There’s a moment at every TEDx event that feels almost surreal – the lights dim, the audience quiets, and a speaker steps onto the red circle. It looks effortless. Polished. Inevitable.

But TEDxSutherland was anything but inevitable.

The story of TEDxSutherland? It started with me, ‘just’ a high school teacher who loved watching TED Talks. I’d spent years inspired by the ideas, the storytelling, the way a single talk could shift how you see the world. And somewhere along the way, a question started to stick:

What would this look like in our area?

Not Sydney broadly. Not a major city centre.
Here. In the Sutherland Shire.

And then the questions came quickly after that:

• Why hadn’t it been done before?
• Would people here even value something like this?
• Who would I get to speak?
• How do you even get licensed?
• Do I actually have the skills to pull this off?

They weren’t small questions. And there weren’t easy answers.

But the idea didn’t go away.

Backing the Idea

After running it by some friends and getting their overwhelming support, I decided to take my first step.

I went to my school principal and asked a simple question: Is this something you would support?

I knew my school had the facilities to be able to host an event like this, and do it well. 

But I didn’t go in unprepared.

I put together a full proposal. A five-year plan. A vision for what TEDxSutherland could become—not just as an event, but as something embedded in our community. Something sustainable. Something that could grow.

That conversation mattered.

Because from that point on, this wasn’t just an idea in my head—it was something real enough to be taken seriously.

My Principal, as a life-long learner and forward thinking individual, gave me the support I needed.  

When It All Started Moving

From there, things didn’t unfold slowly. They accelerated.

I was accepted to attend the TED conference 2025 in Vancouver (a qualifying event that would give me the opportunity to apply for a license to run my own TEDx event) — suddenly surrounded by the very ecosystem I had only ever experienced from a distance. It gave me insight, context, and a sense that this was possible.

Around the same time, I secured two major speakers—people who believed in the vision before it had even fully taken shape. Then came the first sponsorship.

And that’s when it shifted.

What had been an idea… became momentum.

Building Something From Nothing

Even with those early wins, the reality of building a TEDx event didn’t get simpler—it got more complex.

There were still logistics to figure out, systems to build, decisions to make—often without a clear roadmap.

There are a lot of things that need to be done when you start something like this from scratch. Things that hopefully don’t need to be redone every subsequent event, but it makes the first one even more challenging. For example, we needed to build our website, establish our social media channels, build our audience, secure partnerships and get our head around all the TED rules and guidelines.

I was learning as I went, solving problems in real time, and constantly asking: How do I do this in a way that actually does justice to the TEDx name, but also reflects our community?

Because that mattered.

This couldn’t just be a copy of something else. It had to feel like us.

The Red Circle

And then, eventually, after all the planning, questioning, building, and backing myself—

There it was.

The red circle.

Not just a stage feature, but a symbol of everything that came before it. Every moment of doubt. Every decision. Every risk.

Because the story of TEDxSutherland isn’t just about the wins – its about the challenges too.

When the first speaker stepped onto that stage, it didn’t feel inevitable.

It felt earned.

More Than I Expected

What started as a quiet question—what would this look like here?—became something much bigger than I anticipated.

Not just an event.
But a platform.
A community.
A shift in what feels possible locally.

And the strangest part?

It all began with someone who wasn’t an event professional.
Not a producer.
Not part of the TED organisation.

Just a teacher who had an idea—and decided to see where it could go.

And the story of TEDxSutherland? Its just beginning.