TEDxBemidji Samantha Nienow, Slide Designer

Hacking the Red Circle

Samantha Nienow is the organizer of TEDxBemidji, in Minnesota, and a professional slide designer at her firm, Red Zest Design. She’s produced the decks for speakers at 14 events and this year produced her first event. Samantha says that her job is to help the speakers feel comfortable and confident. She loves presentations and takes great care in getting to know each speaker. Once she feels like she understands them, she can set about helping them tell their story visually. She got her start doing presentations by stumbling upon Nancy Duarte’s book, SLIDEOLOGY in 2009. Nancy is a TEDster and has helped hundreds of speakers on the main stage with their slides. When Sam saw the book, which suggested she could make a career out of creating presentations, she never looked back. She soon realized that there was a TEDx event, TEDxFargo, only 150 miles away from Bemidji and ventured there to see how she could help. Thus begins her story. Thanks to Greg at TEDxFargo for introducing us to Samantha. Samantha created a special page on Red Zest for Hacking The Red Circle listeners with links to resources and examples she mentioned during the conversation. Thanks for the tips.