Seema Agnani is the Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD) – a coalition of more than 100 community-based organizations in 19 states and the Pacific Islands. Collectively the coalition improves the lives of over two-million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in poverty by providing voice, tools, and shared knowledge to drive change. Currently, she serves on the Community Advisory Board, Consumer Financial Protections Bureau and is an officer of the board of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT). She was originally from the Chicago metro area, her parents emigrated to the US from India. Media includes: The Nation, The New York Times, WNYC.

Karin Wang is the Executive Director of UCLA School of Law's David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. In that role, she heads the nation’s leading academic program focused on training the next generation of lawyers working in nonprofit, advocacy, and government sectors. Previously, she was the Vice-President of Programs & Communications for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the nation’s largest legal organization for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. For more than 20 years, Wang has advocated for civil rights and immigrant rights, covering issues such as race discrimination and defamation, language rights, immigration and immigrant integration, and LGBT equality. As a young attorney, she directed Advancing Justice-LA’s immigrant rights project and she also launched the Los Angeles civil rights field office of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Media includes: The New York Times, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, NBC.

Nancy Wang Yuen is a sociologist and expert on race and racism in Hollywood. She is also an award-winning associate professor at Biola University. Nancy is the author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (2016) and co-editor of Power Women: Stories of Motherhood, Faith, and the Academy (2021). She has co-authored multiple media reports including, “Tokens on the Small Screen: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on Prime Time and Streaming Television” (2017), “Terrorists and Tyrants: Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Actors in Prime Time & Streaming Television,” (2018), and “The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders Across 1,300 Popular Films” (2021). Nancy is currently writing a book about her life through the films and television shows she grew up watching. Media includes: Elle, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, NBC, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, CBS.

Theresa Lau is an attorney with experience working with clients and community advocates, advancing impact litigation, and leading health care policy campaigns. Theresa is currently Civil Rights Counsel and on the Oversight Team and HELP Committee of the United States Senate. Theresa was previously Senior Counsel on the Strategy and Policy Team at the National Women's Law Center. Theresa primarily led the NWLC's Judges & Courts portfolio, which focuses on judicial nominations campaigns and the impact of the courts on the fight for gender justice. Prior to joining NWLC, she was a National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Law Foundation Fellow at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice where she advanced impact litigation on behalf of low-income communities and implemented a community-based health care access project. Media includes: Refinery29, NBC News.

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, lawyer, and racial justice advocate. Currently, Deepa is a Strategic Advisor at Building Movement Project and Director of Solidarity Is, a project that provides trainings, narratives, and resources on building deep and lasting multiracial solidarity. Deepa’s areas of expertise include the post 9/11 America experiences of South Asian, Muslim, Arab and Sikh immigrants, immigration and civil rights policies, and racial equity and solidarity practices. Deepa has worked at various national and local organizations with a focus on immigrant and racial justice. She served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade, and has also held positions at Race Forward, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, and the Asian American Justice Center. Media includes: The New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, NPR.

Duyeon Kim is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a Columnist with The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum founded by former National Security Advisor Chung Yung-woo. Kim specializes in both functional and regional issues: nuclear nonproliferation, the two Koreas, East Asian relations and geopolitics, U.S. nuclear policy, arms control, and security. Kim was an Associate in the Nuclear Policy and Asia programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and previously a Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. Media includes: The New York TImes, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Donga Ilbo, Japan Times, CNN, BBC, KBS.

Associate Professor of Counseling at San Diego State University, Nellie Tran studies subtle gender biases within the educational context for students and faculty, especially women and people of color. She holds a Ph.D. in Community and Prevention Psychology, is a funded National Science Foundation researcher, has held multiple national elected positions in the Asian American Psychological Association and the Society for Community Research and Action, and has developed and runs several leadership and empowerment programs for students and early career professionals nation-wide. As a professor at SDSU, she trains master's level multicultural community counseling students and serves as the faculty advisor to the Asian Pacific Student Alliance. Media includes: Teaching Tolerance Magazine.

Grace Huang, J.D., is the Policy Director at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence. For 25 years, she has advocated on behalf of domestic and sexual violence survivors and immigrants. Huang also previously practiced immigration law, as well as represented low-income individuals in a civil legal aid organization. Huang continues to work on federal legislative and administrative policies to address the needs of victims, including on immigration legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, the Family Violence Services and Prevention Act, and the Victims of Crime Act. Media includes: The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, The Hill, Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Refinery29, Vice.

Laboni Hoq is an experienced civil rights lawyer who founded Hoq Law in 2020. Her practice draws from her over twenty-year career successfully litigating high-profile cases on behalf of workers, immigrants and those seeking government accountability. Prior to starting her own firm, Ms. Hoq was the Litigation Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles for eight years, where she directed the organization’s impact litigation unit. Among the notable immigrants’ rights cases Hoq has litigated is Gomez v. Trump, a case which resulted in summary judgement against the Trump administration for its policy that effectively ended the 2020 Diversity visa program. The case resulted in over 13,000 diversity lottery winners regaining their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immigrate to the U.S. Hoq was also class counsel in Chhoeun v. Homan and Trinh v. Homan, two cases that stopped the Trump administration’s policies of targeting refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam for prolonged detention and summary deportation without due process. Media includes: Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, The Sacramento Bee, NBC News.

Thuc Doan Nguyen is a Los Angeles-based writer and producer and the founder of "The Bitch Pack", a group dedicated to promoting female-driven screenplays through Twitter and other social media sites. She is an expert in Asian American representation in film and screenwriting. Nguyen was born in Vietnam, and grew up in North Carolina and Southern Maryland. Media includes: The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire, The Huffington Post.

