Attendee Resource Guide
2022 Speakers
Our Host, Baratunde Thurston
Baratunde Thurston holds space for hard and complex conversations with his blend of humor, wisdom, and compassion. Baratunde is an Emmy-nominated host who has worked for The Onion, produced for The Daily Show, advised the Obama White House, and wrote the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. He’s the executive producer and host of How To Citizen with Baratunde which Apple named one of its favorite podcasts of 2020. Baratunde also received the Social Impact Award at the 2021 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards on behalf of How to Citizen with Baratunde. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.” Baratunde is unique in his ability to integrate and synthesize themes of race, culture, politics, and technology to explain where our nation is and where we can take it.
With an ancestry that includes a great-grandfather who taught himself to read, a grandmother who was the first black employee at the U.S. Supreme Court building, a computer-programming mother who took over radio stations in the name of the black liberation struggle, and an older sister who teaches yoga at her donation-based studio in Lansing, Michigan, Baratunde has long been taught to question authority and forge his own path. It helps that he was raised in Washington, D.C. under crackhead Mayor Marion Barry. Baratunde’s mind, forged by his mother’s lessons and polished by a philosophy degree from Harvard, has found expression in the pages of Fast Company and the New York Times, the screens of HBO, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, the sound waves of NPR and podcasts such as Pivot, WTF, and Hello, Monday.
He has hosted shows and stories on NatGeo and Discovery’s Science Channel and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for hosting the Spotify/Mic series, Clarify. Baratunde is also an in-demand public speaker and live events host for organizations ranging from Google to criminal justice reform non-profits such as JustLeadershipUSA. Far from simply appearing in media, Baratunde has also helped define its future. In 2006 he co-found-ed Jack & Jill Politics, a black political blog whose coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention has been archived by the Library of Congress. From 2007 to 2012, he helped bring one of America’s finest journalistic institutions into the future, serving as Director of Digital for The Onion then did something similar as Supervising Producer for digital expansion at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. He has served as an advisor to the Data & Society Research Institute and a director’s fellow at the MIT Media Lab.
Baratunde is a rare leader who sits at the intersection of race, technology, and democracy and seamlessly integrates past, present and future. Baratunde serves on the boards of BUILD and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Los Angeles, California.
Ari Wallach
Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host of the forthcoming series on PBS “A Brief History of the Future” which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake. He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100 companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN Refugee Agency, RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long Game Forum. As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into twenty-one languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman. He has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, Vox, and more. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley with his wife, three children and wonderdog Ozzie. More at Longpath.org and @ariw.
Aja Monet
aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and aja monet follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first full collection of poems is titled, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter on Haymarket Books. Her poems explore gender, race, migration, and spirituality. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. aja monet cofounded a political home for artists and organizers called, Smoke Signals Studio. She facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. She is currently working on her next full collection of poems entitled, Florida Water. aja monet also serves as the new Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls. She recently released her first single called Give my regards to Brooklyn which will be followed by the release of her first full studio album in 2023.
Anand Giridharadas
Anand Giridharadas is a writer. He is the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and he is the publisher of the popular newsletter The Ink. He has spoken on stages around the world and taught narrative journalism at New York University. He is a regular on-air political analyst for MSNBC. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised there, in Paris, France, and in Maryland, and educated at the University of Michigan, Oxford, and Harvard. His writing has been honored by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year award, the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture from Harvard, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Priya Parker, and their two children.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. She co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. Her writing has been published widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Scientific American. She serves on the advisory boards of Environmental Voter Project and Scientific American, and on the board of directors for GreenWave and Patagonia. Recent recognitions include the Schneider Award for climate communication and Time’s 100 Next List. Outside magazine called her “the climate leader we need.” Dr. Johnson’s forthcoming book has the working title What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futurism. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Mayor Beverly Burks
Beverly Burks was sworn in as the mayor of Clarkston, Georgia, the most diverse city per mile, on November 30, 2020, after a special election. She is the first woman and the first person of color to serve as mayor of Clarkston. She ran unopposed for a four-year term in 2021. Mayor Burks is a graduate of Alabama State University, with a B.S. Degree in Computer Information Systems. Beverly worked for several fortune 100 companies as a business consultant and technical manager. Ms. Burks served as Executive Director of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. She worked as the Director of Community Engagement at the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority. Her current role is the Regional Director of Philanthropy and Public Relations for National Church Residences. As a Breast Cancer survivor and Health Advocate, Beverly works closely with Georgia State University Prevention Research Center to reduce health issues facing Clarkston.
