The upper school’s TEDx chapter will host its annual TedxHarkerSchool event on Saturday, March 22 in Nichols Atrium following weeks of preparation.

This year’s TEDx event focuses on “fostering youth entrepreneurship,” and will provide students in the Bay Area with the opportunity to network and learn from a diverse mix of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Director of Business and Entrepreneurship Juston Glass commented on his hopes for the what the event will bring.

“That students will leave inspired, educated, and with a greater confidence in themselves as future leaders and entrepreneurs,” Juston Glass said.

The event is independent, but affiliated with the larger organization of TED; it’s being organized by a group of students who are members of the upper school’s TEDx club.

TEDx officer Glenn Reddy (11), who has spent the past few weeks contacting speakers and putting the event together, elaborated on the theme of “fostering youth entrepreneurship.”

“There are two truly unique things about TEDxHarkerSchool 2014: the theme and the mentor luncheon. This year is unprecedented in that the team has decided to create a focus on social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship in the context of non-profits.”

Glenn went on to discuss the mentor luncheon, which is scheduled to occur midday following the first three TED talks. The luncheon aims to connect students to mentors in their field of choice, operating similarly to the upper school club CareerConnect.

“The mentor luncheon is a special opportunity for attendees, high school and college students, to interface more personally with business professionals. There will be around 25 mentors, each at his or her own table, that the attendees can choose from to eat lunch and discuss with,” Glenn said.

In fact, since TEDxHarkerSchool and CareerConnect are both under the upper school’s business and entrepreneurship wing, they share members and officers and often join forces in their undertakings.

DECA member Raymond Xu (9) plans on attending TEDx to hear from the speakers, of whom he has heard “great” things.

“I think the list of speakers this year is surprisingly interesting and unique, as its been highlighted that our own senior, Arjun Mehta, is going to be talking about his past entrepreneurial success as well as his current success,” said Ray.

The keynote speakers being featured are David Girouard, Founder and CEO of Upstart and former President of Enterprise at Google, Lata Krishnan, CFO at Shah Capital Partners, Dr. Ronda Beaman, Chief Creative Officer at PEAK Learning, Ariel Tseitlin, VC at ScaleVP and former Director of Cloud Operations at Netflix, Rashmi Menon, lecturer at Stanford University, and upper school’s very own, Arjun Mehta (12), founder of Stoodle and co-founder of Playspan.

To purchase tickets, visit www.tedx.harker.org. While, for a certain period of time, attendance was initially only open to Harker students and families, tickets have now gone on sale for all TED enthusiasts in the area.