Ramona Pierson spoke at TEDxDU in May 2011. Photo: Wayne Armstrong
A video of Ramona Pierson’s powerful talk at TEDxDU 2011 has been selected to appear on TED.com. Landing a feature spot on the TED site is a rare honor — of the thousands of talks submitted under the TEDx banner each year, less than 1 percent are published on TED.com. Since 2006, TEDTalks videos have been viewed more than 300 million times.
In her emotional talk, Pierson tells of her remarkable recovery from an accident that put her in an 18-month coma, unable to see, walk, or speak. Senior citizens came to her rescue and slowly re-taught her all of her life skills. Several master’s degrees and PhDs later, Ramona credits their “radical collaboration” and personalized care for driving her passion for customized education.
Pierson launched SynapticMash Inc. in 2007 to revolutionize learning management and assessment systems in education. Now the chief science officer at Promethean, Pierson continues to study the act of learning and to explore ways to make our education system work better for students.
TED is a nonprofit devoted to “ideas worth spreading.” At TED conferences, leading scientists, philosophers, entrepreneurs and artists present their ideas in 18 minutes or less. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Pierson was one of 20 presenters at the University of Denver’s second TEDx event in May 2011.