Billy Ray
Billy Ray wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Captain Phillips, for which he won the WGA award. He also wrote, directed, and executive-produced Showtime's "The Comey Rule," which had the biggest debut of any limited series in that network's history. Ray's films as writer, co-writer, or writer-director include "The Hunger Games," "Richard Jewell," "Shattered Glass," and "Breach." He serves on the boards of Common Defense and Big Sunday. He believes in democracy, justice, and the Dodgers.
Dr. Bhavik Kumar
Bhavik Kumar, MD, MPH, is a family medicine physician serving as Medical Director for Primary & Trans Care with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, in Houston, TX. He has been an abortion provider in Texas since 2015. He previously worked with Whole Woman’s Health, traveling across Texas for years to maintain access to safe, legal abortion. He completed medical school at Texas Tech University HSC, residency training at Montefiore Medical Center, and a Fellowship in Family Planning at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Bhavik is an outspoken advocate for abortion and trans care access in the media and in the courts.
Bryan C. Lee
Bryan is an architect, educator, writer, and Design Justice activist. He is the founder/Design Principal of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit design practice. A founding organizer of the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University. Led two award-winning architecture + design programs for high school students through the Arts Council of New Orleans (local) and the National Organization of Minority Architects (national), respectively. National NOMA South VP. Many awards and fellowships. 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business and Youngest firm to win the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award in 2019. 2021 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.
David Spicer
David Spicer is the current Undergraduate Association President at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Political Science. Serving over 4,600 undergraduates, David leads initiatives around public service, mental health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. David’s education advocacy extends beyond MIT. He student taught mathematics in Cleveland and New York City. David has worked with the Equity Strategy and Programming team at DC Public Schools and the Rural Education Achievement Program and Office of Educational Technology teams at the United States Department of Education. Currently, he is interning at the Louisiana Board of Regents. Upon graduation David intends to teach high-school mathematics in Baton Rouge and then pursue a joint JD/PhD in education program.
Dee Davis
Dee Davis is the founder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies. Dee has helped design and lead national public information campaigns on topics as diverse as commercial television programming and federal banking policy. Dee began his media career in 1973 as a trainee at Appalshop, an arts and cultural center devoted to exploring Appalachian life and social issues in Whitesburg, Kentucky. As Appalshop's executive producer, the organization created more than 50 public TV documentaries, established a media training program for Appalachian youth, and launched initiatives that use media as a strategic tool in organization and development. Dee is the chair of the National Rural Assembly steering committee; he is a member of the Rural Advisory Committee of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Fund for Innovative Television, and Feral Arts of Brisbane, Australia. He is also a member of the Institute for Rural Journalism’s national advisory board. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Work and the Economy. Dee is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. Dee is also the former Chair of the board of directors of Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation.
Deja Foxx
ACTIVIST. STRATEGIST.FUTURE POTUS. Deja Foxx is 21 years old and leading thought at the intersection of social justice and social media. She is the founder of GenZ Girl Gang, a student at Columbia University, and a Digital Creator with Ford Models who got her start advocating for reproductive justice after experiencing homelessness in her teenage years. At just 19, she worked for Kamala Harris as the Influencer and Surrogate Strategist and became one of the youngest presidential campaign staffers in modern history.
Derecka Purnell
Derecka Purnell is a human rights lawyer, researcher, and author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. She works to end police and prison violence by providing legal assistance, research, and training in community based organizations through an abolitionist framework. As a Skadden Fellow, she helped to build the Justice Project at Advancement Project’s National Office, which focused on consent decrees, police and prosecutor accountability, and jail closures. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Purnell co-created the COVID19 Policing Project at the Community Resource Hub for Safety Accountability. The project tracks police arrests, harassment, citations and other enforcement through public health orders related to the pandemic. Purnell received her JD from Harvard Law School, her BA from the University of Missouri- Kansas City, and studied public policy and economics at the University of California- Berkeley as a Public Policy and International Affairs Law Fellow. Her writing has been published widely, including in The Oxford Handbook of Race and Law in the United States (forthcoming), The Harvard Journal of African American Policy, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New York Magazine, Boston Review, Teen Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar. Purnell has lectured, studied, and strategized around social movements across the United States, The Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Australia. She is currently a columnist at The Guardian and a Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School.
