Junior Zoe Serbin was selected to be part of the TEDx event in Santa Barbara called The Spark Within. TEDx is a program that has both online TEDTalks and TEDx conferences around the world that aim to spark discussions through influential speakers. Santa Barbara held its second TEDx American Riviera event on Nov. 11 at Music Academy of the West in Montecito.
This year they focused on creating opportunities, creating happiness, and creating beauty. All these topics were discussed by the 11 speakers; Stefen Bucher, Robert Gupta, Matthew Kenney, Jenna McCarthy, Chris Orwig, Eugene Lee, Peter Matthies, Eric Goodman, Barry Berkus, Tom Snow, and John Boettner. These prominent speakers covered business, finance, community outreach, mental and physical health, vitality, nutrition, lifestyle, and the arts.

Zoe discovered this event through her friend Griffin Saxon. She and Griffin have a partnership in which they write songs and musicals.
Griffin’s dad nominated them for the award and they were interviewed at Santa Barbara Middle School with the codirector of the program.

They were asked a multitude of questions and also asked to sing one of their co-written songs from their own musical, Underdog, about the characters of Mario and Luigi from the Nintendo video game.

“The interview process was pretty intimidating at first, but after I got to know the filmmakers it was really fun. It was the first time Griffin and I had talked about our musical to people outside of our family. Now that people know about it, we have a greater motivation to finish the play and put it on,” Zoe said.

Out of the 100 applicants, 10 were chosen to be finalists.  Zoe and Griffin were part of the top 10.
Originally, two to three applicants were to be chosen as the winners, but after the interviews were completed, the directors couldn’t choose just one. So the top 10 finalists became the 10 winners.
“It was an honor to have been chosen and we learned a lot about ourselves in the process, as well as becoming closer friends,” said Zoe.