July 28, 2022
We are excited to introduce our Conference Keynote Speaker, Ted Meyer. Ted Meyer is a nationally recognized artist, curator, and patient advocate, helping patients, students, and medical professionals see the positive in the worst life can offer. Ted’s rare niche mixes art, medicine, and stories of healing and survival, drawing from his experience as a lifelong patient of Gaucher Disease. His work is influenced by many hospital stays where he began mixing art and medical supplies. Despite believing he would never reach his 30th birthday, new treatments and joint replacements have changed his life and he considers himself normal and healthy.
Now Ted aims to highlight other people’s health problems. His “Scarred for Life” series chronicles events that suddenly changed people’s lives. During an expansive narrated visual presentation, audiences come to understand how a lifetime of chronic illness impacts an artist’s work. Ted’s curation turns devastating illnesses into a source of artistic expression, giving voice to people around the world living with rare diseases and disfigurement, such as MS, cancers, germ phobias, and back pain.
Ted has been featured on NPR and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. He is a Visiting Scholar at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, is a graduate of the Aspen Leadership Seminars, was the 2017 Sterling Visiting Professorship at Stanford University and has been TEDMED main stage speaker.
Ted will be speaking on Saturday, November 12th, at 9:00 am.