Diana Chao
Diana Chao is a first-generation Buyi Chinese-American immigrant from Southern California. Diana founded Letters to Strangers (L2S) when she was a sophomore in high school after bipolar disorder, PTSD, and a blinding eye condition nearly ended her life. By beginning to heal through letters, she discovered that writing is humanity distilled into ink. Today, L2S is the largest global youth-for-youth mental health nonprofit, impacting over 35,000 people annually on six continents and publishing the world’s first youth-for-youth mental health guidebook for free. For this effort, Diana was honored by the U.S. President at the White House during the inaugural Mental Health Youth Action Forum, named a 2021 Princess Diana Legacy Award Winner, 2020 L'Oréal Paris Women of Worth, and Oprah Magazine's 2019 Health Hero. Having grown up below the poverty line with parents who don't speak English, Diana learned firsthand how healing is non-linear, complicated, and a process one shouldn't have to approach alone. So most of the time, she too is just trying to navigate this dizzying, mesmerizing journey we call
Elle Moxley
Elle Moxley is a renowned Black liberation artist, model, storyteller, director, producer, community organizer, and speaker from Columbus, Ohio. Currently, she is the CEO of Forever Free Productions and the Director of the featured documentary “Black Beauty.” She also serves as the Executive Director and Founder of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute. A freedom fighter, advocating for Black Trans Lives and multicultural women’s stories, she has led campaigns including “Raise The Debate,” #SayHerName National Day of Action, and the first-ever National Day of Action for BLACK Trans Women in 2015. As a thought leader, she has delivered Keynotes at The Movement for BLACK Lives inaugural convening, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in BLACK Culture. As a model, she has collaborated with fashion designer Pyer Moss and has been a Billboard feature for H&M in Times Square. As a multi-faceted public figure, she has been recognized within Essence’s Woke 100, The Root 100’s Most Influential African Americans, and Avenue Magazine’s Power List 100. Her work has been featured in TIME, CNN, MTV, The New York Times, and more.
Ezra Klein
Using his trademark depth of policy knowledge and academic research, Ezra Klein gives audiences a systematic look at why American politics is so polarized, and what that polarization has done to electoral institutions, policymaking, and the media. Klein is a columnist on the New York Times opinion page, host of the award-winning “Ezra Klein Show” podcast, and author of the bestselling book, “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was the founder, editor-in-chief, and then editor-at-large of Vox, the explanatory news platform, which has won a bevy of awards and now reaches more than 50 million people each month. He was also a creator and executive producer of its hit Netflix show, “Explained.” Prior to starting Vox, Klein founded and led The Washington Post’s Wonkblog. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg News and a regular contributor/policy analyst for MSNBC. The Economist named him one of the “Minds of the Moment.” In 2011, TIME named his blog one of the 25 best financial blogs and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers named Klein as their 2011 Opinion Columnist of the Year. In 2012, GQ named him to their 50 Most Powerful People in Washington list and Esquire named him to their 79 Things We Can All Agree On list saying, “Ezra Klein gives economics columnists a good name.”
George Goehl
At age 21, George Goehl walked into a soup kitchen to eat. Over time, he became an employee, first washing dishes and eventually helping run the place. Three years into his time there, he was struck by the fact that the soup kitchen line continued to grow, not shrink. It was then that George began to organize. He has spent the last 25 years bringing rural and urban people together to team up to tackle some of the biggest issues facing their communities and the country. For 15 years George led People’s Action, one of the largest organizations of low-income and working-class people in the United States. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, he created the most substantial progressive rural organizing program in the country, having conversations with hundreds of thousands of rural people. Under his leadership, People’s Action launched the largest deep canvass program in the country, training thousands of volunteers to have non-judgmental conversations on hot-button topics with people who they did not (yet) see eye to eye. George is the host of the podcast, To See Each Other, which tells the story of people in areas often described as Trump country, coming together, against the odds, to work together to solve the problems facing their community. He is currently traveling through the rural Midwest having conversations with people from across the political spectrum. George’s work has been featured in The Atlantic, the New York Times, Washington Post, on CNN, MSNBC, and Rolling Stone.
