Sherridan Schwartz is Graduate Program Coordinator at the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Schwartz is also a Visiting Professor in the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. She does extensive research in the fields of Political Science, Race, Higher Education, Sports. She resides in the neighborhood that George Floyd and his family is from and his high school is nestled between the two universities - Texas Southern and Houston - where she works. An expert in politics, race, public health and disaster recovery, Professor Schwartz has extensive media experience.

Through research, writing, legal services, and organizing, Andrea J. Ritchie has dedicated the past two decades to challenging racial profiling, police violence, criminalization and mass incarceration, with a particular focus on the experiences of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of color. She is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (Beacon Press 2017) and co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (African American Policy Forum 2015), and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States(Beacon Press 2011). She is a nationally recognized expert and commentator on policing issues. Media includes: The New York Times, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, MSNBC, C-Span, NBC, NPR.

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. A practitioner of telling more complete stories, her research includes interrogating historical conjunctures of Black freedom-making post-emancipation and decolonial revolution, Black governance, Black feminist and queer theory. Her work spans more than 15 years of community organizing across racial, gender and economic justice movements. As the founding national director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), she has worked alongside hundreds of young Black activists to build a national member-led organization of Black 18-35 year olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Her passion for developing young leaders to build capacity within marginalized communities has led her to work on immigrant rights, economic justice and civil rights campaigns nationwide. Charlene is author of the bestselling book, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements and is working on her Black Studies PhD at Northwestern University. Media includes: Huffington Post, The Grio, MSNBC, BBC, NPR.

Rinku Sen, the Executive Director of Narrative Initiative, is the former President and Executive Director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation and the Publisher of the 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. Rinku’s books Stir it Up and The Accidental American theorize a model of community organizing that integrates a political analysis of race, gender, class, poverty, sexuality, and other systems. Media includes: Associated Press, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC.

Kristal Brent Zook, Ph.D. is an award-winning journalist. She is the author of I See Black People: Interviews with African American Owners of Radio and Television and Black Women's Lives: Stories of Power and Pain. Brent Zook 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: The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, Fox.

Christian F. Nunes is President of the National Organization for Women’s, and is leading the organization through an intersectional lens, bringing a diverse coalition of grassroots activists to work against structural sexism and racism. Along with her activism for mental health, Nunes also has over 20 years of experience advocating for children’s and women’s issues. Media includes: Business Insider, Salt Lake Tribune, CBS, PBS.

Celeste Faison is the Director of Campaigns at National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-founder of the Blackout Collective. A seasoned organizer, she cut her teeth as a youth organizer in 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement and served as lead organizer at Youth Together. An organizing strategist, Celeste served as assistant director of the League of Young Voters, training thousands of young people in new electoral organizing strategies that infused community organizing. Many of those methods were adopted by the Democratic party in 2008. During her time as a director of the Ruckus Society, Celeste fell in love with direct action. In 2014 she co-founded the Blackout Collective, an all Black direct action collective that assisted with shutting down the Bart and the topless #SayHerName action. She spends her free time traveling the country developing Black people as direct action trainers and strategist.

Sylvia A. Harvey is an award-winning journalist and author of The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family, a searing exposé of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families – including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up. Harvey is a longtime expert on the intersection of race, class, policy, and incarceration. Harvey’s research and reporting investigate the way culture, politics, history, public health, and financial insecurity affect our lives. She focuses on how some of our most important social institutions – the criminal legal system, the child welfare system, and the education system – exacerbate the collateral effects of mass incarceration on families and communities. Media includes: The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, Imprint News, Colorlines, NPR, WBAI.

Chantá Parker is a Partner with the Management Center where she coaches leaders to be more equitable, sustainable, and results-driven. She is the founding Managing Director of the Neighborhood Defender Service in Detroit where in 2019, she built a client-centered, holistic public defender office for residents of Wayne County. Previously, she served as the Special Counsel for New Initiatives at the Innocence Project in New York, NY. Chantá has over fifteen years of criminal defense experience, having worked as a supervising attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice of the Legal Aid Society’s Brooklyn office, and as a felony trial attorney with the Orleans Public Defenders. As a public defender, Chantá has seen up close the impact of mass incarceration on clients, their families, and their communities and has experienced the harms of mass incarceration both in her professional and personal life. Media includes: Detroit Free Press, The Gambit.

Angela Peoples is a strategist, trainer, and social justice economist focused on building movements for gender justice and Black liberation. She is CoFounder of The South—a brand where unapologetic Black culture defines political power. She was also Principal Strategist of MsPeoples and has worked on campaigns like No Justice, No Pride, #ForUsNotAmazon, and with organizations like The Groundwork Collaborative, and All Above All. The subject of the "Don't forget White Women Voted for Trump" viral photo, Peoples sees direct action and strategic storytelling as a platform for creative expression to engage uncomfortable truths. Media includes: The New York Times, The Hill, The Kojo Nnmandi Show.

