TEDxLosAltos
Nestldown, Los Gatos
2025
100%
positive attendee satisfaction across 100+ guests, validated by post-event surveys. A flagship event for women’s voices, built in eight weeks.
ContextTEDxLosAltos Women was an independently produced TED-licensed event held at Nestldown—a storybook estate in the California redwoods. Over one hundred guests, a 40-person production team, speakers including a former White House Deputy CTO, a Meta VP of Product, and a Stanford HAI program lead. The theme was Women’s Voices, grounded in research from 500 women on vocal strain, interruption, and self-silencing.
I joined as Creative Director in October 2025 with eight weeks to the event. The brief wasn’t to produce a conference—it was to build a multi-sensory environment whose emotional integrity held across every person and object in the room.
“She is shaping how the event feels, looks, and flows to ensure every detail reflects our vision.”
— TEDxLosAltos teamCredits & Scope
Role
Creative Director (Contract)
Team
40+ across contractors and cross-functional partners
Scope
Concept development, visual identity direction, experience design, spatial design, gift design, volunteer casting, copy & tone of voice, partner deck direction, social-channel verbal identity, documentation strategy, on-site execution
Timeline
October–December 2025
Event
130 guests, Nestldown, Los Gatos, CA
Art Direction Note
Visual design execution by the art director. I directed visuals, storytelling, and copy—concept synthesis through final production.
Voice as light from within. Light as manifestation. The circle as the stage.
The art director presented three directions: light, the red circle, and bloom. I combined the first two into a single framework—voice as light from within, and light as manifestation, which made the circle the stage where a woman’s voice becomes visible. From that sentence, every other decision followed.
The symbolic system wasn’t decorative. It rested on findings from 500 women showing vocal fatigue, interruption, and self-silencing as gendered experiences. The design answered that finding directly: a space where voice could manifest without effort.
The synthesis became the event’s canonical language—its tagline, its press-release headline, its partner-deck cover, and its social voice:
The SystemEach woman’s voice is a light, guiding others forward.
I defined the verbal identity and curated the first batch of copy across every channel—attendee guides, volunteer scripts, partner deck, social. The voice was clean enough to scale: the social team continued within the established register using an AI agent. The system was reproducible without diluting.
Ticket sales, venue, community, press release, organizer profile, research theme—all speaking the same system.
The system. Deployed.One symbolic system, thirty surfaces
ManifestationsStage and Spatial Design
A clear-top glass tent in the redwoods, draped with greenery garlands and fairy lights. The red corrugated backdrop. Chair layout, sightlines, and audience flow were designed so the room felt intimate at 100+ capacity. I chose what went in and held the line on what didn’t.
Speaker journey
Speakers were held inside the system from the night before until the night after. A pre-event gathering at the organizer’s home with tea, reflective conversation, and meditation. The Barn as green room—an oasis, not a backstage. A post-talk portrait session when they were relaxed. An intimate dinner to close.
Each speaker received a furoshiki-wrapped gift box—Japanese-style packaging with a scent chosen to echo the redwoods: woody, fresh, slightly sweet. The accompanying card read: “Thank you for lending us your voice—and for joining us on this journey to help more women find theirs.” The gift functioned as a grounding ritual, not merchandise, we wanted speakers to feel cared for.
Partner presence
Partners were integrated into event’s environment. Flowwow created over 100 cards with different flower each, to be put on every chair—art-directed from a reference I provided, with the thought of every guest choosing the seat and the flower, another moment of conscious presence. Lelé Cake served pastries on rustic wood boards styled with moss. Every partner element felt intentional, aesthetic, and aligned with the narrative. Sponsorship became part of the experience, they became partners, part of the community.
Volunteers cast,
not staffed
We handpicked every volunteer and assigned each a role—wayfinders, check in people, speakers assistant, anchor at showtime. Instead of universal hoodies, they wore designed scarves: the red orb in the redwoods, the event’s symbolic system made wearable. Different designs for volunteers and speakers, one visual language holding both.
The verbal system extended to every spoken word. Volunteer scripts carried the same register as the pre-event communication.
Outcome
100% positive attendee satisfaction across 100+ guests, validated by post-event surveys. At the main TED conference in Canada, TED HQ approached the organizer and said they wanted to meet the person who delivered the 100% feedback.
