2026 WORTHY.
Speakers & Performers

Worthy. Powerful Beyond Measure.

Meet our
2026 Speakers

Yastika Chouhan

The Experience Gap That Doesn’t Exist

Talk Summary:

The fear of being inexperienced or unqualified can become a barrier we place on ourselves, keeping us from speaking, participating, and leading. But experience and confidence are not prerequisites for having a voice; they are built through participation. 

  • Yastika Chouhan believes that some of the most important voices in our communities never go unheard because they lack ideas — they go unheard because they convince themselves they haven't earned the right to speak. As the founder of a youth-led civic media organization, she works to make politics and public policy more accessible to young people while encouraging the next generation of civic leaders to participate with confidence. 

    Her work has taken her from campaign offices and conversations with elected officials to debate tournaments, Model United Nations conferences, and youth advocacy initiatives. Throughout those experiences, she discovered that the greatest obstacle was rarely a lack of knowledge or ability, it was the belief that she needed more experience before her voice mattered. 

    Now a student leader, writer, and civic education advocate, Yastika is passionate about helping others replace self-doubt with action. 

Shannon Ellis

Worth for the Win: How Belief Shapes Success

Talk Summary:

What leaders believe about the people they lead shapes every system, habit, and interaction — and those beliefs determine whether people struggle or soar.

  • Shannon Ellis is a coach, counselor, and leader whose work centers on helping people feel seen, valued, and capable of extraordinary growth. With a master’s degree in counseling and a background coaching collegiate and high school athletes, she blends psychology, sport, and leadership to create environments where people rise. Her approach is grounded in one core belief: worth changes everything. Shannon builds programs known for exponential improvement, strong culture, and joyful competition. Her teams consistently outperform expectations, and she attributes this success to systems rooted in connection, competition, and teaching without judgment.

    Beyond the gym, Shannon serves as a real estate managing broker and mental performance coach, applying the same principles to help professionals collaborate more effectively and lead with clarity. Whether guiding athletes, colleagues, or clients, she focuses on simple, powerful behaviors that help people discover what they’re capable of.

    Shannon is a mother of four, a lifelong learner, and a passionate teacher. Her work reflects a deep commitment to helping individuals stay “in the game” long enough to experience the moments that reveal their potential—moments she believes can change the trajectory of a life.

Virgina Emery

How to Read the Sting of Rejection and Build With It

Talk Summary:

Rejection stings, so most of us either avoid it, or we grit our teeth and bear it. There’s a better option: read the sting the way a biologist reads venom, for the information inside, and use it to build something worth building.

  • Virginia Emery builds companies from emerging scientific innovations. She earned her PhD in biology from UC Berkeley, decoding the chemical language of ants in the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Amazon.

    As founder and CEO of Beta Hatch, she raised $30 million and scaled an insect biomanufacturing company from a backyard shed to a 60,000-square-foot factory, turning apple cores and waste heat from a data center into sustainable protein. Along the way she secured federal R&D funding from NSF, DARPA, USDA and the CDC, built a 15-patent portfolio, and briefed the White House on the emerging bioeconomy.

    Today, Virginia is Founding Partner of Gliding Ant Ventures, a venture studio building deep tech startups. She partners with first-time technical founders to build and fund companies that take breakthrough science from the lab to market.

Carla Grandori

For the Right Cancer Medicine, Ask the Tumor

Talk Summary:

Reading cancer’s DNA has brought real successes, but it offers no answers for many cancers. A patient’s urgent request for help led me to ask living tumor cells, “Which medicine kills you?” — testing existing medicines to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and help personalize treatment.

  • Dr. Carla Grandori is a physician scientist, dedicated to studying how cancer genes disrupt cell behavior. Her aim was to discover, more targeted, less toxic cancer treatments. After 30 years of research, her career took a sharp turn when a cancer patient asked for help. That is when Dr. Grandori pioneered the field of functional precision medicine through the development of a clinical test to personalize cancer treatments, using a broad menu of targeted medicines.

Madhura Halasgikar

Joy at the Extremes: Solitude and Intimacy

Talk Summary:

Most of us linger somewhere in the middle—avoiding solitude and fearing the vulnerability of intimacy. Drawing on the engineering concept of “boundary cases,”  the talk explores solitude as a gift and intimacy as an invitation, revealing how embracing both extremes can deepen our connection with ourselves and others.

  • Madhura Halasgikar is a wellness and leadership coach at BetterUp, with a background in software engineering and experience at Microsoft and Amazon. Having spent a decade solving technical problems, she now brings the same curiosity to understanding people and the experiences that shape their lives.

    She is particularly interested in self-compassion and its role in connection — how treating ourselves with greater kindness and understanding can deepen our relationships with others.