Melanie E. Bates, Esq. is the Principal of Melanie Bates Consulting, LLC, a Washington, DC-based consultancy specializing in local government relations, criminal justice reform, and communications. Bates has a strong passion for criminal justice reform and believes it is incumbent upon our society to ensure that every person, regardless of socioeconomic status, has access to quality legal representation. Media includes: The Nation, Rolling Out, D.C.ist, Fox.

Shani Gilchrist is a writer, strategist, and advocate based in Columbia, SC. In writing, the bulk of her focus has been on diversity, equity, and inclusion as they pertain to interpersonal and community relationships and their wider contexts. She is an expert on systemic and societal racism as a human rights issue, critical thinking in social justice movements, reaching beyond racial differences; race, ethnicity, and policy in the South. Her strengths lie in analysis, forming strong arguments based upon solid research, personalizing current domestic and international events for readers, and identifying trends and context in culture, policy, and politics. Media includes: The Washington Post, Charleston City Paper, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Daily Beast, Garden & Gun, MSNBC, NPR.

Debbie Hines is a Washington, DC based trial attorney, legal analyst, former Baltimore prosecutor and member of the Supreme Court bar. Hines is an expert in criminal law, high profile criminal cases, gun control and gun laws, police brutality, death penalty, domestic violence and Supreme Court cases. She often addresses legal/political issues at the intersection of gender, race and class. As a former felony prosecutor, she tried homicides, attempted murders, rapes, burglaries, robberies, narcotics and economic crimes. Media includes: The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, BET, C-SPAN, CBS, CCTV, MSNBC, PBS, Sky News, Fox 5 News.

Recognized as a Black Feminist Rising in 2017 by Black Women’s Blueprint, Trina Greene Brown is a leader who is 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, Brown is a proud Black-feminist Mama-activist. In 2016, she founded Parenting for Liberation a platform for Black parents. Brown has worked in violence prevention for the past 15 years, managing multiple local and national initiatives. Media includes: The Washington Post, On-Air with Ryan Seacrest, Peace Over Violence.

Lenese Herbert is a Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law, where she teaches Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Social Media and the Law, and Administrative Law. Herbert co-authors Constitutional Criminal Procedure, a problem-based casebook adopted in a number of law schools across the U.S., as well as Criminal Law: Skills and Values. She is a contributing author to Race to Injustice: Lessons Learned From the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. Media includes: Voice of America, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, NBC.

Sunnetta "Sunny" Slaughter is a Master Connect, Vulnerability Expert, Executive Consultant, and the CEO of Sunny Slaughter Consulting, LLC. As a highly skilled and qualified thought-leader, Slaughter offers her perspective on the intersecting complexities of vulnerability, crime, criminality, oppressive systems, and policy. She has committed her life and efforts to uplifting and empowering women through her substantive work on intersectional violence against women and girls, gender bias, and addressing the impact Culture. Race. Inclusion. Equity. Diversity. (CRIED), and intentional Exclusion plays in societal norms and practices within corporate, college, and community culture. Media includes: CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX.

Koritha Mitchell is a 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. Mitchel is the author of From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture and Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 - 1930. Media includes: ColorLines,The Feminist Wire, Feministing, Vox.

Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College, and Interim President of Mount Holyoke College, is a clinical psychologist widely known for both her expertise on race relations and as a thought leader in higher education. The author of several books including the best-selling “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”and Other Conversations About Race and Can We Talk About Race? and Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation, Tatum is a sought-after speaker on the topic of racial identity development, the impact of race in the classroom, strategies for creating inclusive campus environments, and higher education leadership. Media includes: The Oprah Winfrey Show, The New York Times, Washington Post, Today Show, C-SPAN, CNN.

JeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. is a sociologist and leading scholar specializing in diversity, race relations and issues of women’s empowerment. JeffriAnne works as research faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder working on the Social Science research team at National Center for Women and Information Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Florida. As a black woman and sociologist, JeffriAnne is very passionate about connecting sociology to the everyday issues occurring within our society, especially issues that impact women, girls, and communities of color. As an advocate for social justice, JeffriAnne is the recipient of many research, teaching, and leadership awards, and her work has been published in an array of academic journals and publications. Media includes: The New York Times, The Grio, NPR.

Treva B. Lindsey, a full time professor at Ohio State University, is a Black feminist cultural critic, historian, and commentator. She is the author of Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C. Her 2015 three-part series for Cosmopolitan on an ex-cop, serial rapist who targeted Black women has been shared over 225,000 times. As one of the first writers to chronicle this harrowing story about Black women, sexual violence, and police brutality, Treva became a highly sought-after commentator, with editors from numerous outlets reaching out to her for new pieces on a wide range of topics. Media includes: Al Jazeera, Complex, Vox, The Root, Huffington Post, Popsugar, Teen Vogue, Grazia UK, The Grio, Cosmopolitan, BET.