1. 1 p.m. Sunday, March 20
Anderson Center, Osterhout Concert Theater
SA CHARTERED

2. LINEUP
MASON WARTMAN
“Improving your community through focus and
persistence”
SAMAR HABIB
“Let the scholar speak, even if it scares you”
KYRIN POLLOCK AND MATTHEW GILL
“The reality of virtual reality”
INTERMISSION
Binghamton Bhangra
ELLEN STOFAN
“Are we alone?”
AKILI TOMMASINO
“Get high [culture]”
MELISSA FRASCELLA ’11
“Defying the constraints of ‘supposed to’”
BAKARI KITWANA
“The Ferguson Effect”

3. Mason Wartman
Philadelphia native Mason Wartman returned to his
hometown in 2013, after working as an associate at an
equity research company in Manhattan, to start Rosa’s
Fresh Pizza, a pizza shop modeled after the $1-slice joints
he admired in NYC. Opening and managing a pizza shop
was a dramatic change from his daily routine of formatting
reports and crunching numbers on Wall Street. Several
months into operation, a customer asked to pre-purchase
a slice of pizza for one of the many homeless people that
Rosa’s served. Wartman liked the idea and made the
pay-it-forward program a prominent part of his business
model. Since that first slice, Rosa’s now feeds about 100
homeless people each day and has expanded to sell
t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, gloves and socks to support
the neighborhood’s homeless population. He attended
high school at Germantown Academy and went on to
get a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a
concentration in finance at Babson College.
“Improving your Community through Focus
and Persistence”
Samar Habib
Samar Habib is a writer, researcher and scholar. She
received her doctorate at 26, and is the author, editor
and translator of several seminal books, including Female
Homosexuality in the Middle East (2007), Arabo-Islamic
Texts on Female Homosexuality (2008); and Islam and
Homosexuality (2010). Her literary works include the novel
Rughum and Najda (2012). Habib is regularly invited as an
expert of international standing to speak at world-leading
universities and contributes to long-standing reference
works on gender and sexuality in the Arab world. Some
publishers of her academic works include E.J. Brill, Oxford
University Press and Routledge.
“Let the scholar speak, even if it scares you”

4. Kyrin Pollock ’18 and Matthew Gill ’18
Sophomore Kyrin Pollock, majoring in biomedical
engineering, is a member of Enhance VR, a virtual reality-
based start-up company established in spring 2015. Since
its founding, the company has designed peripheral devices
for users to experience motion, complementing their
interaction in a virtual world. She is a Zurack Scholar in the
School of Management and also dedicates time outside
of classes to business and finance. Pollock has served
as president of the Freshman Class of 2018, and helped
organize fundraisers and promote unity among the class.
She is currently employed as a tennis instructor and is an
active tennis player.
Matthew Gill is a sophomore majoring in electrical
engineering, a member Binghamton’s track and cross
country teams, and co-founder of Enhance VR. From a
young age he enjoyed building bikes and restoring cars in
his father’s garage. His engineering interests and creativity
have guided him to designing peripherals and systems to
use with today’s modern Virtual Reality technology through
Enhance VR. He also works in Watson Advising, aiding
both students and staff in the Thomas J. Watson School
of Engineering and Applied Science. Outside of classes,
running and virtual reality, you’ll find him sailing and working
on vessels in the Finger Lakes, including crewing on the
1926 Schooner “True Love.”
“The reality of Virtual Reality”
Binghamton Bhangra
Binghamton Bhangra combines the modern and attractive
appeal of current pop music with the traditional and
cultural dance elements of Bhangra, a folk dance that
originated from the Punjab region in India.
Intermission

