TEDxAkron

From viral storyteller to fierce advocate, SirDiamond Jones is proof that vulnerability is a superpower. At just 26, he’s built a digital community of over half a million followers—by showing up, speaking out, and making space for others to feel seen.

In his powerful and revealing TEDx Talk, Becoming a Black Man in America, SirDiamond reflects on what it took to grow into himself as a Black, trans man—navigating identity, visibility, and belonging in a world eager to define him.

In telling his story of both known and perceived identity, he explores how naming and embracing every part of who we are as individuals can become a source of strength, leadership, and responsibility within our own communities.

🤩 Congratulations again to SirDiamond on his TEDx Talk. Akron is so proud of you and everything you bring to our community and the world.

Becoming a Black man in America | SirDiamond Jones | TEDxAkron In Becoming a Black Man in America, SirDiamond reflects on what it took to grow into himself as a Black, trans man—navigating identity, visibility, and belon...

📣A note on TEDx, politics, and values in 2026 from the team at TEDxAkron.

As a reminder—and in the spirit of transparency—TEDx events operate under a global license that does not allow organizers or speakers to promote partisan politics, endorse candidates, or advocate for specific political agendas from the stage or through official TEDx programming. These guidelines exist to protect the integrity of this global platform and to ensure that TEDx remains a space for ideas, curiosity, nuance, and shared learning rather than political campaigning. The team at TEDxAkron fully respects, understands, and abides by this stance.

At the same time, it’s also important for us to say this clearly as an American TEDx program in 2026:

To know TEDxAkron is to know that we are committed to welcoming everyone to the stage. We believe in thoughtful dialogue, in complexity over slogans, and in the power of ideas to expand empathy rather than narrow it. We value diversity, inclusion, equity, justice, free expression, and the responsibility that comes with the First Amendment. We believe that stories—when shared by our friends and neighbors here in Akron and Greater Summit County—can challenge assumptions, illuminate lived experience, and move us toward deeper understanding, when offered with care.

We respect the boundaries of our license, and we take them seriously. And we trust our community to see us, know us, and understand the values that guide how we show up and lead this program, even when we cannot make declarative political statements.

Ideas matter.
How we hold space for them matters, too.

We take our drinks neat, and we toast to everyone trying to make this world a better, more compassionate, more inclusive place—on and off stage.

Angie Haze isn’t just a musician: she’s a movement. With a voice made for the haunted and the hopeful, Angie creates songs that speak directly to survivors, dreamers, and anyone who's ever felt like their story was too heavy to carry alone.

Powerfully pushing into new territory--and a vulnerable step away from behind the piano or guitar -- Angie's TEDx Talk, Extremism to Radical Kindness, is a personal request to reframe personal trauma and today's extremism as a lens to reexamine who we truly are in these intense moments.

That maybe the extremism we see and experience in the world today is exactly what is needed to inspire us to do something and become someone different. Angie asks if these are the moments to remember who and what we are, and why.

🤩 Congratulations again to Angie on her TEDx Talk. Akron is so proud of you and everything you bring to our community and the world.

Extremism to radical kindness | Angie Haze | TEDxAkron Maybe the extremism we see in the world today is exactly what is needed to inspire us to do something differently. Maybe we need to remember who and what we ...