TEDxPenn invited two Penn graduates and seven additional speakers to share their stories at the organization’s 2026 conference on Saturday.
The five-hour event, marking the largest of its kind nationwide, included presentations from 2021 Engineering graduate and CEO of robotics company Cerulion Lakshay Sharma and 2012 College graduate and contemporary artist Allison Zuckerman. In interviews with The Daily Pennsylvanian, multiple speakers discussed important moments from their lives and careers.
Sharma opened the March 28 event, which was hosted at Irvine Auditorium, by discussing how his work in robotics and astrophysics taught him what it means “to be human.”
While building rockets and robots, Sharma realized that while “humans can operate in ambiguity … robots don’t have that luxury.”
“It’s not just about what we teach robots about how to live and act,” Sharma said. “It’s about what building them teaches us about how we live in this uncertain world.”
Sharma told the DP that his time at Penn helped shape his identity.
“I realized, while preparing for this talk, how my life philosophy evolved here — and bringing that back to the stage at Penn was really special,” he said.
Zuckerman, who’s known for her large-scale collage paintings, discussed how her work reinterprets female representation in art during the event.
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She explained that her collages draw only from male artists — characterizing the process as “part tribute, part takedown,” and “a form of rebellion” that allows her to practice agency “inside a system [she] did not build.”
John Grant, a privacy and civil liberties engineer at Palantir, spoke about the ethical challenges and responsibilities of working with powerful technology. He began by acknowledging that the company “is in a controversial place.”
“Palantir does, in my opinion, some things that are morally wrong,” Grant said. “Palantir also does many things that are, in my opinion, morally right. When Palantir gets it right, it’s extraordinary.”
Grant encouraged students to seek out companies that wrestle with “ethical challenges” so that they can “make a difference.” He emphasized the importance of finding a company that seeks to do good for its own sake — rather than doing good because morality “aligns with their incentives or profitability.”
“I can tell you that I believe the people at Palantir are good people trying to do the right thing, but that comes from 15 years of working with them,” Grant said. “If all the good people run away from anywhere where they might be ethically challenged … who’s there to ask: ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’”
In an interview with the DP, Grant reiterated that students should “run towards hard ethical fights.”
“I think this generation of students is really receptive to it, and so I’m hopeful that they’ll be excited about it,” he said.
Investor Seema Hingorani discussed her role as the founder and chair of Girls Who Invest, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing gender diversity in the investment industry.
Hingorani explained that she created the organization to train a “pipeline of amazingly talented young women” that could be recruited into the industry. She expressed pride that the “community of women is growing and they are supporting each other.”
“These women are going to run our firms one day, and when they do, they’re going to build an entire machine behind them that is all about bringing the most diversity of thought to every decision-making table — and that’s because it will be just how business gets done,” Hingorani added.
James Payne, creator of YouTube channel “Great Art Explained,” argued against the idea that suffering and mental illness are necessary to achieve artistic greatness. Payne used the examples of Vincent Van Gogh, Jean Michel-Basquiat, and Yayoi Kusama to challenge the stereotype of the “tortured genius.” He contended that while these artists struggled with mental health issues, it was their “hard work” that allowed them to excel.
Payne urged young artists to focus on building a “sustainable practice,” instead of allowing pressure to manifest itself as “unfavorable comparison with other people, and the mistaken belief that if success isn’t extraordinary every single day, then something must be wrong.”
Tracy Viola, a recovery advocate and author of a best-selling memoir, discussed how she overcame addiction during her talk.
She described experiencing “a deep moment of clarity” when a counselor screamed: “You’re going to die.”
“If I had to summarize the awareness that happened in that moment, it would be one word: responsibility,” she added.
Viola explained that her path to sobriety entailed “deliberately and consistently” choosing “to show up every day,” leading her to view herself as an example of how accountability can turn “someone so broken into a person even stronger and more beautiful because of those cracks.”
In an interview with the DP, Viola said that Wharton School professor Angela Duckworth — who wrote a quote for her book — encouraged Viola to become involved with TEDxPenn. Viola added that she mentors high school students without trying to act “poised and perfect.”
“That’s my favorite age to talk to destigmatize addiction in general, and have open, honest, funny conversations,” she said.
Mike Israetel, a sports physiologist and competitive bodybuilder who has gained an online following for his expertise in dieting and fitness, urged audience members to be kind to themselves and to others when they are critical about their looks, adding that “culture needs broadening and expanding to welcome every look.”
Israetel emphasized the importance of “empowering people and being accepting of people that want to change their look.” He added that his company, Renaissance Periodization, tries who want to improve their looks and health without toxic perfectionism.
Former OpenAI Head of GTM Zack Kass — who delivered the final talk — discussed what society deems should be automated and what to retain human control over. He argued that “humans have far fewer preferences than we actually think” and that automation should be used to eliminate trivial or unnecessary preferences.
“In a world where the automation boundary will stretch technically as long as we want it to go, our future will be defined not by what machines can do, but by how we choose to use them,” Kass said.
Penn hosts the largest student-run TEDx event nationwide. TEDxPenn’s Speaker & Content Team invited prospective contributors to audition. Team members work with speakers to develop their talks to fit a student audience through a series of drafts and revisions.
College junior and TEDxPenn S&C Co-Director Christina Kodsi told the DP that the team’s process consists of “taking the ideas that underpin their entire work and career and figuring out how to bring them to the surface and make them palatable to the Penn and Philadelphia audience.”
