Celeste Headlee is a journalist, professional speaker, and author of the books We Need To Talk, Do Nothing, and Speaking of Race. Her TEDx Talk, 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation, viewed nearly 40 million times, is one of the 10 most-watched talks.

In her 25 years in public radio, Celeste has anchored programs including 1A, Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, Here and Now, All Things Considered, Here and Now, and Weekend Edition. Celeste hosts the Conferences for Women’s “Women Amplified” podcast.

She is also the president of Headway DEI, a non-profit that works to bring racial justice and equity to journalism.

Deepa Fernandes is an award-winning journalist, a two-time first-generation immigrant, and a citizen of three countries. Deepa is currently the co-host of NPR and WBUR's Here and Now, heard on 500 stations nationwide. She began her career in Sydney, Australia at community station 2SER. In her 20s, Deepa lived and freelanced across Latin America, including Cuba, Ecuador and Mexico. Arriving in New York, Deepa found a home in the public radio community, and founded a nonprofit aimed at diversifying the journalism. While running People's Production House and hosting a three-hour morning show on WBAI, Deepa also got her master's in journalism from Columbia University. That work landed Deepa a prestigious JSK fellowship at Stanford, and subsequent jobs at KPCC in Los Angeles and as the immigration correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gabe Schneider is a reporter and editor based in LA. He is a co-founder of The Objective, a publication that examines systems of power and inequity in journalism, as well as a growth strategist at LA Public Press.

Chris is the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, the luxury, lifestyle and culture vertical at Bloomberg News. He is also an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. Previously, he has been an editor at Vanity Fair and New York Magazine.

Mark Pagán is an award-winning producer, writer, and editor for non-fiction audio and film. He's developed projects with Radiotopia, Futuro Studios, PRX, Ten Percent Happier, The New York Times and is the creator and host of the critically acclaimed show Other Men Need Help. His work has been featured at the Slamdance Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and on Latino USA, On the Media, 99 Percent Invisible, Code Switch, among others and has been nominated for a Peabody, made The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker's annual “best of” lists, and has been recognized by Vulture, TIME Magazine, the CBC, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Financial Times. Before working in digital media, Mark was a teacher, social worker, comedian, part-time mascot, and b-boy. He currently lives in NYC with his wife and an emo pit bull named Soca.

John Asante (he/him) is an award-winning, independent audio producer, showrunner, and consultant. He’s devoted to crafting stories that shine light on marginalized communities within the worlds of music, pop culture, and social justice. After spending much of his 15-year career producing radio shows and podcasts for companies like NPR, WNYC, Stitcher and Pineapple Street Studios, John shifted to freelancing in 2022. Since then, he’s made podcasts in collaboration with several shops, including Awfully Nice, Fresh Produce, Pushkin, Imagine Entertainment, EmbraceRace, Audible, Spotify, and Hartbeat. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and their two rambunctious cats.

Bernice Yeung is the managing editor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Journalism investigative reporting program. Previously, she was an investigative journalist for ProPublica where she covered labor and unemployment. She is a board member of Fund for Investigative Journalism. 

Phoebe Gavin is a career and leadership coach helping ambitious professionals build successful, fulfilling careers without sacrificing work-life balance. She is speaker, and trainer specializing in career strategy, negotiation, and empathetic leadership.

Deborah Jian Lee is an award-winning journalist and radio producer, senior editor at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, journalism fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the author of Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism (Beacon Press). She has worked as a staff reporter for the Associated Press, taught journalism at Columbia University, and has bylines in Esquire, Fast Company, ELLE, Foreign Policy, TIME, WBEZ and others. Winner of a Newswomen’s Club of New York Front Page Award and the Education Writers Association’s Eddie Prize, she was also named a finalist for the Livingston Awards.

Mallory Carra, is a veteran journalist, podcast producer and adjunct professor with 20 years of journalism and new media experience. She teaches digital, audio and TV journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and has worked on several podcasts, including Sarah Turney’s Voices for Justice, The Why Files, and USC’s Electric Futures. Previously, Mallory was a podcast writer and story editor at Spotify’s Parcast Studios for over 5 years. She also writes articles for NBCU Academy’s Equity Lab and is the founder of the West Coast Media Jobs newsletter.

