Charlene A. Carruthers is a Black, queer feminist community organizer and writer with over 10 years of experience in racial justice, feminist and youth leadership development movement work. She currently serves as the national director of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), an activist 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. Media includes: Huffington Post, The Grio, MSNBC, BBC, NPR.

Rinku Sen 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. Media includes: Associated Press, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC.

Matisse Bustos-Hawkes served as Associate Director, Communications and Engagement at WITNESS. WITNESS is a nonprofit organization that trains and supports people worldwide to use video for human rights change. Bustos-Hawke led WITNESS’ communications, media relations and managed the organization’s strategic efforts to reach influential networks of human rights advocates, activists and more with their tools and resources. Media includes: The New York Times Magazine, PBS Newshour, WIRED, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now!, 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 peaks 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 an active community organizer and has spoken at events such as the March for Black Women in 2018. She is currently chair of National Organization for Women’s Racial Justice Task Force, and has just been elected NOW’s Vice President. 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 serves as a founding director of the Blackout Collective, a training organization with a mission to train 20,000 Black direct action strategist and practitioners by 2021. A nomadic New Yorker, she spends a majority of her free time on the road facilitating and building movement infrastructure as an active member of Movement for Black Lives. She is also 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. Piloted in New York and Georgia, the program has since expanded to seven states. Media includes: USA Today, Alternet, NBC.

Chantá Parker is the Managing Director of Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit, a public defense organization known nationally and internationally for its innovative, community-based, holistic public defense practice. As a public defender, criminal justice strategist, and leader, Parker has over ten 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. Media includes: Detroit Free Press, The Gambit.

Angela Peoples is an organizer, activist, political strategist, and social commentator working toward the liberation of all Black people. 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. She is the Founder and Principal Strategist of MsPeoples a progressive consulting group and currently serves as Campaigns Director for the Action Center on Race and the Economy. 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.

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 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, 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 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. Mitchel is the author of Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 - 1930. Media includes: ColorLines,The Feminist Wire, Feministing, Vox.

Imani Perry is a Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who studies race and African American culture using the tools provided by various disciplines including: law, literary and cultural studies, music, and the social sciences. She is the author of More Terrible, More Beautiful, The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the U.S. Media includes: The New York Times, Huffington Post, CNN.

Scholar, teacher, author, administrator and race relations expert Dr. Beverly Daniel 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. Media includes: The Oprah Winfrey Show, New York Times, Washington Post, Today Show, C-SPAN, CNN.

Dr. 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, The Grio, NPR.

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. 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.

Madeleine Bair leads the WITNESS Media Lab, which is dedicated to addressing the challenges of sourcing, verifying, and contextualizing eyewitness video to advance its use as a tool for human rights. An award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and thought leader, she is an expert on human rights video advocacy, ethics, and the role of citizen video in exposing abuse and bringing about justice. Media includes: Huffington Post, Chicago Public Radio.

Erika L. Wood is an Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School where she teaches Employment Discrimination, Legislation and Legal Practice.Wood has litigated complex civil rights case, authored several groundbreaking reports, numerous articles and is a frequent speaker and commentator on voting rights, criminal justice reform and racial justice issues. Media includes: The New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NPR.