Hosted by Hoda Emam and Devon Kodzis in partnership with The Dallas Morning News.
An evening of true personal stories about confidence and how it propels us to do crazy and wonderful things, from the community of Dallas, TX!
Stories By:
Saba Ansari has years of experience telling stories in Dallas TX including performing “Putting the Bang Back into Science” at Checkered Past Winery and “A Duet of How We Met” with her husband at the Dallas Comedy Club. She has also completed multiple levels of improv training from The Comedy Arena, and a Jamie Campbell Storytelling workshop.
Saba has a Masters in Science in Physical Chemistry from Aligarh University, has been a high school science teacher for 19 years and was nominated for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science in 2022. She has also served as a writer, reporter, and editor in the US, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and India.
Devon Kodzis has been called a joyful bumblebee. Professionally they have had job titles as an educator, journalist, animal trainer, nanny, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Their passions include reading about food, and shouting at the television with their cats. They want to go on a walk and talk about animal behavior. They apologize a lot, and are sorry for that.
Devon began storytelling at Dallas Comedy House in the fall of 2016. They have been teaching storytelling and comedy workshops since 2017, and have taught students living on every continent except for Antarctica.
Kofi Kusi is a Ghanaian pharmacist and second year PhD student in biomedical sciences at the University of North Texas Health Science Center with addiction studies as his main research area. Living many parallel lives, Kofi is a budding rapper and songwriter under the artist name KooKusi. He has for the past few years leveraged his skill in music, art, and media to discuss social issues that are most germane to his primary area of scientific interest, mental health. He made this very evident on his debut project, “5foot3”, a seven-track extended play on which he creatively uses his height as a synecdochical representation of weakness and shortcomings. The one-year-old tape addresses themes such as inferiority complex, narcissism, stereotypes, and the cascade of events that follow them. With a keen interest in scientific communication, Kofi intends to continually use his art of musical storytelling as a mouthpiece for the science he practices, and make a difference.
Greg Pandelis is the curator of the Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center of UT Arlington, where he manages the largest scientific collection of preserved reptiles and amphibians in Texas, while also conducting his own research. Despite thoroughly enjoying studying dead things, Greg’s other passion lies in studying animals in the field; he has been on several field expeditions to Central America, South America, Europe, and Asia in pursuit of creepy crawly things of all sorts.