Dent Santa Fe 2025 Web Site Schedule

Registered attendees can pick up their badges and conference materials at the Stiha room (second floor, look for Dent signage).

Registered attendees can pick up their badges and conference materials at the Stiha room (second floor, look for Dent signage).

Join everyone in the New Mexico room to connect and learn the day’s plans. Confirm your schedules, find new and old friends, and grab some caffeine to fuel the morning.

Activate your gift of creativity! In this DIY playshop, you’ll create an art collage expressing your unique vision… and surprising yourself with your eye for design. Working with a carefully curated selection of images and treasures, you’ll arrange colors and forms into a one-of-a-kind collage to bring home as a unique art piece, and a reminder of your expressive talent.

Join this ever-popular Dent workshop where participants are introduced to the basic techniques for opening the most common locks, hosted by Steve Broback (Dent co-founder) and Alethe Denis (Dent 2025 speaker).

Gary Ware from Breakthrough Play brings "Breakthrough Bricks: Unlock Innovation with LEGO® Serious Play" to Dent Santa Fe. This hands-on session uses LEGO bricks as tools for creative problem-solving, the same methodology used by teams at NASA and Google. Participants build 3D models that serve as metaphors for complex ideas, exploring challenges in ways traditional brainstorming cannot achieve. Attendance is limited, with Gary providing all LEGO materials

Asa will lead a street photography workshop, a genre that focuses on capturing candid moments in public spaces, often highlighting the unique interactions and scenes of urban life. The workshop will be hands-on, guiding participants in engaging with subjects, using natural light, and composing dynamic images. Among the many practical methods he will present that are applicable in everyday settings, Asa will demonstrate how simple tools, like a single piece of foam core board, can create compelling lighting effects.

Take a fast-paced tour of the latest AI startups from Santa Fe local firms and Denters alike. The AI Startup Showcase features 8 carefully selected presentations. Join your fellow Dent attendees (entrepreneurs, executives, technologists), plus a select group of regional investors we’re inviting specifically for the AI session. It's an ideal setting for feedback, strategic connections, and potential funding conversations.

Get your hands floured up and learn the art of making pizza. We’ll talk briefly about the tradition and craft of pizza, and then delve into the ingredients and the process: making dough and sauces, stretching dough, topping and baking. And then we’ll eat pizza, a skill that needs no teaching. After you take the class, you’ll have the skills to confidently bake pizza in your home oven, and you’ll be able to speak with some authority on all things pizza, including whether pineapple has a place on pizza.

Want to get a crash course on what Dungeons & Dragons is all about? From Stranger Things, to selling out Madison Square Garden, find out what makes the 50-year sensation tick in hands-on play with pre-generated characters. Jump into an adventure with no experience necessary as you get a feel for the basics in a quick, fun mini-adventure. Materials provided; just bring your creativity and enthusiasm.

Is this your first Dent conference? If so, we have a dinner just for you. Hosted by Greg Kisor, our official conference sommelier, the Sunday evening ”freshman class” Dinner offers first-time conference attendees a relaxed opportunity to connect before the main festivities begin. This invitation-only gathering is for new Denters only, and helps newcomers ease into the Dent experience by meeting fellow participants in an intimate setting. It’s designed to foster early connections and create context for the days ahead.

The Dent 2025 Opening Reception takes place Sunday evening at Hervé Wine Bar, a modern tasting room and gathering space in the heart of downtown Santa Fe. Set against the backdrop of local art and estate-grown New Mexico wines, this reception invites all attendees to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. Light bites, thoughtful pours, and unstructured conversation make it an ideal way to ease into the week ahead.

After dinner, Denters naturally gather for informal conversations that stretch late into the night. For many, these unstructured “lobby” moments often become the most memorable.

Breakfast begins each morning with a buffet featuring scrambled eggs and eggs benedict, grilled breakfast potatoes, bacon and sausage, seasonal fruit, yogurt, gluten-free waffles with fresh berries, avocado toast, and granola with berries or caramelized bananas.

DEF CON Black Badge winner Alethe Denis takes us behind the scenes of her work as an ethical hacker—where she gains access to highly secured environments not through brute force, but through charm, empathy, and precisely the right narrative. She will focus on the psychological and social aspects of ethical hacking and how she uses human psychology, storytelling, and social engineering techniques rather than technical exploits to gain access to secure systems as part of legitimate security testing.

Greg Lukianoff brings a unique perspective as both a Stanford-trained First Amendment lawyer and proven organizational leader who transformed FIRE from a small advocacy group into a nationally influential force for free speech rights over nearly two decades. He'll share insights from FIRE's growth and explore strategies for scaling a nonprofit or purpose-driven enterprise while staying true to its core mission.

In the fireside chat, Dr. Brad Younggren will discuss the current state of longevity science and how emergent medical breakthroughs including therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) represents a shift from treating age-related diseases to targeting aging mechanisms. As CEO and Co-founder of Circulate Health, Younggren brings unique credibility to this topic through his company's groundbreaking clinical results published in Aging Cell showing that TPE can measurably reverse biological age.