    Madhura is also the author of two poetry collections, A Living Room and A Cup of Life. She and her band, Lyrical and Timeless, host music and poetry programs that bring communities together across Seattle’s Eastside. 

    In her TEDx talk, Joy at the Extremes: Solitude and Intimacy, Madhura explores how solitude and intimacy make each other possible, inviting audiences to see solitude as a gift and intimacy as an invitation.

Karen Manthey

How to Fight a Karen

Talk Summary:

What if a “Karen” isn’t someone else, but a mindset that can show up in all of us? Through humor, personal stories, and principles from improvisation, Karen explores how we can stop reacting to the stories we create in our heads and respond instead to what is happening.

  • Karen Manthey believes laughter is one of the most underused tools for connection, communication, and leadership. For more than twenty years, she has been performing, coaching, and teaching improvisation while helping people discover that the skills that make improv work onstage can be just as powerful in everyday life.

    As a speaker, communication strategist, leadership trainer, and applied improviser, Karen has worked with business leaders, educators, nonprofit organizations, public officials, and community groups. Her work blends humor, storytelling, experiential learning, and practical communication tools to help people listen better, adapt more quickly, connect more deeply, and navigate uncertainty with greater confidence.

    One of the principles at the heart of her work is “Yes, And,” the foundational idea of improvisation. For Karen, it isn’t simply a performance technique. It is a way of approaching people and problems: accept what is actually happening, listen carefully to what is being offered, and build from there.

    Karen lives in Meridian, Idaho, and continues to perform, teach, facilitate, and speak wherever people are willing to laugh, participate, and occasionally make themselves a little uncomfortable, in the name of learning.

Erica Yu

Whose Game Are You Playing?

Talk Summary:

We can become remarkably good at games we never consciously chose — adapting to invisible standards of success until pursuing them drains us. By identifying the referee, naming the cost, and asking what we would choose if no one were watching, we can reclaim our agency and choose the games worth playing.

  • Erica Yu never expected one of her biggest life lessons to come from quitting youth soccer. After moving from China to Seattle, she traded one parenting playbook for another — shifting from an academically driven Chinese mom to an enthusiastic sports mom. Three years later, she realized that somewhere along the way, she had become remarkably good at playing a game she had never consciously chosen.

    That experience sparked a much bigger question: How often do we absorb the rules and scoreboards of the environments around us without ever asking whether they reflect what we truly want?

    For more than a decade, Erica has worked in strategy and consulting, including at McKinsey, helping senior leaders navigate complex decisions. She is also a certified iPEC Energy Leadership Coach who works with high-achieving women navigating ambition, identity, and the pressure to constantly prove themselves. Having lived and worked across Eastern and Western cultures, she has seen how the definitions of success may change while our instinct to adapt, achieve, and measure ourselves against them remains remarkably consistent.

    In her TEDx talk, Whose Game Are You Playing?, Erica invites us to step onto the sideline long enough to see the rules, question the scoreboard, and decide whether the game deserves our time, energy, and lives. 

Meet our
Speaker Coaches

Marianna de Fazio

  • Since receiving her MFA at the University of Washington Professional Actor Training Program, Marianna has coached dialect, voice and speech for theater on plays across the region and at the high school and university level. She also coaches accent modification and presentation prep for professionals across industries. Her focus is clear communication and storytelling, and highlighting YOU in the process. 

Andrea Scott

  • Andrea is a seasoned leader, mentor and development coach with 25+ years of experience helping people find clarity and confidence in their professional lives. Her coaching is deeply person‑centered, meeting individuals where they are and grounding them in their strengths, lived experience, and values as they move through moments of change and growth.

    She also supports clients in high‑stakes communication moments, offering guidance that helps them refine their ideas and express themselves with authenticity and purpose.

    With a background in cross‑functional leadership, operations, organizational development, and person‑centered coaching, Andrea is known for her clarity, warmth, and ability to create supportive environments where people feel seen, grounded, and capable of growth.

Meet our
Artistic Performers

Anokye Agofomma

  • Learn from the past to replenish the present and cast a shadow into the future.

    Anokye Agofomma specializes in performance and preservation of Royal Court music and dance from Ghana, and High Life music and dance. Over the years, Anokye has expanded its repertoire by drawing inspiration from other West African drum and dance traditions. From complex multi-part rhythms to rich vocal harmonies, and with elegant and acrobatic choreography, this music and dance honors the wisdom of those that came before.

Joké Durojaiye

  • Joké Durojaiye is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and certified life coach with over 20 years of experience spanning business, design, real estate, and leadership.

    Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Joké brings a unique blend of cultural perspective, humor, and lived experience to conversations about identity, courage, and the power of finding your voice.

    Through her writing, speaking, and work with entrepreneurs, she encourages people to challenge limiting beliefs, take up space, and give themselves permission to start afraid.