EP# 172 Alan Warburton Founder Curator TEDxBearCreekPark: MAKING HISTORY March 27 2021

Alan Warburton is a retired school principal. His career in education spanned 34 years and included teaching in three different countries, England, the Bahamas and Canada. He started as a P.E. teacher in England and enjoyed many opportunities to coach school sports team, especially in soccer and track and field. The last 20 years of his career was as a principal in the Richmond School District. Alan has always been active in athletic endeavours. He was the captain of his University soccer team and played soccer at the senior amateur level in England. After retiring from soccer in his 30's, he took up distance running and completed 5 marathons. He has remained active over many years and completed the bike "Ride to Conquer Cancer" from Vancouver to Seattle (with his daughter) two weeks before his 70th birthday. After retirement, Alan became very involved with Toastmasters. He accomplished the level of Distinguished Toastmaster and won many Toastmaster Speech contests. He qualified for the World Championships of Public Speaking on two occasions (San Francisco in 2009 and Cincinnati in 2013). Alan was elected as the Toastmasters' District 21 Director for 2016-2017 which involved him being responsible for overseeing 150 Toastmaster clubs in Southern BC. Alan has been deeply involved with TEDx over the past four years. In 2017-2018, he was the Curator for TEDxWhiteRock. He founded TEDxBearCreekPark in 2018 and has been the Licensee/Curator for the past three years. TEDxBearCreekPark has grown from a small event, limited to 100 attendees, to being recognized as the premier TEDx event in BC. Alan leads a team of 20 dedicated volunteers who work incredibly hard to produce an event of the highest quality.