Unscript The Flow

Richard Byrne is a Wall Street executive, investor, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt whose career has taken him from Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank to his current role as President of Benefit Street Partners. He previously served as CEO of Deutsche Bank Securities and today also chairs Franklin BSP Capital Corp. Beyond finance, Richard turned a passion for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu into another major part of his life, becoming a black belt and founding KASAI Elite Grappling Championships. His journey across business, sport, unexpected opportunities, and major personal challenges has shaped his perspective on success, luck, and the unpredictable moments that can change the direction of a life. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, he will step on stage to share "[TALK TITLE - TBC]."

Khola Maryam Hübsch is a journalist, author, and speaker whose work explores some of society’s most challenging conversations around identity, faith, human rights, and belonging. With a background in journalism, psychology, and German studies, she has contributed to major German media outlets and brought her perspective to public debates, political institutions, and stages across Germany. As an author, public speaker, and spoken-word artist, Khola has built a career around the power of words, particularly when speaking up means stepping into uncertainty, criticism, or discomfort. Her experience in highly visible public spaces has shaped a deeply personal understanding of what it means to find your voice and remain true to yourself even when fear is present. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, she will explore a different way of looking at fear: not as something we must eliminate before we can act, but as something we can understand, navigate, and move with without allowing it to write the script of our lives.

Prof. Dr. Christian Bürgy is a professor, researcher, and entrepreneur whose career spans academia, technology, and industry. He is Dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Hochschule Darmstadt, where his work focuses on software engineering, human-machine interaction, Building Information Modeling, and wearable computing. He also holds an adjunct faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned his PhD in Computer-Aided Engineering and Management. Beyond academia, Christian has spent nearly two decades as Managing Partner of teXXmo Mobile Solution, bringing research and technology into real-world industrial applications. Moving between research, entrepreneurship, teaching, and leadership has shaped a career in which there is almost always another project, responsibility, or goal ahead. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, Christian will challenge the idea that meaningful breaks require months away from everyday life. Drawing on his own experiences, he will explore the concept of “micro-sabbaticals” and how intentionally stepping away, even briefly, can help us reflect, reset, and return with a different perspective.

Ivana Steiner is a Vienna-based architect and designer exploring how the spaces and objects of everyday life can shape a more sustainable future. Her work brings together architecture, design research, and social observation, with a particular focus on future living, circular design, zero-waste systems, and the relationship between people and the objects around them. Her projects have been featured by international architecture, design, and sustainability publications. Her Zero Waste Kitchen reimagines one of the most familiar spaces in our homes as a circular system designed around reducing waste, reusing resources, and extending the life of materials. She later expanded these principles through Zero Waste Kitchen City, exploring how ideas that begin at the scale of a kitchen could reshape food, energy, mobility, public space, and community life across an entire city. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, Ivana will take us from the kitchen to the city, exploring how rethinking just a few square meters of our everyday lives could become a blueprint for a more sustainable, zero-waste future.

Jonny Davies is an entrepreneur and investor whose career has never followed a conventional path. After studying Law with Business at the University of Birmingham, he chose to step away from the traditional graduate route, beginning his career in football representation before moving into esports and the creator economy. Along the way, he worked with some of the world's leading creators and entrepreneurs, including Ali Abdaal, Max Klymenko, and Simon Squibb. Today, Jonny is Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Dream, where he is working to make entrepreneurship more accessible to ordinary people. His journey from law graduate to talent management, investing, and eventually building his own venture has shaped his belief that careers don't always have to begin with finding the right opportunity. Sometimes, they begin by creating one. Jonny Davies is an entrepreneur and investor whose career has never followed a conventional path. After studying Law with Business at the University of Birmingham, he chose to step away from the traditional graduate route, beginning his career in football representation before moving into esports and the creator economy. Along the way, he worked with some of the world's leading creators and entrepreneurs, including Ali Abdaal, Max Klymenko, and Simon Squibb. Today, Jonny is Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Dream, where he is working to make entrepreneurship more accessible to ordinary people. His journey from law graduate to talent management, investing, and eventually building his own venture has shaped his belief that careers don't always have to begin with finding the right opportunity. Sometimes, they begin by creating one. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, Jonny will explore what happens when the traditional path from university to employment no longer feels as certain as it once did, and why the next generation might need to shift from asking “Who will give me an opportunity?” to “What opportunity can I create?”

Dîba Tuncer is an educator, researcher, and somatic and systemic coach whose work explores how we learn not only through the mind, but through the body. Bringing together decolonial education, embodied learning, and trauma-sensitive practice, she challenges conventional ideas about knowledge and whose ways of knowing we learn to trust. Currently pursuing her PhD in Education at the University of Bremen, Dîba researches Pedagogy of Integrity and decolonizing approaches to higher education. Her research was recognized with the German Society for Higher Education Didactics’ Nachwuchspreis, and for more than a decade she has facilitated international trainings, coaching, and supervision across educational and professional contexts. At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, Dîba will invite us to reconsider an overlooked source of knowledge we carry everywhere: our own bodies. Rather than choosing between reason and intuition, she will explore what becomes possible when we learn to listen to both.

Gheith Ben Salem is an engineer and business psychologist working at the intersection of technology and human behavior. His career at Siemens has taken him through automation, technical sales, digital strategy, and e-commerce, while his interest in how people learn and develop led him to train as an NLP Master Coach and Agile Learning Coach. A turning point came when Gheith watched a colleague, known and praised for her exceptional writing, suddenly struggle when the AI tool she relied on became unavailable. It left him with an uncomfortable question: when technology gives us access to an ability, how do we know whether that ability is still truly our own? At TEDxTUDarmstadt, Unscript The Flow, Gheith will explore the increasingly blurred line between using AI to extend our abilities and quietly handing those abilities over to it. His question for the audience is simple: are we still driving, or have we become passengers?