I went to TED. This is what stayed.
Apr 20, 2026Last week, I had the enormous privilege of attending the final TED Conference to be held here in Vancouver. I’m still recovering from my “TEDache.” It was an incredible week with very little rest.
I want to share with you what I learned, but with such a diverse range of talks, most of which are not yet released, this is a challenging task. Speakers presented solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems in the areas of nutrition, education, political systems and advocacy, homelessness, animal welfare, greening our planet (inspiring talks by Bill McKibben and Sylvia Earle), and of course, many conversations about the promises and tensions of AI and emerging technologies.
It would have been easy to leave feeling overwhelmed by the scale of it all, but instead, I keep coming back to something else.
What stayed with me
A few ideas kept resurfacing across very different talks:
- Listening, as something that actually changes outcomes
- Technology as something that could connect us, depending on how it’s designed
- A line from Vitalik Buterin: “Polarization is a design flaw.”
- And from Reginald Dwayne Betts: “We find what we are looking for.”
Because of my experience at TED, I’m taking more responsibility for what I’m orienting toward, day after day.
It shows up in small ways: what I focus on in a conversation, what I assume about someone, what I choose to follow or ignore.
One talk you can watch now
Very few of the talks have been released yet. One that has, and that I highly recommend, is Malala Yousafzai’s talk, What I Got Wrong About Changing the World.
A few lines that stayed with me:
- “I thought changing the world meant one big moment. I was wrong.”
- “Change is not a single act. It’s a lifetime of small, consistent actions.”
- “We celebrate the heroes, but we forget the millions who make change every day.”
- “The question is not ‘Can I change the world?’ but ‘How am I contributing to change, today?’”
Most of the work in this field, caring for people at the end of life or helping them prepare for it, looks like that. Rather than one defining moment, there are small shifts. Conversations. Decisions. Clarity that changes how someone lives.
Bringing this closer to home
All of this comes back to what we value, and how consciously we’re living from that.
Willow Workshops provide a space to get clearer about what matters to you and how that shows up in your life (and death). Whether it's exploring you values, wishes ad who and what matter most, or how to green your death and align your values, the workshops speak to the same question I’ve been sitting with since last week:
What am I shaping through the way I live?
Maybe they can help you shape the way you live.
Register for all Willow Workshops here.
