Carolyn Foote is a 39-year educator who is passionate about advocacy, library space design and technology. Winner of the AASL Library Collaboration Award and a White House Champion of Change for Connected Learning in 2013, she is a champion for intellectual freedom and is currently a member of the @Freadomfighters team, fighting for students, librarians and authors. She writes frequently for library and education magazines. Find her most recent work in Twenty Things to Do with a Computer (ed. Gary Stager) or on her blog Not So Distant Future (www.futura.edublogs.org)

Baratunde Thurston holds space for hard and complex conversations with his blend of humor, wisdom, and compassion. He is an Emmy-nominated host, author of the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black [baratunde.com], and creator/host of How To Citizen with Baratunde [baratunde.com] which Apple named one of its favorite podcasts of 2020. He’s also a founding partner of the new media startup Puck [puck.news]. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED [baratunde.com] 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. Baratunde lives in Los Angeles, California but mostly in the cloud.

Priya Parker is a facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and executive producer and host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has spent 20 years guiding leaders and groups through complicated conversations about community, identity, and vision at moments of transition. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and two children.

George M. Johnson is an Award-Winning Black Non-Binary Writer, Author, and Activist located in the NYC area. George has written for major outlets including Teen Vogue, Entertainment Tonight, NBC, The Root, Buzzfeed, Essence, Ebony, THEM, and The Grio. They have also served as Guest Editor for BET.com’s Pride month. They were awarded the 2019 Salute to Excellence Award by the National Association of Black Journalists for their article “When Racism Anchors your Health” in Vice Magazine, and recently named to The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2020. They are the author of the Bestselling Young Adult memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue discussing their adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey through a series of powerful essays. The book will also be translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese, with a UK distribution set for 2021. George’s next memoir, We Are Not Broken, was released on September 7, 2021.

Antonia Hylton is an NBC News correspondent. She is an Emmy award-winning journalist reporting at the intersection of politics, civil rights, and immigration across NBC News platforms. In 2021, Hylton co-hosted the #1 hit podcast, Southlake, with co-host Mike Hixenbaugh. Southlake tells the story of how this idyllic city, and its local school board election, became the poster child for a new political strategy with national repercussions. Southlake hit #1 on podcast charts. From 2016 to 2020, Antonia worked for Vice Media and HBO’s nightly news and documentary show, Vice News Tonight, and launched a podcast with Spotify focused on the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus. Antonia has won several awards, including an Emmy for her development and reporting of an HBO special episode on the family separation crisis, a Gracie Award for her stories about women, a NAMIC Vision Award for reporting on violence and politics in Chicago, and two Front Page Awards for special reporting and breaking news.

Mike Hixenbaugh is a senior national investigative reporter for NBC News. Before joining NBC in 2019, he spent more than a decade at newspapers in North Carolina, Virginia and Texas, where his reporting exposed safety flaws in health care and the military, leading to reforms. In 2020, Mike reported on and hosted a chart-topping and award-winning podcast series, Do No Harm, offering rare access inside a system dedicated to spotting subtle signs of abuse, following families from the hospital room to the courtroom in their fight to keep their children. In 2021, Hixenbaugh co-hosted the #1 hit podcast, Southlake, with co-host Antonia Hylton. Southlake tells the story of how this idyllic city, and its local school board election, became the poster child for a new political strategy with national repercussions. The podcast hit #1 on the podcast charts and was named to numerous lists of the best new podcasts of 2021.

Kailee began her career as fundraiser and organizer for Barry Ford, a Democratic Congressional candidate in Brooklyn, New York. Kailee’s work, at the intersection of global development and social justice, spans nearly two decades in the U.S. and 14 countries throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and North and South America. Kailee has collaborated with the WHO, UN, global CEOs and heads of state including Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, in developing solutions to the world’s most complex problems. From 2017 to 2020, Kailee served as the first Managing Director of Black Lives Matter Global Network. In this role, she was responsible for building infrastructure across the global organization. She launched the Arts+Culture platform and created BLM’s WhatMATTERS2020, a civic engagement campaign targeted towards Black Millennial and Gen Z voters at risk of disenfranchisement. She also served as the executive producer of the viral video, Rest in Power Beautiful, which aired less than 48 hours after the murder of George Floyd. It was seen over 10M times on social media, BET, CBS, Times Square and the Staples Center. In June 2021, she was tapped by Adam Braun to serve as the CEO of Pencils of Promise. Pencils of Promise has built more than 580 schools that currently serve over 110,000 students across Ghana, Guatemala, and Laos.

