The Bezos Scholars Program partners with TED Fellows every year so program alums have opportunities to build professional experience, attend TED events and learn from and get inspired by TED Fellows who are global changemakers. Here, 2019 alum Victor Ye shares his reflections as a BSP intern supporting the TED Fellows Program at TED 2025, where the theme was Humanity Reimagined.

When I arrived in Vancouver for the TED Conference 2025, I stepped into a space built for deep thinking, collaboration, and daring imagination. TED’s mission to share “ideas worth spreading” comes alive each year through the gathering of thinkers, creators, and builders who dare to stretch the limits of what is possible. As a BSP intern, I supported the TED Fellows, helping them feel at home, assisting with the filming of their short documentaries, guiding them through programming, and contributing to events like the Fellows Dinner and Fellows Night, where creativity and connection thrived.

Throughout the week, I built real relationships with the Fellows, individuals whose lives are proof that vision and action are inseparable. Whether preparing them for interviews, coordinating logistics, or offering encouragement in quiet moments, I saw how small gestures can sustain the vastness of their work.

One of the most meaningful parts of the experience was working alongside my co-intern, Winnie Msamba. Together, we reflected on how our journeys as Bezos Scholars had rooted within us a belief that community transformation begins with a refusal to accept inherited limitations. It felt grounding to reconnect with those early lessons in a space that insisted on boldness.

The 2025 conference theme, Humanity Reimagined, offered not just a question but a challenge: how must we evolve when technology tests the very fabric of what it means to be human? Sitting close to Carole Cadwalladr during her session, I was stirred by her call to reclaim the internet as a space for authentic self-expression. Later that week, in conversation with her at the Sustainable Media Center dinner, I was reminded that protecting the fragile ecosystems of truth and freedom online may be one of the defining struggles of our era.

Moments of serendipity made the experience even richer. Stumbling into the CEO of M-Pesa Africa at the convention center entrance with Winnie and later hearing him speak about mobile payments as lifelines for underserved communities deepened my understanding of innovation as a moral enterprise. Speaking with Yancey Strickler, former CEO of Kickstarter, about democratizing creative ownership sharpened my belief that new systems can emerge when imagination is treated as a civic duty. Hearing Sam Altman address the future of artificial intelligence crystallized an urgent truth: ethical guardrails are not auxiliary to innovation; they are essential if we hope to preserve what is most human.

TED 2025 reminded me that the future is not something that happens to us. It is something we co-create. In a world often shaped by cynicism, I left Vancouver with a deeper conviction that young people must sharpen their critical thinking, challenge the status quo with fierce honesty, and hold onto optimism as a radical force for change.

As I prepare to graduate next month, I could not imagine a more meaningful way to close this chapter. I am profoundly grateful to the TED Fellows team, especially Allegra, Leonie, and Lily, and to the BSP team, Adriana and Molly, for making this opportunity possible.