5. Ellen Stofan
Ellen Stofan, chief scientist of NASA, serves as principal
advisor to the NASA administrator on the agency’s science
programs, and science-related strategic planning and
investments. Her research has focused on the geology
of Venus; Mars; Saturn’s moon, Titan; and Earth. Stofan
has a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and
Mary and a PhD from Brown University. She has published
extensively, and received many awards and honors including
the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and
Engineers. She is an associate member of the Cassini
Mission to Saturn Radar Team, and has proposed a mission
to NASA to land a boat on a sea on Titan.
“Are we alone?”
Akili Tommasino
An advocate of emerging artists and scholar of the 20th-
century avant-garde, Akili Tommasino is a curatorial
assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. He earned his master’s
and bachelor’s degrees at Harvard University, where he
is conducting doctoral dissertation research on Fernand
Léger’s efforts to produce socially transformative art through
a variety of media during an age violently impacted by
the advent of machine technology, research that began
during a Fulbright fellowship in France. He is chairman and
co-founder of an arts initiative which, under the aegis of
New York City-based gifted education program Prep for
Prep, seeks to create and expand opportunities for young
people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. He
has organized and collaborated on numerous exhibitions at
institutions including the Centre Pompidou - Musée national
d’art moderne, Paris; Harvard Art Museums⁄Fogg Museum,
Cambridge, Mass.; U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale;
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Venice.
“Get high [culture]”

6. Melissa Frascella ’11
Binghamton University alumnus Melissa Frascella ’11 has
some pretty noteworthy colleagues: five superheroes who
know everything there is to know about the human body and
hail from planet Mediland. As the manager of U.S. accounts
at Medikidz, the world’s first global kids health brand that
uses superheroes and comic books to explain medicine to
children, Melissa embraces the opportunity to be a part of this
growing and exciting team that is changing the landscape for
kids’ health. At Binghamton, Frascella was part of a select
group of students pursuing the Individualized Major Program.
Interested in all things healthcare, communications and
economics, but finding no culminating opportunity that existed
in Harpur College, she challenged the typical major declaration
during her sophomore year and set out to successfully create
her own health communications major. Frascella also holds a
Master in Public Health with a concentration in health policy
and management from New York Medical College.
“Defying the constraints of ‘supposed to’”
Bakari Kitwana
Journalist, activist and national thought leader in the area
of hip-hop activism, youth culture and young voter political
participation, Bakari Kitwana’s commentary has been seen on
CNN, Fox News, C-Span and PBS and heard on NPR. He is
the executive director of Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues
on Hip-Hop, which for the last decade has conducted town
hall meetings around the U.S. Also a senior media fellow at
the Harvard Law-based think tank, The Jamestown Project,
he is authored the bestselling book The Hip-Hop Generation:
Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, which
has been adopted as a course book in classrooms at over
100 colleges and universities. Former executive editor of The
Source: The magazine of hip-hop music, culture and politics,
he has taught at the University of Chicago and co-founded the
2004 National Hip-Hop Political Convention, which brought
over 4,000 young people to Newark to create and endorse
a political agenda. Kitwana’s forthcoming book is Hip-Hop
Activism in the Obama Era.
“The Ferguson Effect”

7. This event would not have been possible without your
donations and support. Thank you!
TEDx Binghamton University would like to thank the
following sponsors:
●● Office of the Vice President
for Student Affairs
●● Office of the Vice President
for Research
●● Office of the Dean of Harpur
College of Arts and Sciences
●● Office of the Dean of School
of Management
●● Student Association’s
Financial Committee
●● Convocations Committee
●● Off Campus College Council
●● Department of Philosophy
●● Philosophy, Politics and Law
Program
●● Executive Master of
Science in Health Systems -
Manhattan Program
●● Fleishman Center for
Career and Professional
Development
●● Alumni Association
●●
●●
SUPPORT
“Special thanks to”:
●● Education Club
●● LiNK
●● New Student Programs
●● Public Speaking Lab
●● Anderson Center staff
●● Office of Marketing and
Communications
●● Department of Fine Arts
●● TEDx Volunteers
●● Bhangra

8. TEDx@binghamton.edu
16-119
BINGHAMTON.EDU/TEDX
TEDxBinghamtonUniversity
@TEDxBinghamtonU
@TEDxBinghamtonU
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