Building trust across America's divides
Talk given at TEDxChicago 2025
Chicago, September 26th, 2025
Meg Whitty
Ecosystem Innovator
About the Talk
In this powerful talk, Meg Whitty shares lessons from childhood campaign trails in rural Iowa that shaped her career building coalitions for sustainable aviation fuel. Drawing from experience across agriculture, energy, and aviation sectors, she reveals how authentic trust unlocks solutions to seemingly impossible challenges. Whitty demonstrates how the same communities devastated by hospital closures and economic decline can lead the clean energy transition, creating jobs while solving aviation's 3% contribution to global emissions. The presentation examines specific techniques for bringing together competing interests around shared goals, challenging false choices between economy and environment. Her message resonates particularly with leaders seeking to bridge political and geographic divides.
Source: TEDxChicago
About Meg
Meg Whitty serves as Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Marketing at LanzaJet, Inc., a global leader in sustainable fuels technology and the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel. She leads the company’s global marketing, brand, and community engagement strategies, advancing their mission to accelerate the clean energy transition in aviation and beyond.
Meg is a proven strategist, team-builder and communicator with 17+ years of experience spanning the corporate, tech start-up and government sectors. Her work has supported rural communities investing in renewable energy through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, advanced SAF adoption at a major U.S. airline, and helped industrial businesses reimagine operations through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Today, she is at the forefront of decarbonizing the aviation sector with cutting-edge fuel technologies.
Meg holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in government from Georgetown. Based in Des Moines, Iowa, she lives with her husband and two young children.
Source: TEDxChicago
TEDxChicago 2025
Our future feels uncertain, yet we are resoundingly called to what matters most: You and me. Us. Humanity, itself. At TEDxChicago 2025, we believe the most powerful force shaping tomorrow is our collective agency, imagination, desire for connection and laughter, dignity, and generosity. This year, our speakers and artists arrive on Chicago’s stage to share their ideas, showcasing their fierce commitment to unify science, technology, and sustainability with the essential principles of compassion, justice, and care.
This is our love letter to Chicago.
Source: TEDxChicago
Coach’s Reflections
More to come!
Dustin Huibregtse
Founding Principal
Talks & Speaker Coach
