TEDxBinghamtonUniversity explored unique perspectives in its 15th-annual conference, themed “Refraction,” last Sunday. Held in the Fine Arts building’s Chamber Hall, the conference featured four speakers — one undergraduate student, one graduate student and two alumni — and centered around the exploration of unique ideas and new perspectives on common themes.

“Refraction is for audiences who want new perspectives and who want to know how ideas can shift to create something extraordinary,” said Aaron Cordero, the director of finance for TEDxBinghamtonUniversity and a sophomore majoring in mathematics, to open the conference.

The talk began with Guru Madhavan MBA ‘07 Ph.D. ‘09, a systems engineer and senior director of programs at the National Academy of Engineering. He spoke about resilience, both in engineering and one’s personal life, and challenged the idea that resiliency involves “bouncing back” from a traumatic event.

Madhavan pointed to historical engineers who studied resiliency, like Thomas Tredgold, who measured the strength of wood in building ships and found that “trees that grew in the worst soil under the worst conditions tread the best.” He tied these understandings of resilience to his experience as an immigrant and how every “displacement” he faced “actually fueled his strength, much like Tredgold’s trees.”

“Rethinking resilience requires us to rethink how we engineer a better world,” Madhavan said. “It is not about designing systems that never break but systems that break revealingly — how we can make breakdowns into breakthroughs.”

“True resilience isn’t about bouncing back, it’s about bouncing forward to where we need to be,” he added.

Next, Sarah Zarember ‘24, a first-year master’s student studying business administration, discussed Generation Z’s “identity crisis” as the first generation that grew up after the widespread use of the internet. Citing the trends that Generation Z has followed — mullets, perms, matching sweat sets and Ugg boots — she said that young people suffer from “analysis paralysis,” or the emotions that arise from too many options, especially with the constant consumption of information available online.

As a business student, Zarember found that Generation Z could solve this identity problem by utilizing branding strategies like the ones used to market products, much like selling a pen. She pointed to 10 qualities highlighted by Kevin Harrington, a businessman who has been featured on Shark Tank, that Generation Z could use to market themselves. She found analogies between the strategies of selling products and marketing oneself, like a “powerful offer with a supportive costs of goods” to “giving enough of your time, enough of your resources to fostering relationships.”

Zarember ended by describing how she would market her own pen using the strategies covered in her presentation.

“My pen is purple and sparkly on the inside and out,” Zarember said. “It is a functional writing utensil, it is high-quality, it is very thoughtfully put together, and it can lend itself really to signing a check or in an art capacity. Even with its purple, sparkly ink, it is comfortable wherever it needs to be, and it is loved and appreciated by many.”

“But the reason that the Sarah pen is loved and appreciated by many isn’t because someone just told me when I was formulating this product, this brand, that I should just be myself,” she continued. “It’s because I took the effort, I took the incentive to go and try to do these internal audits for myself.”

Clay Jeon, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law, set a scene at the start of his speech, telling audience members to see themselves walking past a pond and seeing a child drowning. He asked if they would jump in the water to save the child’s life, saying the decision was a rather obvious yes. He then questioned what separated the child drowning in the pond from a child dying across the world.

He cited philosopher Peter Singer, who believes that those who would help the child in the pond should feel equally obligated to help children living in poverty, with disease and who suffer from a lack of necessary resources. He said before tackling his main question, whether or not physical distance should impact moral decision-making, they needed to “take a step back.”

Jeon said philanthropy, which is not only for the wealthy, is declining, with more and more people feeling less inclined to give to others, a large part of which, he said, is because individuals underestimate the singular impact they can have. Small actions can add up to “create waves of positive change,” Jeon added.

“Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good,” Jeon said. “Ultimately, when you decide to give, don’t wait and realize that you, and yes you, can be a philanthropist.”

Faye McCray ‘03 began her portion of the event with a question: “Have you ever felt like the world made up its mind about you before you had a chance to decide for yourself?” She employed an example, saying her son, who is 6-foot-8 and a jazz pianist, is often mistaken for a basketball player when he is introduced. Being 6-foot-2 herself, she said she is no stranger to the same assumption.

She continued, saying that people often put each other in boxes, seeing each other as one thing, as it is easier than understanding “the nuance and the complexity of being a human being.” She then described her professional journey to becoming a federal attorney, which was disrupted when the government shut down in 2013, and she was sent home without a paycheck or plans to return.

The identity she had spent so much time crafting for herself had fallen apart. Eventually, McCray began writing more creative works like blogs, articles, TV and film reviews, which she said helped her realize that the complex parts of her identity she had been pushing away “wasn’t a liability, it was a superpower,” and people were not meant to be confined to only one thing.

“When I left law after 10 years of practice, my path was blurred,” McCray said. “People listened and they judged. But for the first time, I wasn’t chasing a title. I wasn’t chasing someone else’s definition of success. I wasn’t trying to be palatable or digestible or be seen by people who could never really see me.”

“Here’s the thing: No one else gets to define success,” she continued. “That belongs to you. Your joy, your survival and your evolution depend on your ability to grow and to lean into your autonomy.”