admission and $37.50 for students. Admission includes appetizers and drinks, live entertainment during intermission, and time to connect with neighbors from across the South Lake Tahoe community.

Tickets and the full speaker lineup are available at tedxsouthlaketahoe.org. For group purchases, call the CONNECT office at 530-541-4660, ext. 717.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Seven speakers will take the stage:

  • Angie Shy
    • Talk Title: “By Healing our Minds, We Heal the World”
    • Shy is a speaker and storyteller whose journey through addiction, recovery, and reinvention drives her mission to treat mental health care as a civic responsibility. Her talk explores how downplaying our need for care harms not only us, but the people we love and the strangers we meet. She makes the case that hyper-independence has become the biggest barrier to healing, and that when we heal ourselves, we help heal the world.
  • Corey Rich
    • Talk Title: “Lessons Through the Lens”
    • Rich is an award-winning director and photographer, best-selling author, and Nikon Ambassador who has spent nearly 30 years documenting the world’s best climbers and boldest adventurers. He co-founded Novus Select, and his work has appeared in National Geographic and The New York Times and in global campaigns for Apple, Google and Patagonia. He will share lessons from a nontraditional career documenting athletes, leaders and creatives in extreme environments, and what a life of adventure and storytelling has taught him about success on the wall, in the workplace and in life.
  • Natasha Lukasiewich
    • Talk Title: “Gritsilience: The Missing Skill Beneath the Surface”
    • A registered nurse with a doctorate in nursing practice, Lukasiewich is a health care executive, author, and educator. With more than 20 years in emergency and critical care, flight nursing, search and rescue, rural health care, and health care leadership, she has worked alongside people during some of life’s hardest moments. That work led her to ask whether resilience is really about how much we can endure. Her talk looks at what happens beneath the surface of the people we see as strongest and introduces Gritsilience, her framework for sustaining ourselves in high-stakes environments. Built on awareness, recovery, and connection, it challenges the idea that strength means simply pushing through.
  • Maxwell Brodie
    • Talk Title: “The Relentless Why: Reclaiming Childhood Curiosity to Dismantle the Inevitable”
    • Brodie is a climate tech and aviation founder working to change how society responds to climate-driven disasters. As CEO of Rain, he leads development of autonomous flight systems that let firefighters respond to ignitions within minutes. The idea traces back to his family’s experience in the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park Firestorm, which triggered Canada’s largest mass evacuations since World War II. A serial entrepreneur in aviation and education, he brings an optimistic, systems-level view of how autonomy, aviation, and abundance thinking can shift climate outcomes.
  • Kimberly Templeton
    • Talk Title: “The Power of a Painted Rock”
    • After a series of devastating health crises left Templeton immobile and fighting for her life, a discarded painted rock she found in a park became the turning point in her emotional recovery. Her talk explores how small, tangible acts of kindness can anchor us in our darkest moments. Through the Painted Rock movement, she hopes to inspire people to find purpose in their own adversity and to see that hope doesn’t require anything grand, just a willingness to share light with others.
  • Alex Ramon
    • Talk Title: “What is the Secret of Connection”
    • After more than 25 years studying magic, Ramon learned the craft isn’t really about the tricks. Real magicians understand people, and the goal is to help an audience see and feel something that excites them. That takes connection. In his talk, he does something a magician is never supposed to do and gives away a secret.
  • Francesca Ciucci
    • Talk Title: “The Freedom Trap: Why the life everyone’s chasing is the one thing keeping you stuck”
    • Ciucci is a global speaker, educator, founder, and writer whose path has never followed a straight line. With a degree in psychology and a master’s in social innovation and policy, she has worked across markets, cultures, and languages and now writes and works as a fractional marketer and business advisor. Raised in multilingual environments and moving between countries from a young age, she learned early that the meaning of freedom can shift. Her talk looks past the one-size-fits-all version of freedom tied to happiness and sold across generations, and finds part of the answer where she began, in a city with no straight roads.

Event Details

  • When: Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, 5 to 9 p.m.
  • Where: Duke Theatre, Lake Tahoe Community College, One College Drive, South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
  • Tickets: $75 general admission, $37.50 students. Includes appetizers, drinks and live entertainment during intermission.
  • Buy Tickets: Visit tedxsouthlaketahoe.org or call 530-541-4660, ext. 717, for group purchases.

TEDxSouthLakeTahoe is an independently organized TEDx event operated under license from TED.