Pat Mitchell

Media and technology are our greatest assets. And yet, they are our most undervalued and underused assets. Now when I say that, people look at me like I'm crazy because every young person we know in the world is never without media, ever.

Investing in women and girls may once have been considered a radical notion or even a waste of resources, but in most places in the world today, women and girls are increasingly recognized as a critical link to greater prosperity, political stability, better health and public policy.

TED Women isn't championing a cause; it's surfacing and sharing some of the most important ideas of our time. Our focus is on women as change agents, innovators and idea champions, and I think people will be both inspired and surprised by the program. We're exploring some fascinating territory!

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

I was part of the draft resistance movement in L.A. where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus. I had a student classification and they said that anybody who'd taken part in these demonstrations would be reclassified and drafted. And that's when I went to Canada.