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.

Gina Chua is Executive Editor at Semafor, a new global news startup. She was previously Executive Editor at Reuters, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Editor of the Journal's Asia edition and a Journal correspondent in Vietnam and the Philippines. A native of Singapore, she majored in math at the University of Chicago and has a masters in journalism from Columbia University.

John J. Edwards III is a former longtime senior editor at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, where he was most recently managing editor for weekends in the Americas. He has also held editing and reporting positions at TheStreet.com, The Times of Trenton, N.J., Dow Jones Newswires and the Bureau of National Affairs (now Bloomberg Industry Group). He graduated from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

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.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Xicana writer, editor, author, and a co-founder of the independent music site Hearing Things. She was formerly the top editor at both Jezebel and The Fader, and over the past 25 years has written for a slew of publications including Hell Gate, Vibe, Rookie, Spin, The Guardian, Flaming Hydra, Vogue, and Pitchfork, where she was a contributing writer. Her forthcoming book from Penguin, Vaquera, is about growing up Mexican American in Wyoming and the myth of the American West.

Jamie Lauren Keiles is currently working on The Third Person, a book about nonbinary identity in America, to be published in 2026 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He also runs the trans public history project @sexchange.tbt on Instagram.

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.

Pavlína Černá has been with Hearst Magazines—Runner’s World, Bicycling, and Popular Mechanics—since August 2021, most recently as senior features editor. In her role, she has edited stories ranging from profiles of famous athletes and in-depth exploration of widespread health issues to DIY projects and the possibility of space becoming the next front for war. When she doesn’t edit, she writes; when she doesn’t write, she reads or translates from or to her native Czech.

Tony Ho Tran is the Senior Technology Editor of Slate. He was formerly the Senior Innovation for Editor at The Daily Beast and a Staff Writer for Futurism. His work has been seen in Playboy, Outside Magazine, HuffPost, and wherever else fine writing is published. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Joseph is the Associate Director for Bon Appétit and Epicurious, having previously served as research director. Though he leads beverage coverage for both brands, he also produces culture, food, and travel content across the BA universe. Over his nearly two decade journalism career, Joseph has covered food, wine, travel, and culture as a senior editor and features reporter at multiple publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chicago Tribune, SevenFifty Daily, Thrillist, and Wine Enthusiast. He's also a former vice- and regional chair for the James Beard Awards Restaurant and Chefs committee, working alongside reporters, editors, and restaurant critics to identify and celebrate the country’s talented chefs, leaders and innovators. Joseph’s freelance work has also been published by Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, and Afar Magazine, among others. Please, don’t call him Joe.

Elisabeth Goodridge is the award-winning deputy travel editor for The New York Times. She began her career at The Times in 2008. Previously, she worked at The Associated Press
and the Boston Globe, and earned degrees from Colgate University and the Medill School of
Journalism at Northwestern University. She was a Class of 2023 Fellow at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.

Jeffrey Yamaguchi is an author and longtime book publishing professional who has held leadership positions at publishers such as Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Abrams Books. Currently he works directly with authors and publishers as an independent marketing and publicity consultant to successfully launch their books. He also publishes a book publishing focused newsletter, bookpublishing.substack.com.

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.

Melinda F. Emerson, “SmallBizLady” is America’s #1 Small Business Expert, She’s an
internationally renowned keynote speaker on business development, social media selling,
and marketing strategy. As CEO of Quintessence Group, her marketing consulting firm serves
Fortune 500 brands that target small businesses. She has an online
school www.smallbizladyuniversity.com that teaches business owners online marketing. She
has published over 5000 articles on her blog SucceedAsYourOwnBoss.com. Her advice is
widely read, reaching more than 1 million entrepreneurs each week online. She hosts The
Smallbizchat Podcast and is the bestselling author of Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months,
 and Fix Your Business.

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.

Myron Kaplan is a longtime podcast producer and experienced full-time freelancer who has a lifelong love of audio and storytelling. They’ve produced podcasts for Slate, Talkhouse, the LA Times, Audacy, and many other networks. They hold a Master’s in Specialized Journalism in the Arts from the University of Southern California and are also a professional musician and juggler.

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.

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.

Sari Botton's memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual "5 Over 50" feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. She was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.

