Meet the Speakers!

Many thanks to everyone who applied to speak at TEDxSarasota 2026. We were humbled by the response as we received more than 300 applications from passionate individuals across a wide range of backgrounds. The quality of ideas made the selection process both inspiring and challenging.

From this pool, we curated a group of speakers whose talks reflect this year’s theme (Making Waves) and the spirit of TEDx: ideas worth spreading. We’re grateful to every applicant for helping make waves within the growing TEDxSarasota community.

Betsy Golden Kellem

Shaquem Griffin

Martha LaGuardia-Kotite

Betsy Golden Kellem is a scholar of the unusual. She is the author of Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the Nineteenth Century Circus, and her entertainment history work has appeared in venues including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Public Domain Review, Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, and Slate.
Betsy is an Emmy and Telly award winner for her Showman’s Shorts video series on P. T. Barnum and writes on pop culture for JSTOR Daily and history.com.
If you ask nicely, she will juggle knives for you.

Shaquem Griffin, the first one-handed former NFL linebacker in history, played four seasons with the Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins before retiring in 2022. Now a sought-after motivational speaker, he has inspired D1 Power 4 programs, pro teams, Fortune 500 companies, and more, around the world. He serves as an Advisor for a Venture Capitol, BIG12 Alumni Counsel Member, and startup advisor. Co-founder of Consumer Launch Pad and Y.O.U. Adapt, he is also an award-winning athlete, author of Inseparable, and creator of The Locker Room Playbook Curriculum.

Captain Martha LaGuardia-Kotite US Coast Guard (retired) spent her life in, on or near the ocean. She is one of the first female officers to serve aboard two Coast Guard cutters, patrolling the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Caribbean Sea, leading all-male crews and teams through numerous disasters during her decades long military career. Her awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, six Commendation Medals, three Achievement Medals, and numerous service and team accolades.
An award-winning author of So Others May Live: Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers Saving Lives Defying Death (used by Kevin Costner for his role in the movie The Guardian) and two other books. She built a robust second career as a keynote speaker and coach, inspiring current and future leaders on how to be bold, first and authentic to achieve their biggest dreams.

Dr. Rene Roberts is a Castle Connolly Top Doctor, board-certified Family Medicine physician, and keynote speaker on a mission to reform who gets to heal. Rejected 50 times from medical schools during the application process, Dr. Roberts knows what it means to be a "medical misfit." Rather than accepting defeat, she used rejection to fuel her advocacy for changing the rigid, test-score-driven admissions system that overlooks empathy, resilience, and lived experience.
With nearly 14 years of clinical experience, Dr. Roberts currently serves underserved communities on Chicago’s south side and has become a trusted voice featured on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, WGN, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times. She mentors aspiring physicians and champions a more inclusive approach to medical education. We will all need a healer at some point in our lives - and that reality makes Dr. Roberts' question all the more critical. In "Who Gets to Heal?", she challenges us to rethink how we select the next generation of doctors - because who gets to heal determines who gets healed.

Marsha Wulff is a serial entrepreneur, early-stage investor, and advisor who has helped build seven multi-billion-dollar companies - three American-led and four African-led - across multiple sectors and continents. Having lived and worked on six continents, she brings a deeply global perspective shaped by decades of building businesses and mentoring leaders worldwide.
Her life experiences - spanning scarcity and abundance, mobility and physical limitation - have informed her belief in collaborative leadership, passionate teams, and investment strategies that balance profit with long-term impact. Since the late 1990s, Marsha has worked alongside African entrepreneurs driving large-scale economic transformation and now supports the next generation of founders through her partners and growing team. She discusses her findings and lessons learned in her book African Ngenuity: An Investor’s Guide to a Vital Tech Ecosystem, helping funders gain confidence to adopt more effective strategies.

Dr. Rene Roberts

Marsha Wulff

Kostya Kimlat

Kostya Kimlat is a magician, speaker, and entrepreneur who studies how people perceive and interpret the world around them. Known professionally as The Business Magician, he draws on principles from the art of magic to reveal how perception and personality shape the way people experience the same moment.
Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Kostya immigrated to the United States as a Soviet refugee in 1992. What began with his father’s $160 investment in magic books grew into an international career exploring human behavior through live performance. He gained global recognition after fooling Penn & Teller on national television.
His work spans over 200 cities across five continents and includes collaborations with organizations ranging from NASA to NASCAR. In his talks, Kostya shows how magicians read people in real time, offering insight into how attention, interpretation, and trust form between individuals, and why people can witness the same experience yet walk away with entirely different conclusions.

