2025
Achievement vs Fulfilment

What does it actually mean to succeed?

TEDxEHL 2025 brought together eight voices, philosophers, coaches, educators, builders, and wanderers, to interrogate one of the defining tensions of our time. Across an evening of talks, a single question surfaced again and again: if we've been given every tool to achieve, why does fulfilment feel so far away?

From the identities we cling to and the suitcases we carry across continents, to the discipline systems we build and the stars we dare to reach for, each speaker arrived with a different entry point, and the same underlying unease. A high-performance coach who hit every milestone and still felt lost. A philosophy teacher who questions whether our ambitions are even deserved. A teenager who acts before he's ready. A rhetoric pioneer who insists your voice is not a performance, but a form of existence. A student who learned that missing out might be the most strategic move of all.

Together, they made the case that achievement and fulfilment are not synonyms, and that confusing the two may be the most expensive mistake a generation can make.

TEDxEHL 2025 was not a celebration of success. It was an invitation to ask what success is actually for.

Jessica Huie MBE

We Are Not Who We Think We Are

What if the greatest threat to your freedom is the identity you've spent your whole life building?

Jessica Huie MBE, entrepreneur, author, and publicist to some of the world's leading changemakers, argues that real power begins the moment those constructs fall away. Drawing on her own journey from teen mother to Buckingham Palace honouree, she offers a raw, lived case for radical self-excavation. Strip back the titles, the roles, the armour, and find what remains. That, she says, is where everything begins.

Jenna Rydh

The High Achiever’s Paradox

You've hit every milestone on the list, and still, something feels off.

Jenna Rydh knows that feeling intimately: a former rising star at a Fortune 500 company, she built a career, then questioned everything it cost her. Now a certified High-Performance Coach with 500+ hours guiding executives at the world's top firms, she makes the case that achievement without alignment is just a well-dressed trap. The paradox isn't that success fails you: it's that you were never taught what success actually feels like. Jenna is here to change that.

Daphne Kobia

The Invisible Suitcase

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Nine countries. Twenty-two years. One invisible suitcase packed not with belongings, but with labels, masks, and the exhausting performances of belonging.

Daphné Kobia, who has navigated everything from Congo to Myanmar to Singapore, dismantles the idea that identity is something you're half of, or fractured by, and reframes it as a constellation: everything you carry, all at once. This is a talk about rootlessness, yes, but more precisely, about the quiet alchemy of turning estrangement into one of the sharpest forms of empathy there is. Her suitcase is the metaphor. Your life is the mirror.

Eva de Groot

The Relief of missing out

Every student knows the feeling: the calendar is full, the CV is growing, and somehow the anxiety is growing faster.

Eva de Groot calls out the FOMO no one talks about, not the parties, but the opportunities, the internships, the activities we say yes to out of fear rather than conviction. We've been sold a formula: GPA plus extracurriculars plus relentless output equals success. Eva is here to challenge the math. Sometimes, the most powerful move you can make is the one you don't.

Dr. Dino Vajzovic

Why Your Voice Is The Bridge

Thirteen years. Nearly a thousand people trained. One conviction: your voice is a bridge between who you are and the world you want to shape.

Dr Dino Vajzovic, doctor of law, founder of the Geneva Debate Club, and one of Europe's most sought-after rhetoric coaches, has spent his career proving that eloquence is not a gift reserved for the few but a discipline available to anyone willing to do the work. He has trained diplomats, leaders, and students alike, blending classical rhetorical tradition with the demands of modern communication. This is not a talk about speaking better. It's a talk about existing more fully.

Melchoir Rüfenacht

The Art of Doing Things You’re Not Ready For

He is 18 years old, two years into an EPFL degree, and already asking the questions most people spend decades avoiding.

Melchior Rüfenacht, musician, tech builder, and self-described work-in-progress, draws a line from the beaches of Normandy to the pressures of his generation, and finds in his grandfather's story a kind of permission: to act before you're ready, to pursue excellence before you're qualified, to reject mediocrity before the world tells you it's comfortable. In a culture obsessed with overnight success and polished outcomes, Melchior makes the case for something older and braver: the audacity of beginning anyway.

Michael Liechti

Should we, as humans, be allowed to

reach for the stars?

Twenty-five years in a classroom will teach you something the stars never will: how fragile the whole thing is.

Michael Liechti, philosopher, literature teacher, and self-questioning educator from the canton of Vaud, doesn't arrive at this stage with answers, but with something rarer: honest doubt. His talk pulls back the curtain on the role of chance in what we call success and asks whether the achievements we pursue are ever truly deserved or simply the result of fortunate circumstances. In an era of audacious ambition and exponential possibility, he offers the counterweight: empathy, humility, and the uncomfortable question of what we owe each other before we reach for anything else. Should we be allowed to reach for the stars? Michael isn't sure. And that, he argues, might be exactly the point.

Angelo Rachou

How we build long-lasting discipline

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Forget the cold showers. Forget the 5am grind content.

Angelo Rachou, French engineering student, content creator, and systems thinker, has reverse-engineered discipline the way an engineer reverse-engineers a process: methodically, repeatably, and without the performance. Drawing on his year abroad and his background in industrial engineering, he developed the CORE System, a practical, no-nonsense framework for building habits that actually hold. His argument is simple and quietly radical: discipline isn't a personality trait. It's a design problem. And like any design problem, it can be solved.

2025 Achievement vs Fulfilment

2025
Achievement vs Fulfilment