Heather McGhee
Heather designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. Over her career in public policy, Heather has crafted legislation, testified before Congress and helped shape presidential campaign platforms. Her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was longlisted for the National Book Award and Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The New York Times called it, “The book that should change how progressives talk about race.” and the Chicago Tribune said, “Required reading to move the country forward...”. It is a Washington Post and TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2021. The paperback version will be out in February 2022. The Sum of Us will be adapted into a Spotify podcast by Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama in June 2022, and into a young adult readers’ version by Random House Children’s in 2023. Heather is an educator, serving currently as a Visiting Lecturer in Urban Studies at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. She has also held visiting positions at Yale University’s Brady-Johnson Grand Strategy Program and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. She is the recipient of honorary degrees from Muhlenberg College, Niagara University, and CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy. For nearly two decades, Heather helped build the non-partisan "think and do" tank Demos, serving four years as president. Under McGhee’s leadership, Demos moved their original idea for “debt-free college” into the center of the 2016 presidential debate, argued before the Supreme Court to protect voting rights in January 2018, helped win pro-voter reforms in five states over two years, provided expert testimony to Congressional committees, including a Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2017, and led the research campaigns behind successful wage increases for low-paid workers on federal contracts, as well as at McDonalds, Walmart and other chain retailers. As an executive, McGhee transformed Demos on multiple levels. She led a successful strategic planning and rebranding process. She designed a Racial Equity Organizational Transformation which led to an increase in staff racial diversity (from 27 percent people of color to 60 percent in four years), an original racial equity curriculum for staff professional development and a complete overhaul of the organization’s research, litigation and campaign strategies using a racial equity lens. McGhee also nearly doubled the organizational budget in four years. A strong coalition-builder and trusted cross-movement leader, McGhee deepened Demos’ influence through new networks and collaborations inside and outside the Beltway. An influential voice in the media and a former NBC contributor, McGhee regularly appears on NBC’s Meet the Press and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Deadline White House and All In. Her 2020 TED talk is entitled “Racism Has a Cost for Everyone”. She has shared her opinions, writing and research in numerous outlets, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico and National Public Radio. McGhee’s conversation on a C-SPAN program in 2016 with a white man who asked for her help to overcome his racial prejudice went viral, receiving more than 10 million views and sparking wide media coverage that included a New York Times op-ed, a New Yorker piece and a CNN town hall. In spring 2018, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz asked McGhee to advise the company as it designed an anti-bias training for 250,000 employees in the wake of the unjust arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia store. McGhee wrote a report with recommendations for how Starbucks can apply a racial equity lens to their businesses, and how other companies both large and small can benefit from doing the same. McGhee also played a leadership role in steering the historic Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and was one of the key advocates credited for the adoption of the Volcker Rule. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law,. McGhee is the chair of the board of Color Of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, and also serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Open Society Foundations’ US Programs and Demos.
Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji is the first recipient of Oprah Winfrey’s “Chutzpah Award” for boldness. She is also the founder of Moral Courage College, which mentors people worldwide to turn contentious issues into constructive conversations -- and shared action. A professor of leadership at New York University for many years, Irshad now teaches with Oxford University's Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. She is the New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of Don't Label Me: How to Do Diversity WIthout Inflaming the Culture Wars. (Fun fact: Chris Rock calls the book "genius." Another fun fact: Not everybody agrees with Chris Rock.)
Jinho “Piper” Ferreira
Jinho “Piper” Ferreira is a writer, rapper and actor from Oakland, California. His platinum selling alternative hip-hop band Flipsyde has toured internationally with artists such as Snoop Dogg, Akon, The Game and more. In response to police killings across the country, one of the victims being his lifelong friend Jihad Akbar, Jinho decided to pay his own way through the police academy. Jinho devoted 8 years to affect change from the inside and resigned from policing in 2019. Jinho is a Sundance Lab Fellow, Tribeca All Access award winner, and SFFILM alum. He holds a BA in Black Studies from San Francisco State University, where he is also a member of the Alumni Hall of Fame. In December 2021, it was reported that Jinho signed a deal with the Mark Gordon Company, Entertainment One and BET, for a television series motivated by his experiences in law enforcement. Jinho will serve as the executive producer and head writer. .
José Garza
José Garza was elected Travis County District Attorney on November 3, 2020. As a former federal public defender, immigrant rights activist, and leader of the systemic change organization, Workers Defense Project, José Garza has a unique view into how our broken criminal justice system works and how it impacts our communities. He believes we can fix it together. José attended law school at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and worked for Judge Richard W. Roberts in federal district court for the District of Columbia. He returned to Texas to work on the border as an assistant public defender in the first multi-county public defender’s office in Texas at Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. Subsequently, José served as an assistant federal public defender in the Western District of Texas, where he represented people accused of misdemeanor and felony crimes. In those experiences, he saw first hand how our system weighs most heavily on people of color, working people and poor people, and immigrant families. José later returned to Washington, D.C. to serve as the Deputy General Counsel for the House Committee on Education and Labor. He went on to work as Special Counsel to the National Labor Relations Board where he represented the agency against legal attacks brought by a Republican Congress. He eventually served Secretary Tom Perez as a senior policy official at the U.S. Department of Labor where he worked to ensure that working people and people of color were able to find safety and stability in good jobs. José brings to the office of the District Attorney extensive experience building power with communities of color, working families, and immigrant communities across Texas. During his tenure as the Executive Director of Workers Defense Project, the organization won significant criminal justice reform in Travis County, won paid sick leave policies in Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, and advocated for the creation of a Public Defender Office alongside community allies in Travis County.
