Trusting the process of giving a TED talk led me to another confounding moment of personal exploration. It wasn’t just another professional engagement, it was something far more profound: a rare opportunity to speak entirely for myself.
For years, my voice had been shaped by institutions, causes, or clients. As a scientist, my voice was bound by the conventions of academic publication. As a patent lawyer, my voice was confined by law and data. As an employee of my beloved University of Nebraska Medical Center, my voice was a servant to its mission.
My professional voice was defined by others. In the red circle – I’m all alone.
This realization was both exhilarating and terrifying. Who was I when I wasn’t speaking for someone else? What did I, as an individual, have to say about innovation that was worth sharing on a TEDx stage? Finding my authentic voice became an almost existential challenge.
As I grappled with these questions, I found myself drawn to an unexpected source of inspiration: history. My Audible is a nutritious banquet of serious historical works: Durant, Hobsbawm, and Manchester. Some books I’ve listened to five or six times. Especially in times of strife, I find comfort in historical scholarship. With a long enough viewpoint, there’s nothing new under the sun.
As I reflected on the enormous challenges facing our modern world, that long viewpoint leant perspective. Throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen. Their irrigation systems were unable to keep up with the changing rivers. Their armies unable to repel invaders with iron weapons. Their culture erased by horse-mounted archers. How many of them had designed reinforced dams, or built the shields to repel the invaders – but uselessly left the plans in a vault?
It felt like my anger at innovation. I empathized with the rage of the bronze age innovator, watching the Euphrates overtop his ancestral ditches. How different is it now? Watching the spread of pandemic disease, the rise of the oceans, and the festering of problems solvable by technology that still aren’t solved?
Those technological discoveries felt like candles, unlit as the darkness of our societal doom descends. My idea worth spreading had arrived.
Innovation was a much bigger topic than the topical take I’d envisioned. TEDx was a way to indulge my love for history while making a point about the timeless nature of innovation. It allowed me to step back from the immediate pressures of modern innovation and view the process through a broader, and confoundingly, more personal lens.
This historical perspective was a thread that, when woven together with my professional experience, produced something new. It wasn’t the voice I used to advocate for clients, it wasn’t the voice I used to advance the mission of my employer: it was my voice.
I’m still getting used to it.
If historical anecdotes fit so well, so, what other personal elements might belong? I began weaving in threads from my life previously separate from my professional persona. My Audible library of historical works transformed from personal indulgence to a wellspring of unique insights. Hungrily, I started to look elsewhere: my playlists? My recipes?
Crafting the talk became an exercise in rediscovery. The lines between professional expertise and personal passions blurred, each addition feeling like reuniting with a part of myself.
And again, I relaxed into the process. The TEDx stage evolved into an opportunity to present a fuller version of myself – where my love for history harmonized with my professional voice. In this process, I found more than content; I discovered the joy of bringing my whole self to my work, realizing how my diverse interests could enrich my professional voice in unexpected ways and create something new. My voice.
a candle, unlit 