Takeo Suzuki, a former executive director for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s global education center, landed at Lovell Field on Thursday thrilled to return to Chattanooga and anxious to present at the 2026 TEDxChattanooga speaker series.
His 15-minute talk centered on the power of using media, sports and entertainment as “soft diplomacy” to connect humans all around the world. He concluded his speech in an Oprah-esque fashion.
“To help you to start the conversation,” Suzuki said, “I placed a Pokémon card under your chairs.”
Indeed, there were the cards, under all 370 chairs in the Chattanooga Theatre Centre’s main auditorium. They were in Japanese, the language of Suzuki’s home country. Much of his 15-minute presentation retold his immigration story after the 1995 earthquakes in Kobe, Japan.
“It is very important to share stories,” Suzuki said. He encouraged the audience to tell coworkers about the cards under their seats. “So my question is: What is the story you’d like to share?”