The Speakers
Get to know the Speakers of TEDxHSLU 2023!
Kristin Berardi
Music is my safe and strong place
All we have to do is be courageous enough to allow access to our more vulnerable parts, in order to touch others deeply. The risk may seem high, but the pay off is worth the risk. When you share from a place of honesty, People meet you at the same place.
Kristin Berardi is a jazz vocalist, composer and educator from Australia. Berardi is passionate about singing, sharing and encouraging others on their path. She is very happy to have moved to Lucerne to teach at HSLU in the Jazz and Folk Music department in 2020.
Désirée Harmuth
Diversity through empathy
The feminist movements were in the 70s. Today we find ourselves good 50 years later. And now? This TEDx talk will focus on what everyone of us can do to really make a change in deeply rooted gender stereotypes and why diversity is still very important to talk about. Then, how women support each other is crucial and key. Together we can, together we spark.
Disclaimer: Diversity is not only about women, diversity includes or involves people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc. As the presenter is a woman and she feels like a woman, female equality is something she can personally relate to. Other aspects of diversity are left to speakers that know better than her.
Désirée Harmuth is co-founder of Women for the Board. The association’s vision is to make female candidates visible together and thus make boards of directors and foundations more diverse. Désirée is a business economist and has an MSc in Entrepreneurship. Digital transformation, real estate, empowering women and networking are just some of her passions.
Joel Hügli
Make it circular!
Currently, only 1% of clothing that is used in the textile sector is being recycled in a closed loop. However, with the introduction of new EU regulations in 2026, the amount of used textiles will multiply. The focus of this TED Talk is on finding innovative and creative ways, through design research, to turn this gap into an opportunity and contribute to SDG 12, which ensures sustainable consumption and production patterns.
“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few.” (Victor Papanek in 1984). Motivated to refute this statement, Joel Hügli works as a sustainable product designer with an MA and researcher at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in the Product & Textile research group.
Andrea Weber-Hansen
Make it circular!
Currently, only 1% of clothing that is used in the textile sector is being recycled in a closed loop. However, with the introduction of new EU regulations in 2026, the amount of used textiles will multiply. The focus of this TED Talk is on finding innovative and creative ways, through design research, to turn this gap into an opportunity and contribute to SDG 12, which ensures sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Andrea Weber-Hansen studied Environmental Sciences at ETH Zurich and earned her doctorate in the field of Business and Production Sciences at ETH. She is the Vice Director of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – School of Engineering and Architecture, and has been leading research at the department since 2017. Her own research is focused on textiles and sustainability, she heads a research group in this area.
Joelle Loew
Agile teams, agile talk: lessons for workplace communication
This talk provides insight into the science of language use in professional contexts focusing on communication in agile teams. While “agile” can be defined in many ways, I spotlight the frequent and open communicative and reflective practices of such teams, drawing on audio- and video-recordings of workplace interactions from different research projects. I show how incorporating and formalizing communication as part of everyday workplace processes allows team members to take ownership of their work collectively and individually, thereby enabling close team collaboration and inclusion of multiple perspectives – both in talk at work and talk about work.
Joelle Loew is a lecturer in Business Communication at HSLU W. As a linguist, she’s passionate about the science of language use in professional contexts. Her research and teaching pursue questions on gender, culture, and identity.
Elleh N’Guetta
Why we need to be good and why this makes us bad
As humans, there is a need within us that urges us to be good. It leads the desire to be seen by ourselves and others as good beings. However, this desire does not always lead us to take actions that align with the behaviours of good people, as long as these actions are perceived as good, that’s good enough. Therefore, we create and choose to follow elaborate systems of belief, power, and worldview that legitimize truly bad actions, so that we can act in ways that allow us to fulfil our need to good without truly embodying it.
Elleh N’Guetta is 25 years old and a dual citizen of Switzerland and Ivory Coast. Currently, she is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Business Psychology at HSLU. Prior to this, she obtained her vocational diploma and specialized baccalaureate in Social Work from FMS-Zug and worked in various professions.
Samuel Schneider
Driving silence, shaping tomorrow
A way to inspire humans to be part of the solution. Find out how the electric sports car sparked a series of personal changes a decade ago. Samuel Schneider shares his insights on inspiring humans to be part of the solution and drive positive change without resorting to prohibitions. By leveraging the cultural weight of the electric sports car, he demonstrates how we can encourage people to discover themselves and be part of the solution instead of the problem. Join him on a journey towards a future we want, one person at a time, by seeking a positive approach to change. It’s time to start today and make a difference!
Samuel Schneider explores the future of automotive love and how to leverage the cultural weight of the electric sports car. As a co-founder of Leiser Electric, he aims to inspire individuals to become part of the solution and facilitate the adoption of renewable energy and more sustainable business models.
Karel van der Waarden
Enabling patients by listening to them
Patients need instructions on how to take medicines. These instructions are included in medicine packs, and are printed in tiny type on very thin paper. They are difficult to read, hard to understand, and nearly impossible to use. If these leaflets don’t really help patients, why do we keep producing billions of these leaflets every year? A redesign that combines paper and digital information seems inevitable and obvious. Progress into this direction is very slow. Legal and commercial interests conflict with care. This prevents that patients receive relevant and usable information. Is there any way to stop this insane situation?
For Karel van der Waarde, enabling patients to take medicines by designing clear and understandable visual information is a personal mission. He teaches at HSLU and the University of Hasselt and runs his own design research company in Belgium.
Peter Philippe Weiss
Audio. Designing the inner world.
Audio is a magic dimension. Not just music but audio in general. It’s the dimension that designs not the outside world but the inner world. And the effect of audio is incredibly strong and completely different for every person. Peter Philippe Weiss, sound designer, sound artist and lecturer, explores the world of audio with surprising ways of looking…, …no, hearing at its effects. In design, branding and in art. He proves audio as a design dimension of the future and how audio ignites a bright spark of transformation and imagination inside everyone.
Peter Philippe Weiss, born 1962 in Basel, acts as a sound designer, sound artist, speaker and guest lecturer at different Universities. Since 1994 he runs Corporate Sound AG. Additionally, he is partner of audiobreeze ag and since 2013 member of the Red Dot Design Award Jury.