TEDxLagunaBlancaSchool - Kiki Tolles - Student Executive Producer

Hacking the Red Circle

Kiki Tolles is the Student Executive Producer for TEDxLagunaBlancaYouth, an event held here in Santa Barbara, California, home of the Hacking the Red Circle podcast. Kiki is a member of a TEDx production class this semester, led by Anna Alldredge, their faculty advisor. Kiki has the type of passion and energy that we've come to expect from other organizers and more pronounced in Youth event teams. She was first introduced to TED Talks by her teachers, and when the opportunity to produce an event, and be a part of the leadership came up, she jumped at it. With over 30 students on the team, they've been able to organize, develop and produce an event that's going to happen two weeks from the date of this post (January 31st, 2018). It's not unusual for a group of teenagers to create a TEDx these days; we see it all the time. However, for this team, they have had to work through some staggering logistical challenges since the most massive fire in the state of California started on December 4th, 2017 and burned until a few days before Christmas. Then on January 8th, 2018, the day they would have returned to school, the community was hit by devasting floods and mudslides. This event has separated students and teachers from the school and has made logistics very challenging. As of the posting of this show, the main highway connecting Santa Barbara to the world is closed for the foreseeable future. I love talking to first-time organizers before they've done the event, then circle back and have a cup of coffee afterward, to see how perceptions and assumptions changed in the meantime. Kiki said one of the primary motivations for her and the team is to put on something real, produce an actual event and leave a legacy for the school. As the executive producer of TEDxSantaBarbara, I invited Kiki and their executive team to the dress rehearsal for our event on November 11th. We escorted them backstage, into the production room, visited the green room, and they sat through a couple of the speaker's talks, hearing the coaches give last minute advice. It was eye-opening for them and gave them a good sense of the many moving parts it takes to produce an event.