Kathleen Belew
The Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago, Kathleen Belew specializes in the recent history of the United States, examining the long aftermath of warfare. Her book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, explores how white power activists wrought a cohesive social movement through a common story about warfare and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting previously disparate Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, Belew reveals how the movement carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. Her latest book, A Field Guide to White Supremacy (co-edited alongside Ramon A. Gutierrez), connects the dots between current events—acts of hate, racial violence, and racist law-making—and the deep, violent roots of white supremacy in this country. It is poised to become an urgent and essential reading for legislators, educators, journalists, activists, and citizens of all stripes. As a speaker, Belew is lucid and compelling, showing us the common threads in white supremacist actions at every scale, from hate crimes and mass attacks to policy and law. Covering immigration, antisemitism, gendered violence, lynching, and organized domestic terrorism, the book and her accompanying talks reveal an unsavory, but necessary truth: white supremacy is a motivating force in many parts of American life. In her forthcoming book with Random House, titled Home, At the End of the World, Belew illuminates our apocalyptic era through the history of her native Colorado. She’ll reveal how the high-profile kidnappings and murders, dangerous right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting exposed rifts in America’s social fabric—dramatically changing our national relationship with place, violence, and politics. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her research has received the support of the Andrew W. Mellow and Jacob K. Javits Foundations, as well as Albert J. Beveridge and John F. Enders grants for research in Mexico and Nicaragua. She holds a doctoral degree in American Studies from Yale University. She earned her undergraduate degree in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington in 2005, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. Belew’s research currently focuses on processes of militarization in the domestic United State and the idea of the apocalypse in American history and culture. Her award-winning teaching centers on the themes of race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.
Ken Harbaugh
Ken Harbaugh is a former Navy pilot and past president of Team Rubicon Global. He has served in senior leadership roles at multiple veteran service organizations, and is a prominent commentator on leadership and civil-military affairs, serving as a guest fellow at Yale University and writing for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Yale Journal of International Law. In 2021, Ken received the National Conference on Citizenship HOOAH award, given annually to an American veteran "who defines citizenship through service to our country, both in uniform and beyond." He is the host of several award-winning podcasts, including Reclaiming Patriotism (Crooked Media) and Warriors In Their Own Words (Evergreen Podcasts), and is an Executive Producer for the upcoming feature film Against All Enemies. He holds a BS from Duke University and a JD from Yale Law School.
Kris Bowers
Kris Bowers is an award-winning film score composer and pianist known for his thought-provoking playing style, creating genre-defying film compositions that pay homage to his classical and jazz roots. Bowers has composed music for film, television, documentary, and video games collaborating with musicians and artists across genres, including Jay Z, Kanye West, Kobe Bryant, Mahershala Ali, Justin Simien, and Ava DuVernay. His works include The Snowy Day (for which he won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition in 2017), Dear White People, Green Book, When They See Us, Black Monday, Madden NFL 20, Mrs. America, Bridgerton, Bad Hair, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Respect, and King Richard. In 2018, Bowers scored Monsters and Men, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Bowers’ work also appeared in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries, When They See Us, which was given an Emmy nomination for Original Dramatic Score in 2019. Bowers’ original music and lyrics are featured in Madden NFL 19: Longshot, as well as the Madden 2020. In 2020, Bowers received an Emmy nomination for Original Dramatic Score for his work on the Netflix series, Mrs. America. In 2020, Bowers also co-directed the documentary short film, A Concerto is A Conversation, with documentary filmmaker Ben Proudfoot. The film, a New York Times Op-Doc – executive produced by Ava DuVernay, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at the 93rd Academy Awards. In 2021, Bowers also received Emmy nominations for Original Dramatic Score and Original Main Theme Music for his work on the Netflix series, Bridgerton.
Marielene Hincapié
Marielena Hincapié is executive director of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund. Hincapié has more than two decades of experience in the movement for immigrant justice. She has litigated key cases in defense of immigrant workers, including a precedent case making it illegal for employers to retaliate against undocumented workers who exercise their workplace rights, and other key cases at the intersection of immigration and labor law. Recognized as a seasoned strategist and bridge-builder, Hincapié has led national policy campaigns, such as the creation and successful implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Under Hincapié’s leadership, NILC has been at the legal forefront of the fight to stop President Trump’s attempt to rescind DACA, successfully representing DACA recipients and Make the Road New York in a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court found that the Trump administration’s rescission was “arbitrary and capricious.” Hincapié was appointed cochair of the Biden-Sanders Unity Taskforce on Immigration. As an immigrant from Colombia, Hincapié brings her lived experience and bilingual/bicultural perspective to her work in the social justice movement.