Emma Carew Grovum is the director of careers and culture at The Marshall Project and also the founder of Kimbap Media, a consultancy solving problems at the intersection of technology and audience. In addition to bringing anti-racism interventions to newsrooms, Emma coaches journalists on leadership, product thinking, and digital transformation. She is a co-founder and regular contributor to the News Product Alliance, runs a leadership accelerator for journalists of color called Upward, and co-hosts Sincerely, Leaders of Color, a space for anyone interested in building a safer industry for journalists of color. She currently serves on the board of directors of Prism, a women/BIPOC-centered news startup.

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.

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.

Based at National Geographic's headquarters in Washington, D.C., I lead a team of editors in ideating and assigning stories across all of our core subject areas, which include history, animals, health, science, and the environment. I have a special love for explainers, particularly in history and health.

Nicole Pasulka is the senior features editor at Cosmopolitan. Her writing has been published at New York magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, VICE, and The Believer, anthologized in the Best American series, and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Her first book, How You Get Famous: Ten Years of Drag Madness in Brooklyn, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2022.

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.

Alex Mahadevan is director of MediaWise, Poynter’s digital media literacy initiative, and faculty leading AI initiatives and misinformation research. He's taught thousands of students, older adults and journalists how to verify information online, and co-wrote Poynter’s AI ethics guide. He co-leads the Empowering Diverse Digital Citizens Lab at Stanford University, which studies the impact of media literacy interventions on underserved communities. Alex has also been on the forefront of the study of crowdsourced fact-checking.

Lynn Walsh (she/her) is the Assistant Director at Trusting News and an Emmy award-winning journalist who has worked in investigative journalism at the national level and locally in California, Ohio, Texas and Florida. She is the former Ethics Chair for the Society of Professional Journalists and a past national president for the organization. Based in San Diego, Lynn is also an adjunct professor and freelance journalist.

Description goes hereJoanna S. Kao leads the AI Accountability Network at the Pulitzer Center where she oversees a portfolio of AI and machine learning reporting projects and develops resources for other journalists looking to do AI-related reporting. She holds a computer science degree from MIT and an MBA from IE Business School.

She previously worked at the Financial Times and Al Jazeera America. She also taught data visualization at Columbia Journalism School as well as developed and taught two new accessibility courses for the New School and Parsons School of Design. She champions accessible design and enjoys living at the intersection of computer science, design and journalism.

Bernice Yeung serves on the board of directors for The Fund for Investigative Journalism. She is also the managing director of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism. Previously, she was a reporter for ProPublica and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, PBS FRONTLINE and The New York Times, and she has been a member of investigative teams that have received a George Polk Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She is the author of In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers (The New Press, 2018), which received a PEN America Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize.

As Director of Innovation Kat Duncan leads RJI’s innovative initiatives, programs and workshops. This includes the Student Innovation Competition, the Professional Fellowship program and the Student Innovation Fellowship program. She founded the Community-Centered Symposium and the Women in Journalism Workshop. She manages the innovation team, student staff and leads partnership projects with local newsrooms, organizations and individuals. She also teaches Emerging Tech & Innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Her mission is to move journalism forward through collaborations that can provide free, accessible, open source, practical and timely resources for journalists, newsrooms and the communities they serve.

Marina Walker Guevara is the Pulitzer Center's executive editor. Before joining the Center, Walker Guevara was deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). She managed two of the largest collaborations of reporters in journalism history: The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, which involved hundreds of journalists using technology to unravel stories of public interest from terabytes of leaked financial data.

Walker Guevara was instrumental in developing the model of large-scale media collaboration, persuading reporters who used to compete with one another instead to work together, share resources and amplify their reach and impact.

Joe Hong is an education journalist based in Brooklyn. As a current O'Brien Fellow in Public Service Journalism, he's writing a series of articles about the past, present and future of math education. He's also writing a book about Asian Americans and the racial politics of learning math in the United States. Previously, he covered education for a variety of newsrooms in California, including CalMatters, KPBS and The Desert Sun.

Ann Marie Awad is an independent journalist with 15 years of experience in the news business. As a host and reporter in public radio newsrooms across three different states, their work has also aired nationally on NPR and Here & Now. Ann Marie has produced, edited and consulted on podcast projects with clients including Audible, SONOS and WAMU.

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.

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.

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.