Kristen Cusato

Kristen Cusato is a storyteller, communicator, and advocate who believes that sharing our stories can change lives.
Kristen spent more than two decades in television news as an anchor/reporter in Connecticut, San Diego, Texas, and upstate New York. Her career took a profound turn more than 15 years ago when her mother was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia. A new purpose and profession was born: teaching caregivers the language of dementia.
Today, Kristen collaborates with researchers, caregivers, and people living with all forms of the disease to help them feel empowered. She has authored chapters in two Chicken Soup for the Soul caregiving books and hosts an award-winning podcast.
Kristen is equally passionate about helping others find and use their voice, by coaching TEDx speakers in San Diego and Connecticut, and guiding others in shaping their personal stories.
She is honored to step onto the TEDxSarasota red dot to unite dementia advocacy and powerful communication—and to remind us that when we share our stories, we create connection, understanding, and hope.

Dr. Renee Exelbert

Dr. Renee Exelbert is a licensed psychologist and certified elite personal trainer, uniquely bridging the world of psychology and physical resilience. She earned her B.S. from Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D from New York University. Renee’s career began as a psychologist working with children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer. Then, she became a cancer patient herself.
That experience changed everything. It deepened her understanding of the mind-body connection in a way no textbook could. It led her to found the Metamorphosis Center for Psychological and Physical Change, where she integrates psychotherapy and exercise to help people harness mental and physical resilience to overcome adversity. Renee also developed Visual Emotional Kinetics©, a method that combines positive thoughts, visualization and movement to help people break through obstacles and enhance performance. She personally embraced this philosophy when she became a bodybuilding competitor, reclaiming control of her body after cancer.
Renee’s work has been featured in Thrive Global, Good Housekeeping, The New York Post, and Runners’ World, amongst others, and on television outlets including Fox5 News, Newsmax, NewsNation, News12 and Merit Street Media. She is also an author and previous TEDx speaker.

Catherine (Cat) Karow

Catherine “Cat” Karow is a cybersecurity architect and founder of ZoraSafe.
She began her career in public education IT before leading identity and access management for the University of Florida’s HiPerGator supercomputer, building its restricted data onboarding process as it scaled into one of the top five supercomputers in the world.
An early Hack The Box beta cohort member - back when access required exploitation - she later led technical initiatives for Apple, the Department of Transportation, and the White House.
After scammers targeted her mother using legally purchased personal data, Cat turned her focus to investigating the data broker industry. Her forthcoming book, SOLD: The Hidden Industry That Sells Your Data - and Shapes Your Life, explores how America’s surveillance-commerce system was constructed - and who it leaves exposed.

Katie Trowbridge is an award-winning educator, TEDx speaker, leadership strategist, and CEO of Curiosity 2 Create, with more than two decades of experience helping people think more deeply and lead more boldly. A former marketing director turned high school English teacher, she brings a rare blend of corporate, educational, and nonprofit leadership experience to her work.
After spending 23 years in the classroom, Katie saw firsthand how curiosity, creative thinking, and psychological safety drive engagement and growth. School leaders - and later business leaders - began asking how her approach could be applied beyond education, forming the foundation of her leadership philosophy that the business world has much to learn from great teachers.
Katie is the creator of the trademarked CREATE Method™, a practical framework used to transform teams and organizations into environments where curiosity, collaboration, and problem-solving thrive. She is the author of multiple books, including Deeper Thinking in the Classroom, and her work has been featured in Newsweek, Fortune, Yahoo News, and more.

Katie Trowbridge

Master of Ceremonies

Robyn Faucy guides organizations and individuals to achieve aggressive and transformative results. Her specialties are revenue development, leveraging and building social capital, strategy design and activation, and guiding individuals, teams, and organizations to achieve greater success.
Robyn’s leadership in various organizations resulted in significant financial growth and increased volunteer engagement and client achievement. Prior to taking the helm of Results 1st, she was the Chief Executive Officer of Neuro Challenge Foundation for Parkinson’s, in Sarasota, FL, where in her five-year tenure she increased income, financial reserves, and participant engagement by over 100%.
In 2018, Robyn created the Parkinson’s Expo, the largest educational experience of its kind in the nation. Over 1,400 participants attend and get actionable education and resources. The Expo grew to become a significant source of income to fund Neuro Challenge’s programs.
Robyn is a TEDx Speaker. Her talk – Helping Others Activate Access to Social Capital- outlines an actionable three-step approach leaders can use to help others increase their social capital.
Robyn has been featured in Style Magazine, recognized as an Amazing Suncoast Woman by ABC7, recognized as a Woman to KNOW in Florida, and honored by SRQ Magazine as a Woman Who Roars. She began her college journey at Hillsborough Community College and earned an undergraduate degree in social sciences from Florida State University and a master’s degree in management from the University of South Florida.
When Robyn is not guiding leaders and organizations to greater achievement, she enjoys time with her loved ones, being near the water, and being active. She currently lives in Bradenton, FL and was raised in Sarasota, FL when her parents moved from Massachusetts in the early 80’s.
Robyn attributes her relentless determination to help people succeed to her upbringing by her blue-collar, hardworking parents. Neither of her parents graduated from high school and her father died when she was 12 leaving her mother to be a single parent. Robyn was also a single mother for the first 16 years of her son’s life. She feels these experiences have built her “hustle muscle” and desire to help others achieve success and overcome challenges through change.