Michael Harriot
Michael Harriot is a columnist at theGrio and a staff writer on The Amber Ruffin
Show. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and BET; he is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and CNN known for his biting
observations and investigative reporting. Michael’s work has earned the National Association of Black Journalists award for digital commentary. He holds degrees in mass communications and history from Auburn University and a master's degree in macroeconomics and international business from Florida State University. His book Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America will be released this year.
Mike Washington
Mike Washington is just an average guy trying help out. Mikes mission is to assist veterans and First Responders to identify, understand and react to the forces of stress as a means to combating the forces of PTSD and suicide. Mike is a retired Seattle Firefighter with over 32 years of operational experience. In addition to his ordinary assignment as a firefighter, Mike was a member of the fire departments Peer Support Team as well as a Critical Incident Stress Debriefer, assisting firefighters around the country and now works as a psycho-therapist in Seattle specializing in trauma and PTSD issues. Mike Washington is a retired Marine Corps Master Sergeant with 23 years of service (7 active, 16reserve). Mike served as a Platoon Sgt in Desert Storm and served as a Counterintelligence Officer in Bosnia, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan as well as numerous other real-world missions. He also spent 18 months at the National Counter terrorism Center in Washington DC. Mike is a member of Team Rubicon, a veteran’s disaster relief organization and has responded to over a dozen disasters domestically and internationally. Mike was honored as Team Rubicon Veteran of the Year 2013. Mike is also the recipient of the 2019 HOOAH! Award given by the American Enterprise Institute's Counsel on Citizenship. Mike was featured on the Starbucks “Upstanders” program in 2017 and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for her 2021 “Honoring our Black Kings” Father’s Day Special. Mike volunteers with the organization Everytown For Gun Safety as a member of their Veterans Action Committee. IN 2020 Mike wrote an OpED for the Washington Post sharing story of suicide as it pertained to gun violence. Mike also provides mental health services to various first responder and military entities around the Seattle and Puget Sound area. Mike is a keynote speaker using his own story presents on the topics of stress, depression, PTSD and suicide, but most importantly PTG or Post Traumatic Growth. Mike’s motivation derives from his own personal experiences with PTSD from childhood to the fire service and war including the death of his son Sgt Michael T Washington while serving with the Marines in Afghanistan in 2008. Mike comes a long line of veterans including his wife Valerie. Mike is the proud father of Army veteran and ICU Nurse Aja, granddaughters Jada, Jasmine, Enza, Marceline and Violet. Mike holds a Master of Strategic Intelligence from American Military University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California.
Priya Parker
Priya Parker is helping us take a deeper look at how anyone can create collective meaning in modern life, one gathering at a time. She is a master facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and executive producer and host of the N ew York Times podcast, Together Apart. Parker h as spent 15 years helping leaders and communities have complicated conversations about community and identity and vision at moments of transition. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. Parker is a founding member of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Values Council and the New Models of Leadership, and a Senior Expert at Mobius Executive Leadership. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters ( Riverhead, 2018) has been named a Best Business Book of the year by Amazon, Esquire Magazine, NPR, the Financial Times, 1-800-CEO-READS and Bloomberg. She has spoken on the TED Main Stage, and her TEDx talk on purpose has been viewed over 1 million times. Parker’s work has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the W all Street Journal, NPR, TED.com, Forbes.com, Real Simple Magazine, Oprah.com, Bloomberg, Glamour, the Today Show and Morning Joe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Anand Giridharadas, and their two children.
Rafael Agustin
Rafael Agustin was a writer on the award-winning The CW show, Jane The Virgin, and is the author of the new memoir, Illegally Yours (Grand Central Publishing), which was selected as a Barnes & Noble “Priority Title”, as well as an Apple Books “Must Listen”. Agustin serves as CEO of the Latino Film Institute (LFI), where he oversees the Youth Cinema Project, the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), and LatinX in Animation. In 2018, LA Weekly named Agustin one of the fifty most essential people in Los Angeles. Also in 2018, the United Nations invited Agustin to speak at their 70th Anniversary Celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2021, Agustin was appointed to the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress. Agustin received his BA and MA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television, is an alumnus of the CBS Diversity Comedy Showcase, and is a Sundance Institute Episodic Fellow for his TV family comedy, Illegal, based on his life as a formerly undocumented American.
Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister is writer-at-large at New York Magazine. She was previously a senior editor at The New Republic, and prior to that spent ten years at Salon. She is a contributor to Elle and has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, the Washington Post, Glamour and Vogue. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018, awarded the 2018 National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary for her writing on the #metoo reckoning and sexual harassment, and awarded the 2016 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism. She has won several Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, as well as the 2012 Mirror Award for Best Commentary, Digital Media, from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. She is the author of Good and Mad (Simon & Schuster, 2018), a New York Times best seller and among the Washington Post and People’s ten best books of 2018, as well as All the Single Ladies (Simon & Schuster, 2016), a New York Times best seller and Notable Book of 2016, which was also named one of the best books of 2016 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Library Journal, and the Boston Globe. Traister lives in Maine.
Renee Bracey Sherman
Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. She is the founder and executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who’ve had abortions, and the co-author of the forthcoming book COUNTERING ABORTIONSPLAINING from Amistad/Harper Collins.
Ruha Benjamin
Ruha Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge and power. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award and the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Her most recent book, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, was born out of the twin plagues of COVID-19 and police violence, and offers a practical and principled approach to transforming our communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.
Dr. Safiya Noble
Dr. Safiya U. Noble is an internet studies scholar and Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She holds affiliations in the School of Education & Information Studies, and is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance (OxCAIGG). In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow (also known as the “Genius Award”) for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination, which prompted her founding of a non-profit, Equity Engine, to accelerate investment in companies, education, and networks driven by women of color. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. She is the recipient of a Hellman Fellowship and the UCLA Early Career Award. In 2022, she was recognized as the inaugural NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award recipient. Her academic research focuses on the internet and its impact on society. Her work is both sociological and interdisciplinary, marking the ways that digital media intersects with issues of race, gender, culture, power, and technology. She is regularly sought out for her expertise on issues of algorithmic discrimination and technology bias by national and international press including The Guardian, the BBC, CNN International, USA Today, Wired, Time, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The New York Times, and a host of network news and podcasts. Her popular writing includes critiques on the loss of public goods to Big Tech companies, as featured in Noema magazine. Safiya is the co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture and Class Online and Emotions, Technology & Design. She is a member of several academic journal and advisory boards, and holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.A. in Sociology from California State University, Fresno where she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award for 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumna Award from the iSchool Alumni Association, and is also the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Award winner from the Illinois Alumni Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Noble is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment. She was recently appointed as a board member for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, America’s Black think tank.
Scott Hechinger
For nearly a decade, Scott served as a public defender in Brooklyn, representing thousands of people charged with crimes who couldn’t afford an attorney, but also long shared his perspective as a public defender outside of court in a variety of media to shift the narrative and drive systemic change. While practicing, Scott co-founded the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, which freed thousands of people caged pretrial, and served as Director of Policy, leading creative defender advocacy, as well as design and implementation of multiple new media advocacy films and campaigns. Zealous is an outgrowth of this work as a public defender at the intersection of practice and media advocacy. Zealous is a national advocacy and education initiative supporting and training public defenders, advocates, and people with direct experience to harness the power of media, technology, storytelling, and the arts in order to topple the historic imbalance of power over criminal justice media and policy. The ultimate goal: Enduring and transformative policy change to end mass criminalization. Scott speaks widely, lectures at law schools and universities, advises corporations and organizations on criminal justice media projects and campaigns, and his work and commentary are regularly featured in a range of major national and local outlets.
Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011). He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He was born and raised in Buffalo, New York and resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Uzo Aduba