Katherine is a science journalist and author based in the Washington, D.C. area and special projects editor for the Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley. Her work on education, equity, mental health, parenting, journalism, and social justice has appeared in the Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, Nieman Reports, Undark, and The Washington Post. Her 2018 book The Good News About Bad Behavior grew out of Mother Jones’ most-read article. A biracial woman (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.

Shernay spent more than a decade as a journalist for television, radio, and print outlets throughout the South and East Coast before serving as a business coach, running a content firm, and in 2020, launching The ​Black Mompreneur. Recently Shernay became host and producer of a digital series for TheGrio called "A Taste of Chocolate," where she visits notable Black-owned restaurants to learn the stories behind their food.

Sheena Roetman-Wynn, Lakota, is the education manager for the Indigenous Journalists Association.

Previously, Roetman-Wynn spent six years as director of membership and programs at the Atlanta Press Club, where she also ran APC's annual internship program and assisted in producing debates for local, state and federal races in partnership with Georgia Public Broadcasting and Public Broadcasting Atlanta. She has also spent more than 15 years as a freelance journalist, editor and researcher.

Roetman-Wynn holds a degree in Journalism with a research specialty in American Indian Media from Georgia State University. She is currently based outside Atlanta, Ga. where she enjoys cooking, gardening, yoga and hiking with her husband and their wiener dog.

Meena is an editorial Swiss army knife embracing media entrepreneurship. She’s a freelance writer covering travel and business for publications including Travel+Leisure and Fortune and an audience development consultant specializing in helping publishers build high value audiences.

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.

Lygia Navarro (she/her) is an award-winning bilingual journalist working in long-form narrative print and audio. Lygia has reported on Latine stories from across Latin America, North America and Europe, for outlets including Afar, Al Jazeera magazine, The Associated Press, Business Insider, the CBC, The American Prospect, FRONTLINE/World, Marketplace, The World, Latino USA, The Pulse, Virginia Quarterly Review, Switchyard, Today.com, and the Christian Science Monitor, among many others. 

Lygia is also an essayist and has produced podcasts for Spotify and The Conversation Canada. Her work has received national prizes and awards, and has been supported by multiple grants and fellowships. She holds both a BA and a Master’s (in journalism) from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to reporting, Lygia is also an editor at palabra, the multimedia outlet of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and a mentor for the Uproot Project’s Environmental Justice Fellows. Together with Rux Guidi, Lygia co-founded Narrative Gigs, now a project of the IIJ. Lygia is a proudly queer, disabled and neurodiverse advocate for inclusion and equity.

Yvonne Liu is a Los Angeles writer exploring Asian American experiences, mental health, and adoption. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Salon, NBC News, and includes a viral HuffPost essay. Her memoir-in-progress, "Left to be Found," traces her journey from Hong Kong orphan to a daughter of abusive parents striving to break the cycle of generational trauma. The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and PEN America have supported her writing. Connect with her at @yvonneliuwriter on socials and www.yvonneliuwriter.com

Iona Brannon is a freelance journalist based in the Midwest but still searching for her "forever home." She's captivated by the connection between physical space and the sense of belonging. You can see her work in National Geographic, CN Traveler, Business Insider, and Well+Good among other publications. To follow her journey you can subscribe to her newsletter.

Deborah D. Douglas is director of the newly created Midwest Solutions Journalism Hub and a senior lecturer at Northwestern University. She is a founding co-editor in chief of The Emancipator, a digital platform that reimagines abolitionist newspapers for a new day. She previously served as the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor at DePauw University, senior leader with The OpEd Project, amplifying underrepresented expert voices, and founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Douglas is author of the “U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events That Made the Movement,” the first-ever travel guide to follow the official civil rights trail in the South.

Benét J. Wilson is the lead credit cards writer for Bankrate. She was previously director of the Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, a year-long program for early-career journalists. Before that, she was a senior editor and writer for The Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, a year-long program for early-career journalists. Before that, she was a senior editor and writer for The Points Guy. She serves on the boards of Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism and the Institute for Independent Journalism. She has served on the Online News Association and the National Association of Black Journalists boards. She graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a B.A. in broadcast journalism and resides in Baltimore, MD.

Victoria Lim is an award-winning storyteller, communicator and journalist. She has led communications efforts at the highest level, with her expertise spanning technology, global entertainment, electric auto manufacturing, sports and beauty. She is an Emmy and AP honored journalist who set herself apart from the industry decades ago, pioneering multimedia storytelling, through print, TV, online and radio—simultaneously.

