Janet Dewart Bell is a social justice advocate, activist, executive coach, and motivational speaker, with a doctorate in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. She is the author of Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement. She has been a key strategist and senior executive at a number of national organizations including PolicyLink, the National Urban League, and National Public Radio (NPR). As Director of Communications at PolicyLink, Bell was instrumental in developing the organization’s collaborative approach to advocacy and communications and developed its trademark “Lifting up what works.”® She was the Director of Communications at the National Urban League, where she redesigned, edited, and marketed the League’s signature annual publication, The State of Black America. Media includes: The ED Show, NPR.

Koritha Mitchell is an associate professor of English at Ohio State University. Her research centers on African American literature, racial violence in United States history and contemporary culture, and Black drama and performance. She examines how texts, both written and performed, help targeted communities to survive and thrive. She is author of the new book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture and the award-winning book Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 - 1930. Media includes: Good Morning America, The Huffington Post, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR.

JeffriAnne Wilder is a sociologist and leading scholar specializing in diversity, race relations and women’s empowerment. She is currently a Research Scientist for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), a national non-profit organization aimed at broadening the participation of women and girls in computing. Prior to joining NCWIT, JeffriAnne was a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations at the University of North Florida. Media includes: The New York Times, Black Enterprise, The Grio, CNN, NPR.

Judy Lubin, PhD, MPH is a sociologist, policy analyst, racial justice advocate and founder and president of the Center for Urban and Racial Equity (CURE). She has 20 years of experience working at the intersection of racial equity, public health, communications, and policy advocacy. She is also a researcher in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University where she leads community-centered urban research initiatives. Lubin is a former Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Public Health Fellow and co-founder of Sociologists for Justice, an independent collective of over 2000 scholars organized in response to the disproportionate killing of Black people by police. Media includes: Washington Post, Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Ebony Magazine, Chicago Sun Times, Reuters, CNN, ABC News.

Jilisa Milton is an Alabama based civil rights attorney, policy analyst, social worker, racial justice activist, community organizer, and relational strategist. She has nearly a decade of experience working at the intersection of racial equity, critical race & feminist theory, poverty, criminal justice reform, mental health, and reproductive justice. Milton currently practices law in Alabama, implementing a project in the Black Belt that protects children with disabilities from entering the school to prison pipeline, and ensures access to disability-related legal services and health services. Media includes: Birmingham Times.

Carolyn M. West is Professor of Clinical Psychology in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and affiliate Professor in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is a nationally recognized Black feminist scholar who investigates gender-based violence in the lives of African American women, with a focus on domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. West has authored more than 70 academic publications and is editor/contributor of "Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue" (Routledge, 2002). She has taught courses on Sex Crimes and Sexual Violence, Family Violence, and the Psychology of Black Women for more than 30 years. Media includes: The San-Diego Union Tribune, Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, NBC, NPR.

A social scientist by training, Vanessa Tyson currently teaches in the Department of Politics at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Her courses include Black Americans and the Political System; Women and Public Policy; Introduction to Public Policy; Research Design; and Environmental Policy in the US. Dr. Tyson’s book, Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House of Representatives (Oxford University Press, 2016), explores structural inequality in policy formulation in the United States, and how members of Congress have formed multiracial coalitions as a strategy to provide for their diverse constituencies. Media includes: US News and World Report, The Sacramento Bee, The Huffington Post, NPR.

Kristal Brent Zook, Ph.D. is an award-winning journalist and the author of three books, her latest is I See Black People: Interviews with African American Owners of Radio and Television. Her previous book, Black Women's Lives: Stories of Power and Pain, is a collection of intimate portraits of women across the country, from an organic farmer in Vermont, to a filmmaker in Los Angeles. Kristal speaks regularly on popular culture and gender, multiracial identity and blackness, as well as social justice issues involving health, the environment and criminal justice. Media includes: Essence, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, CNN, NPR.

Host and Co-Executive Producer of “The Janus Adams Show,” pioneer of issue-oriented women’s programming, former NPR correspondent, Janus Adams is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and scholar of women’s and African-American history. A northern school desegregation pioneer and mother, she is founder of BackPaxKids. Engaged by history since childhood, a northern school desegregation pioneer at 8, she was one of the four children selected to break New York’s “de facto” public school segregation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Media includes: Essence, Ms. Magazines, The New York Times, Newsday, USA Today, The Washington Post, CBS, NPR.

Chandra Childers is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. She is an expert on social stratification and social and economic inequality by race and sex. Childers examines issues related to women and girls of color and job quality. Some of Chandra's publications include the Status of Black Women in the United States, Status of Women in the South, and Black and Hispanic Women Lag in Recovering from the Recession. Media includes: The Nation, The Atlantic, Voice of America, Refinery29, Al Jazeera.