A formidable talent to be reckoned with, Uzo Aduba is a, three-time Emmy award-winning, and Tony award-nominated actress whose work spans television, film, and theatre. Up next Aduba will be starring in THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT with Aunjanue Ellis and Sanaa Lathan, being directed by Tina Marbry. Aduba also recently wrapped production for the upcoming Netflix limited series, PAINKILLER. She will star alongside Matthew Broderick during the six-episode series. It will dramatize the origins of the opioid crisis with a focus on Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. On screen Aduba can be seen starring in Disney Pixar’s LIGHTYEAR alongside Chris Evans, Keke Palmer and Taika Waititi. The highly anticipated animated film features the origin story of TOY STORY's beloved Buzz Lightyear. Aduba plays Alisha Hawthorne, a fellow astronaut of Buzz whose life and sacrifices shape him into the hero he is known as of today. The film was premiere in June 2022. Aduba launched her production company, Meynon Media, and signed a multi-year producing deal with CBS Studios early last year. Under her production company, Aduba produced Marianne Farley’s FRIMAS. The live action short tells the story of Kara, who turns to an illegal mobile abortion clinic when she finds herself pregnant in a country where abortion is banned with devastating consequences. In January, Aduba starred alongside Ron Cephas Jones in Second Stage Theater’s Broadway production of Lynn Nottage’s play, CLYDE’S. Set in a truck stop sandwich shop, where its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff are given a shot at redemption. The play ran from November until January at The Hayes Theater. Aduba was nominated for a Tony Award® and a Drama League Award for her performance. On the small screen, Aduba recently starred in the Emmy®-winning drama series, IN TREATMENT which returned for a fourth season in May of 2021 on HBO. Aduba earned her fifth Emmy® award nomination playing Dr. Brooke Taylor who is at the center of the series, treating a diverse trio of patients while also dealing with her own issues. Aduba also starred alongside Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren in Amazon Studios’ anthology series, SOLOS. The dramatic and thought-provoking seven-part series explores the deeper meaning of human connection, as explored through the lens of the individual. SOLOS tells unique character-driven stories, each from a different perspective and moment in time. In 2021 Aduba starred alongside J.K. Simmons in the STX film, NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. The film is an adaptation of Adam Mervis’s play of the same name which tells the story of a quarterback who ignites a players’ strike to fight for fair compensation, equality, and respect for athletes. Aduba played Katherine, the outside counsel to the NCAA in the Ric Roman Waugh-directed feature. Her other film credits include the independent drama MISS VIRGINA, BEATS (Netflix), CANDY JAR (Netflix), MY LITTLE PONY (Lionsgate and Hasbro), AMERICAN PASTORAL (Lionsgate) opposite Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning, and Sian Heder’s TALLULAH (Netflix). In 2020, Aduba earned her third Emmy® award and second Critics Choice® award for her portrayal of Shirley Chisholm in FX on Hulu’s limited series, MRS. AMERICA. Chisholm not only made history as the first African American Congresswoman, but also became the first African American candidate to run for President from a national political party when she launched her unprecedented 1972 campaign. The critically acclaimed and award nominated series tells the story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the unexpected backlash led by a conservative woman named Phyllis Schlafly, played by Cate Blanchett. Previously on television, Aduba finished her celebrated run as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in the critically acclaimed Netflix Original Series ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. Her performance garnered a sweep of awards including the 2016 and 2015 SAG Award for “Best Actress in Comedy,” the 2017 SAG Award nomination for “Best Actress in a Comedy,” the 2015 Emmy® Award for “Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series” and the 2014 Emmy® Award for “Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy.” In addition, Aduba was honored as part of the show’s win in the category of “Best Ensemble in a Comedy” at the 2017, 2016 and 2015 SAG Awards. For her Emmy® wins, Aduba joined Ed Asner to become only the second actor ever to win Emmys® for the same role in the comedy and drama categories. Furthermore, with her SAG and Emmy® honors, she became the first African American actress to win the award in each category. She was also nominated for the 2015 and 2016 Golden Globe Award® for "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Series, Mini-Series, or TV Movie." The show’s seventh and final season launched on Netflix in Summer 2019. On stage, Aduba made her Broadway debut in CORAM BOY in 2007 followed by the hit musical revival of GODSPELL in 2011. She discovered her talent for singing at a very early age and became a classical music major at the Boston University School of Fine Arts. Work in theatre quickly followed with critically acclaimed performances at both The Huntington Theatre in Boston and A.R.T. where, under the direction of Dianne Paulus, she won the prestigious Elliot Norton Award for Best Actress in a Play. She made her West End Theatre debut in The Jamie Lloyd Company's contemporary adaptation of Jean Genet's THE MAIDS. Directed by Lloyd, the play also starred Laura Carmichael and Zawe Ashton. Aduba was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Play for her work in the Kennedy Center/Olney Theater production of TRANSLATIONS OF XHOSA. Other theater credits include DESSA ROSE at the New Repertory Theatre, TURNADO: RUMBLE FOR THE RING at the Bay Street Theater and ABYSSINIA at the Goodspeed Theatre. She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Warsan Shire
Warsan Shire is a Somali British writer and poet born in Nairobi and raised in London. She has written two chapbooks, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body. She was awarded the inaugural Brunel International African Poetry Prize and served as the first Young Poet Laureate of London. She was the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature and is included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. Shire wrote the poetry for the Peabody Award–winning visual album Lemonade and the Disney film Black Is King in collaboration with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising, highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa’s largest refugee camp. Warsan Shire lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head published in 2022 is her full-length debut poetry collection.
Zoë Jenkins
Zoë Jenkins (she/her) is a 19-year-old practicing empathy and reimagining education. She founded the Get Schooled podcast and is a Senior Advisor of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. Zoë also created DICCE, a curriculum training Gen Z in cultural responsiveness, empathy, and equity. She has worked with Stanford University and The Nobel Prize and has been featured in The Washington Post and NPR’s All Things Considered. She directed alumni relations and served on the inaugural Steering Committee at Civics Unplugged. Zoë is a rising second year at the University of Virginia studying education, politics, and economics.