Currently, Victoria leads integrated communications and storytelling at Experian, focusing on DEI, ESG and workplace culture. Previously, she led communications campaigns as managing editor for content and public relations for Walt Disney World. She taught multimedia journalismfor the iconic University of Missouri School of Journalism, as well as the University of Tampa and University of South Florida. She has led newsroom trainings around the world on broadcast and online writing, multimedia storytelling, mobile journalism, and ethics. To encourage and support journalism and communications, Victoria has served as a board member for the Orange County chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (OCPRSA) and the Asian American Journalists Association, for which she was voted Chapter President of the Year and co-founded the AAJA Sports Task Force to support Asian American journalists covering and working in sports.

Alan Henry is Managing Editor at PC Mag in New York City. He was previously Director of Special Projects at WIRED, Smarter Living editor at The New York Times and editor in chief of Lifehacker. He is also the author of the book "Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized."

Katie Kingsbury has been at the Times since 2017. Before she was running the desk, she was a deputy editor working on pieces surrounding guns, domestic violence, race, and culture. Prior to that, she worked at The Boston Globe as Managing Editor of Digital. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her series on poor working conditions and pay in the restaurant industry.

Fin Leary is a program manager at We Need Diverse Books, a reviewer at Booklist, and a faculty member at Emerson College, where he teaches in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. Fin is a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction. His fiction is forthcoming in the young adult horror anthology These Bodies Ain’t Broken edited by Madeline Dyer (Page Street Publishing, 2025) and a forthcoming fantasy anthology (OwlCrate Press, 2026). He is also the editor of the forthcoming science fiction anthology The Future State of Stars (OwlCrate Press, 2025). His flash fiction was a finalist for Boston in 100 Words in 2024. His work has been published in the anthology About Us edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, as well as the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Cosmopolitan, The Oprah Magazine, Vice, Bitch, Teen Vogue, Healthline, and more. Fin lives with his literary cat and a rainbow bookshelf outside of Boston, MA.

Chris Gayomali is a freelance writer and editor, mostly recently working as the articles editor for GQ. He also writes a newsletter about modern health and wellness called HEAVIES.

Amanda Peacher works with the best talent in the public media network to acquire and edit stories for all of Marketplace's national radio shows.

Amanda previously worked as a senior reporter for Marketplace, as reporter and editor for the Mountain West News Bureau and as a bureau chief for Oregon Public Broadcasting. Her nationally recognized coverage centered on environmental and investigative stories. She holds master's degrees in environmental studies and literary nonfiction journalism from the University of Oregon and has taught courses at University of California, San Diego.

Rachel Courtland is an award-winning science and technology journalist with a background in the physical sciences. She commissions and edits articles for MIT Technology Review's print magazine and website.

Troy Farah is the science and health editor at Salon.com He was previously a freelancer for more than 8 years, covering science, public health, pandemics, drug policy, space and more. His website is troyfarah.com

Katie Scarlett Brandt is editor-in-chief for Chicago Health Magazine and Caregiving Magazine, and a 2023 Journalists-in-Aging fellow with the Gerontological Society of America. In her reporting, she specializes in untangling complex social issues with no easy answers. These issues have included public health, environmental health, and the homelessness crisis, among others. Katie studied journalism and Spanish at Ohio University. Though she initially saw reporting as a way to learn about people’s lives and passions, Katie has grown to appreciate journalists' power to connect people and give voice to communities.

Jasmine Browley is a Chicago,IL-based writer and former business editor for ESSENCE Magazine. Since joining the publication in 2021 supporting the publication’s senior Money & Careers editor to report on the intersection of Black women and their financial journey, Jasmine has amassed hundreds of interviews with celebrities, community impact leaders and other notable public figures. Jasmine regularly moderates digital and on-camera conversations across multiple platforms under the ESSENCE Ventures banner including Twitter Spaces, Instagram Live, in-website and in-person fireside discussions. She also contributes to Forbes, where she regularly explores the topics around millennials’ working experiences. To date, she's interviewed Issa Rae, Regina King, Normani, Bozoma Saint John, Queen Latifah and Elaine Welteroth among many others. In addition to her passion for bolstering Black-centered career stories, she’s driven by a love for globetrotting and regularly contributes multicultural-focused travel features to the Miami Herald and travel platform Detour XP.  