Charlene A. Carruthers is a Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 15 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a national base of activist member-led organization of Black 18-35 year olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Media includes: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Reader, The Nation, Ebony, Essence Magazines, CNN, BBC, MSNBC.

Leah Wright Rigueur is an author, historian, speaker, and Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is an expert in race and politics, US political and social history, African American politics and history, and riots and American backlash, and holds a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Leah is the author of The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (2015), a book that offers a much-needed critical examination of the tense relationship that exists between African Americans and the GOP. Media includes: The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS News, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, CNN.

Scholar, teacher, author, administrator and race relations expert Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum was the ninth president of Spelman College. Dr. Tatum is a clinical psychologist whose areas of research include Black families in white communities, racial identity in teens, and the role of race in the classroom. For over 20 years, Dr. Tatum taught her signature course on the psychology of racism. She has also toured extensively, leading workshops on racial identity development and its impact in the classroom. Media includes: The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN.

Treva B. Lindsey is a Black feminist cultural critic, historian, and commentator. She is the author of the Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2017: "Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C." She is also a professor at The Ohio State University. Her work covers topics ranging from violence against women to fashion at the Met Gala. Many of her pieces focus on representations and experiences of Black women, although her work on race, gender, sexuality, culture and politics encompasses the far-reaching and often untold effects of current events and pop culture moments. Media includes: Al Jazeera, Complex, Vox, The Root, Huffington Post, PopSugar, Teen Vogue, The Grio, Cosmopolitan, BET.

Recognized as a Black Feminist Rising in 2017 by Black Women’s Blueprint, Trina Greene Brown is a leader on the rise and she’s taking Black parents and children along with her to higher heights. Bridging her 15 years of professional experience as a youth organizer in ending violence with her personal role as a parent of two Black children, Trina Greene Brown is a proud Black-feminist Mama-activist. In 2016, she founded Parenting for Liberation a platform for Black parents. Media includes: The Washington Post, On-Air with Ryan Seacrest.

Christina Greer is an Associate Professor of Political Science and American Studies at Fordham University (Lincoln Center Campus). She was the 2018 Fellow for the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University Silver School of Social Work. Her primary research and teaching interests are racial and ethnic politics, American urban centers, presidential politics, and campaigns and elections. Greer's book Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2013 ) investigates the increasingly ethnically diverse Black populations in the US from Africa and the Caribbean. She is currently writing her second manuscript and conducting research on the history of all African Americans who have run for the executive office in the U.S. Media includes: The New York Times, MSNBC, NY1, NPR.

Khalilah (Ka-Lie-La) L. Brown-Dean, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Political Science at Quinnipiac University and former Faculty Co-Coordinator of the Health Policy and Advocacy concentration at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine. She is the author of Identity Politics in the United States (Polity Press). The book moves beyond the headlines to show how conflicts over group identity are an inescapable feature of American political development. There’s no question that the United States is incredibly divided. Brown-Dean shows us how we got here, and more importantly, how we move forward. Media includes: The New York Times, The Hill, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Wall Street Journal, NPR.

Celeste Faison is a strategist and trainer who cut her teeth organizing in the Blackbelt, with 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement. She's been active ever since, working around issues of labor, electoral justice and policing. She is currently the National Domestic Workers Alliance Director of Black Organizing, where she launched “We Dream in Black,” a multi-state initiative that increases the leadership capacity of Black workers organizing for respect, recognition, and inclusion in labor protections. Media includes: San Francisco Bay View, AlterNet, USA Today, NBC.

Kimberly C. Ellis, Ph.D. is a scholar of American and Africana Studies, an award-winning performing artist, activist and entrepreneur who loves technology and social media. Her work on American studies, history, women's studies, theater and popular culture can be found in The Paradox of Loyalty: An African American Response to the War on Terror by Third World Press. Media includes: Voice of America, Black Enterprise, Ebony, BBC, NPR.

Tia Sherèe Gaynor, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation. Her research focuses on the unjust experiences’ individuals at the intersection of race, gender identity and sexual orientation have when interacting with systemic racism and social hierarchy in public administration. Media includes: Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, PopSugar, NPR.

Dr. Lessie Branch is Associate Professor in the School for Business at Metropolitan College of New York. She is a Racial Policy Scholar and a Fulbright Specialist in Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Politics. Her research examines the gulf between Black optimism about group progress and the actual data on continuing disparities and potentially speaks to wider questions of social knowledge, social beliefs and relative group position; even to questions of “consciousness” and ontology. Media includes: The New York Times, City and State, The Center for Public Integrity, WERS, TEDx.