Annie Stilger Virnig Annie has grown up traveling frequently between the United States and Japan, immersed in a culture of grounded grassroots activism. She graduated from Macalester College last year with a degree in Biology and an independent major — Local and Global Social Change — and has traveled to communities in Mexico, India, South Africa, the United States, and Japan. As a biology major and social activist, she believes that an ecological worldview -- based on viewing the world as an intricately interconnected living system -- is essential to creating transformative social change. After spending the past six months traveling in Honshu and Hokkaido, working on organic farms through WWOOF, co-hosting leadership workshops, and attempting to improve her Japanese, she is excited to be a part of TEDxTokyo yz. Following this event, she plans to continue to travel and work around the world for a few years before pursing a graduate degree in the sciences. Being involved with some forefront social communities in Japan Annie believes that Community is the most important means to create social change in Japan now. Particularly she mentions of the communities in Japan where visions do not stop just by connecting people in an event, rather actually get transformed into reality within days, months and years following the events. These communities nurture diversity and shared values within diversity to bring into meaningful, tangible social changes. Annie believes such