Debjani Roy has been an advocate for women’s rights and equality in the US and UK for ten years. She is currently Associate Director of Training and Prevention at Sexual Violence Response at Columbia University. Her publications include An Employer, Union, and Service Provider’s Guide to Ending Street Harassment, South Asian Battered Women's Use of Force against Intimate Male Partners in the Violence Against Women Sage Journal and An Introduction to Forced Marriage in the South Asian Community in the United States, published by Manavi under the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women. Media includes: Al Jazeera, The Daily Show, HuffPost, NPR, Fox News.

Tiffany Yap is a senior scientist and a wildlife corridor advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. As a conservation scientist, Tiffany is passionate about protecting biodiversity and environmental health, especially in the wildland urban interface. She is an expert on mountain lions, amphibians, wildlife connectivity, and wildfire. Her research includes how human activities and land use impact sensitive species and habitats. Tiffany’s work is influenced by her background as an Asian American woman with Chinese Filipino heritage working in STEM. Media includes: Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR.

Dr. Ying ZHU is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed academic journal Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. A leading expert in Chinese film and television, her research areas encompass Chinese cinema and media, Sino-Hollywood relations, and streaming media and serial narrative. She has published three research monographs including Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television (2013), and six co-edited books including Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds (2019). Her first research monograph, Chinese Cinema During the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System (2003) pioneered the industry analysis of Chinese film studios, with the Journal of Asian Studies calling it “a path-breaking book that initiated the institutional study of Chinese cinema.” Media includes: Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, CNN, NPR.

Sayu Bhojwani is a democracy futurist, ambition amplifier and dream doula. She is the President and Principal at Women's Democracy Lab. Sayu is the founder and former president of New American Leaders, which is working to build an inclusive democracy. From 2002 to 2004, she was New York City’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and in 1997 she founded South Asian Youth Action (SAYA!), the first and only organization working exclusively with South Asian youth. Her TED Talk, “How immigrants voices make democracy stronger” can be found on ted.com. Media includes: The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, Politico, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, PBS.

Nisha Varia is an experienced human rights investigator, author, advocate, and trainer who has worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Varia was advocacy director of Human Rights Watch's women's rights division between 2015 and 2022 and a researcher between 2003 and 2014. At Human Rights Watch she conducted extensive research and advocacy to promote migrant domestic workers’ rights across Asia and the Middle East. She also reported on gender-based violence in conflict and refugee settings and abuses related to coal mining operations. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Varia worked at the International Center for Research on Women and was a Fulbright scholar to India. Media includes: Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Economist, CNN, BBC.

Rinku Sen is a writer and social justice strategist. She is the Executive Director of Narrative Initiative and was formerly the Executive Director of Race Forward and Publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. Race Forward brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity through research, media, and practice. Under Sen’s leadership, Race Forward generated some of the most impactful racial justice successes. One example is the groundbreaking Shattered Families report, which changed the immigration debate with research on how record deportations of parents were leading to the placement of thousands of children in foster care, often separating them permanently from their families. Media includes: The Huffington Post, The Nation, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, MSNBC, NPR.

Juhu Thukral is a social justice lawyer and founder of numerous social impact ventures focused on rights and opportunity for women and girls, LGBTQ people, and Black/Brown/Asian/immigrant communities. She is a policy, communications, and advocacy expert who bridges across sectors and engages new audiences to drive social impact and create enduring change. Juhu has been a founder and on executive leadership teams for social impact enterprises with both domestic and global focus, including: The Opportunity Agenda; Narrative Initiative; Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center; NY Anti-Trafficking Network; and the NYC Women’s Salon. Media includes: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, WNYC, ABC.

Shivana Jorawar is a lawyer and policy advocate who currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Jahajee Sisters, an organization she co-founded. Jahajee Sisters is a grassroots organization based in New York City creating a safer and more equitable society for Indo-Caribbean women through dialogue, arts, leadership development and grassroots organizing. Previously, she directed reproductive justice priorities for the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), the country's only national organization dedicated to social justice and human rights for Asian American and Pacific Islander women and girls. Media includes: Associated Press, Cosmopolitan, The Hill, The American Prospect, Colorlines, The Nation.

Kavita N. Ramdas is the former director of the Open Society Foundations’ Women’s Rights Program and is a globally recognized advocate for gender equity and justice. Ramdas previously served as strategy advisor for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization. From 1996 to 2010, Ramdas served as the second president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women where she transformed it into the largest public foundation for women’s rights in the world. From 2012 to 2015, she led the Ford Foundation’s operations in South Asia and then was senior advisor to President Darren Walker on issues related to the foundation’s global strategy. Media includes: NOW with Bill Moyers, PBS NewsHour, Democracy Now!, CNN.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a Marshall Islander poet, spoken word artist, and teacher. She has used her poetry to highlight the struggles of her people including social justice issues such as the threat of climate change for her islands, the American legacy of nuclear testing in her country, and racism against Micronesians in Hawaii. She received international acclaim after performing at the United Nations Climate Summit where she performed a poem to her daughter entitled, “Dear Matafele Peinam” which moved hundreds of world leaders to tears and has since launched her into global conversations on climate change. She also co-founded the youth environmentalist ngo Jo-Jikum based in the Marshall Islands, and is currently the Pacific Studies faculty instructor at the College of the Marshall Islands. Media includes: The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, CNN.