Benjamin Toff is an Associate Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota where he is also Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center. He studies the public’s changing relationship with news, public opinion, and political engagement and is co-author of Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism (2024, Columbia University Press). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in social studies from Harvard University. He also previously worked at the New York Times.

Tami Abdollah is a senior editor at Noema Magazine. She was previously a national correspondent at USA TODAY focused on the inequities and disparities of the criminal justice system, among other subjects.

Ruxandra Guidi has been telling stories for more than two decades. She is the president of the board of Homelands Productions, a journalism nonprofit cooperative founded in 1989, and a columnist for the 54-year-old nonprofit magazine High Country News. She also serves on the board of El Tímpano, a local reporting lab amplifying the voices of Oakland’s Latino and Mayan immigrants. As a former assistant professor of practice and assistant director of the Bilingual Journalism Program at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism, Ruxandra advised students and taught audio storytelling, feature writing and freelancing for years.

Currently, she is an independent editor and contributor to various podcasts and magazines, and she is working on her second novel. Her first, Calle Colón #15, is represented by agent Amanda Orozco at Transatlantic Agency. In 2018, she was awarded the Susan Tifft Fellowship for women in documentary and journalism by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and in 2023, she won a Soros Equality Fellowship to produce the anthology podcast, Happy Forgetting, which will release by late 2024. She’s a native of Caracas, Venezuela, currently based in Tucson, Arizona. 

Sarah Stirland is a writer/radio and podcast producer living in Silicon Valley. She co-teaches, produces, and edits San Francisco Bay Area high school student stories for KALW’s Summer Podcasting Institute. The Institute publishes an award-winning podcast called tbh.

Sylvia A. Harvey is a journalist, speaker, and the author of The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family. SAH's work has appeared in The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, Colorlines, and more. NPR, WBAI, HuffPost Live, Cheddar News, and others, have featured her commentary. Her work is being used in university coursework and has been cited by federal lawmakers.

Jamila Bey is the editorial director of WHYY News and was previously a longtime freelancer and radio talk show host. Jamila has over 20 years of experience at news organizations, including NPR, Viacom/BET, and The Washington Post, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR.

Sa’iyda is a writer and editor who writes about the intersections of parenting, race, sexuality, gender and socioeconomic status as well as lifestyle and pop culture. A former writer and editor at Scary Mommy, her work has also been published by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Valeria is a Phoenix-based investigative journalist and managing editor of palabra.. She has produced documentaries for Discovery Spanish, CNN Español, and PBS. Her work can be found in The Guardian, California Sunday Magazine, Latino USA and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. She won the American Mosaic Journalism Prize, and as a 2021 Nieman Visiting Fellow, created the podcast Comadres al Aire.

Jaeah Lee is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a 2021-2022 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow. She has written for numerous publications and is a recipient of the American Mosaic Journalism Prize, served as a board member for the Asian American Journalists Association's San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and was a contributing editor for PEN America’s The Sentences That Create Us.

Erika is a writer whose stories appear in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Atlantic, and many others. Erika was a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow and an Alicia Patterson Fellow, and is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Time. Erika currently teaches at the University of California, Irvine as a professor in the Literary Journalism Program.

Liv Monahan is a freelance journalist, editor, educator, public speaker, and Ida B. Wells Investigative Fellow Finalist.

Katherine is a science journalist and author who writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Parents, and The Washington Post. Her 2018 book The Good News About Bad Behavior grew out of Mother Jones’ most-read article. A biracial journalist (Asian American and White), she previously worked as a national correspondent for Newhouse News Service and Bloomberg News.

Ellen is an independent journalist whose writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Wirecutter, The Atlantic, Real Simple and the San Francisco Chronicle, where she was a business and technology reporter. She serves as the co-director of the Asian American Journalists Association Freelance Affinity Group and co-director of the AAJA Media Institute.