In 2024 Jasmine founded multicultural copywriting and media relations firm HLS Communications in honor of her late mother Hattie Lupino Stutts who lived by the adages "there's power in the tongue”  and “words move the world."

Norman Parish is deputy managing editor of DEI, administration and planning at the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Chicago native has worked as a journalist at newspapers in seven states during the last four decades.

He also has served as director of recruitment for Report for America and as a national board member for the National Association of Black Journalists.

Nikita Stewart is the editor of the Real Estate Section. She previously worked as an assistant editor and reporter on the Metro desk.

In 2020, the Newswomen's Club of New York honored her with the Ida B. Wells Award for Exceptional Coverage of Communities of Color. The organization recognized her work covering homelessness, mental health and poverty in 2018. She was a contributor to the groundbreaking 1619 Project, writing an essay about how slavery is taught in American schools and sharing the story of her paternal great grandfather who was enslaved as a boy.



Stewart has won several other awards and previously worked at The Washington Post where she helped chronicle the inauguration of President Barack Obama and uncovered campaign fraud in a mayoral election. Earlier at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, she followed an up-and-coming Cory Booker and other politicians in Newark.

She is the author of "Troop 6000: The Girl Scout Troop That Began in a Shelter and Inspired the World" and is a journalist at The New York Times.

Amber Payne is co-editor in chief of The Emancipator, a multimedia publication created to reimagine the first abolitionist newspapers in the United States and reframe the national conversation around race and equity. Amber was a 2021 Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She formerly served as managing editor of BET.com, overseeing the daily editorial output and leading digital video strategy. Prior to that, Amber was executive producer of Teen Vogue and Them. In 2015 she launched NBCBLK, a section of NBCNews.com dedicated to elevating the conversation around Black identity, social issues, and culture. Amber started her career at NBC Nightly News producing breaking news and feature stories. Raised in Southern Maryland, she is a graduate of the University of Virginia.

Ashton is an accomplished writer and editor—and recovering lawyer—whose work focuses on the intersection of race, culture, and law. Her writing has been published by The Washington Post, Slate magazine, CNN, and others. In 2021, she was named a Maynard 200 fellow. She received a B.A. in English from Harvard College, an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She is the author of forthcoming debut novel THE FREE CITY (Ballantine Books), a work of historical fiction centered on Black women and abolition in nineteenth century Philadelphia. She lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Kevin Nguyen is a features editor at The Verge, where he has published Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award finalists. He is also the author of New Waves, one of the best books of 2020 according to NPR. He lives in Brooklyn.

Daniel Varghese has served as the Gear and Gadgets editor off Off Duty, the weekend lifestyle section of The Wall Street Journal, since last February. He previously worked at New York Magazine, GQ and Wirecutter. If you play Chess or Magic: The Gathering, please let him know.

Camille Bromley is a features editor at Wired. She was previously an editor at The Believer, The Columbia Journalism Review, and Harper's Magazine.

Justin Madden has been the deputy west coast news editor for The Guardian since 2022. He's born and raised in South-Central Los Angeles and graduated from Grambling State University. Justin has spent a decade in journalism as a multi-media cops and courts reporter and editor in Kentucky, Ohio, Chicago, New York and South Carolina. He enjoys hot yoga, reading and using long walks for mental clarity.

Stephanie Griffith is an opinion editor with CNN Digital, editing a wide range of commentary pieces, with a particular focus on community voices and personal narrative pieces. Over a decades-long career, she has worked in radio and print journalism in Europe, Mexico and the United States and has covered electoral politics and politics on Capitol Hill as well as a range of other issues over the course of her career including eduction, police, immigrant issues, cultural and social affairs. She has a BA from Wesleyan University and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University. Stephanie was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and now resides outside Washington, DC.

Chris Ip is a senior editor for culture at The Atlantic. Previously he was a feature writer and editor at Engadget; he has also worked at the Columbia Journalism Review, Reuters, and the South China Morning Post. Chris lives in Brooklyn, and was raised in Hong Kong and the U.K.

Kelly Virella is the editor of the Canada region at The New York Times. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and has worked as an investigative reporter and editor, an audience engagement editor, a newsletter editor and the founding editor of a news organization targeting the African-American community in New York City.

Mark A. Stein is an editor at Next Avenue. Over the course of his career, he has been a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, an editor at The New York Times and Bloomberg News in London, and started a website for Conde Nast Publications.