Tomorrow's Women brings together young Israeli and Palestinian women to build understanding across conflict lines. Two members of the organization will share their personal 5-minute stories of resilience, hope, and the complex realities of navigating life amid ongoing regional tensions. They will provide rare insights into how the next generation of young Israeli and Palestinian women are finding courage to pursue peace and dialogue despite extraordinary challenges. Several Tomorrow's Women participants will also be joining attendees during lunch for continued conversations and deeper connections around these vital themes of bridge-building and shared humanity.

Ryan Singer, a Diné artist, represents one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Indigenous art through his pioneering work in “Indigenous Futurism.” In his talk, attendees will learn about how his work weaves together childhood memories with nostalgic pop culture elements, including science fiction imagery, and has earned numerous awards, including recognition from the prestigious SWAIA's Santa Fe Indian Market, with his pieces held in collections of museums and private collectors worldwide. His genre explores sci-fi, technology, the future, ideas of colonization, as well as giving a cultural perspective from an Indigenous worldview.

Co-founders Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël have built Felix & Paul Studios through a vision-led journey driven by creative necessity rather than conventional business planning, evolving through four distinct eras while maintaining their unwavering commitment to how to create the "ritual of presence." This fireside chat will explore their meta-lesson of "becoming who you need to become at each stage"—from technologists, to producers, to a space company, to location-based entertainment (LBE) pioneers—demonstrating how they've consistently chosen artistic vision over immediate profit, believing that if the work is powerful enough the business should follow. They'll reveal how they're now focused on complex world-building that creates layered realities, allowing audiences to leverage their own subjectivity in a medium that's growing towards full reality.

Authentic leadership starts with an authentic voice. Sheila Lirio Marcelo, the 7th woman to take a company public on the NYSE, will share how she raised over $111 million by leading with mission and authentic storytelling. Pamela Prather, Sheila’s voice and presence coach, will lead interactive exercises demonstrating that great speaking isn't about pretending—it's about becoming more you.

The dine-around transforms Monday evening into an intimate culinary adventure through Santa Fe's acclaimed restaurant scene. Rather than hosting one large group dinner, attendees are divided into smaller groups and are assigned to award-winning local restaurants, all within walking distance of La Fonda. Attendees will experience the authentic flavors that make Santa Fe a renowned food destination. Each restaurant offers its own unique atmosphere and cuisine, ensuring every group has a distinct experience while the entire Dent community explores the city together..

Join us for a special screening of "Tracks," the acclaimed 2013 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver that brings to life one of National Geographic's most memorable stories. Based on photographer (and Denter) Rick Smolan's documentation of Robyn Davidson's extraordinary 1,700-mile solo trek across the Australian outback with four camels and her dog, this intimate adventure story captures the power of human determination and the unexpected connections that shape our journeys. Adam Driver portrays Rick in this beautifully filmed adaptation that transforms a legendary magazine assignment into a moving exploration of solitude, friendship, and the courage to follow an unconventional path.

Rick himself will be present to introduce the film and share behind-the-scenes stories from both the original 1977 expedition and the making of the movie—creating a rare opportunity to experience this remarkable tale and then hear directly from the person who lived it.

As the official programming winds down each evening, the magic of Dent continues with our informal late-night gatherings known as "Dent After Dark." These spontaneous, unstructured sessions take place on the rooftop La Terrazza (with Greg Kisor’s sommelier wine service) for Tuesday night. These are the moments where some of the conference's most memorable connections happen: intimate conversations that stretch into the early hours, unexpected collaborations born over shared drinks, and the kind of serendipitous encounters that embody Dent's "generous with curiosity" spirit.

Breakfast begins each morning with a buffet featuring scrambled eggs and eggs benedict, grilled breakfast potatoes, bacon and sausage, seasonal fruit, yogurt, gluten-free waffles with fresh berries, avocado toast, and granola with berries or caramelized bananas.

Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition, and her New York Times bestseller and Women's Prize for Non-Fiction finalist offers a myth-busting, paradigm-shifting account of how humans evolved by placing the female body at the center of the story. Her presentation will demonstrate how understanding our evolutionary origins through women's biology has critical implications for modern medicine and our understanding of what makes us human.

Dr. Reed Levine, board-certified neurologist and pain management specialist with training from NYU, Yale, and USC, will discuss his deeply humanistic and comprehensive approach to managing pain. Levine brings both cutting-edge medical technology expertise and compassionate understanding to explore how we can merge human biology with advanced devices to alleviate pain and restore quality of life.

Frans Lanting has been hailed as one of the great photographers of our time, and will take the stage to explore how visual storytelling can bridge the gap between the natural world and human understanding. His influential work as National Geographic Photographer-in-Residence has helped create leverage for conservation efforts ranging from local initiatives to global campaigns. In this talk, he will show how powerful narratives are essential for conservation and creating emotional connections that drive meaningful action.

Denter-Led Discussions are small group sessions where conference participants engage in open dialog on self-selected topics. Each discussion accommodates approximately 25 people arranged in a circle, with one attendee facilitating the conversation. Three concurrent sessions run simultaneously, allowing participants to choose their preferred topic and join the discussion that interests them most.