Kumar Garg is Senior Managing Director and Head of Partnerships at Schmidt Futures. In this role, Kumar works to help all major Schmidt Futures programs find successful leverage, as well as helping to run the Technology and Society portfolio. He previously helped shape science and technology policy for the Obama Administration for nearly eight years, serving in a variety of roles in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Garg led the Obama Administration’s efforts to bolster science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, including the Educate to Innovate campaign, with more than $1 billion in in-kind and philanthropic investment; development of major State of the Union initiatives to train 100,000 excellent STEM teachers and bring computer science to all K–12 students; and creation of iconic events such as the White House Science Fair. Working with the OSTP Deputy Director, he supervised a team of 20 staff with portfolios including broad innovation policy, advanced manufacturing, behavioral sciences, biotechnology, broadband, digital media, entrepreneurship, the maker movement, space, nanotechnology, and prizes. As a senior leader at OSTP, Garg was involved in policy development, implementation, and communication of a wide range of science and technology issues. Prior to his time in government, he worked on behalf of parents and children seeking educational reform as an education lawyer and advocate. He received a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a law degree from Yale Law School.

Tequilla Brownie, Ed.D., is CEO of TNTP, a national advocacy and consulting firm focused on disrupting inequities in public education so all students have opportunities and can achieve success. Prior to taking the helm, she served as the organization’s executive in charge of strategy and policy where she helped drive growth to $100 million in support of the mission. Dr. Brownie came to TNTP in 2013 after nearly a decade working with Memphis City Schools where she led its district-wide efforts to improve student outcomes by increasing teacher effectiveness, in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Raised in the Mississippi Delta from humble beginnings, Dr. Brownie is a proud graduate of a rural Arkansas public school system and earned an undergraduate degree from Yale University. She later received a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a Doctorate of Education from the University of Memphis. Dr. Brownie serves on several national and local nonprofit boards including Stand for Children National Board, Forward Arkansas, The Mind Trust, KIPP Delta School District, and Memphis Seeding Success. She was also a founding member and currently serves on the Leadership Committee of Education Leaders of Color (EdLoC).

Max is an entrepreneur and creator. He is the founder of a creative agency klym&co, clients include the UN, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Google and TikTok. Making educational videos about marketing, economics, business and psychology, Max has amassed 3 Million followers and 2 Billion views on social media. He is originally from Ukraine and has four university degrees.

John B. King Jr. is the president of The Education Trust and co-chair of K12 Climate Action with the Aspen Institute. King served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education, and before becoming education secretary, he carried out the duties of the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education. King joined the department following his tenure as the first African American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State Education Commissioner. King began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher in Puerto Rico and Boston, Mass., and as a middle school principal. King holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, as well as a Master of Arts in the teaching of social studies and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Alan Gershenfeld is Co-Founder/President of E-Line Media, a developer of games that help players understand and shape the world. E-Line titles include the BAFTA award winning Never Alone, Gamestar Mechanic, Beyond Blue, The Endless Mission and MinecraftEdu. Alan has worked on impact game projects with the Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, NSF, BBC, USAID, DARPA, White House OSTP, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Games for Change, Google, Sesame Workshop, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, ASU Center for Games and Impact and numerous other impact and academic organizations. Prior to E-Line , Alan was member of the executive management team that rebuilt game publisher Activision from bankruptcy into a global industry leader. As Head of Activision Studios, Alan oversaw titles such as Civilization: Call to Power, Asteroids 3D, Muppet Treasure Island, Spycraft, Pitfall, Zork and Tony Hawk Skateboarding. Before Activision, Alan spent nearly ten years in the film industry where he worked in a variety of development, production and post-production roles on numerous feature films and documentaries. Alan has published articles and books on technology, media and social impact in Scientific American, Education Week, EdSurge, Huffington Post, Slate, Politico, Marketwatch, MIT Sloan Management Review, Perspectives on Work, Creative NonFiction, Cinema India International and Knowledge Quest. He was a film critic for the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and, most recently, co-authored with his two brothers, Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the 3rd Digital Revolution. Alan serves on the Board of Directors of FilmAid International and the Arizona Film and Digital Media Coalition and he serves on the Advisory Boards of iCivics and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center For Educational Media and Research (Sesame Workshop). He is former Chairman of the Board for Games for Change and a Founding Industry Fellow at the ASU Center for Games and Impact. Alan is also a Co-Founder of Experimental Design, a leading world building design agency.