People
Marika Anthony-Shaw
For violinist and violist Marika Anthony-Shaw, driving social engagement has been at the core of her musical endeavour. She has played with Grammy-winning Montreal-based band Arcade Fire and founded Plus 1 - a platform that empowers artists to partner with their fans to drive awareness, advocacy, and resources for organizations doing proven, measureable work for the world’s most marginalized populations.
Dan Ariely
Using simple experiments, Dan Ariely studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. His interests span a wide range of daily behaviors and his experiments are consistently interesting, amusing, and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.
Amar Bakshi
Amar C. Bakshi is the founder and creative director of Shared_Studios, a multidisciplinary art, technology and design collective dedicated to carving wormholes through the world.
Mia Birdsong
In her current role as Co-Director of Family Story, Mia Birdsong is updating this nation’s outdated picture of the family in America. Prior to launching Family Story, Mia was the Vice President of the Family Independence Initiative where she worked to illuminate the ways in which marginalized people build and leverage family and community to move their lives forward.
Asi Burak
Asi Burak is a veteran of the videogame and tech industries, and an award-winning executive producer. He is currently the CEO of Power Play and also the chairman of the influential industry organization Games for Change (G4C), which produces the largest gaming event in NYC, the annual Games for Change Festival.
Rukmini Callimachi
Rukmini Callimachi is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times covering Islamic extremism, including Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, the winner of the Michael Kelly award, and the first journalist in the 75-year history of the Overseas Press Club to win both the Hal Boyle and the Bob Considine awards the same year.
Stephanie Coontz
Stephanie Coontz is Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families. A Professor Emeria at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, she has authored seven books on marriage and family life.
Abdul El-Sayed
Michigan native Abdul El-Sayed is a candidate for Governor in Michigan. When he was 30, he became the youngest health official of a major American city when he was brought home by Mayor Mike Duggan to rebuild Detroit's Health Department after it was privatized during the city's bankruptcy. Abdul is an internationally recognized expert in health policy and health inequalities.
Sarah Lacy
Sarah Lacy is a Silicon Valley journalist and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Pando, an investigative journalism outlet covering the tech world, and Chairman Mom, a guilt-free, judgement-free, troll-free, mommy-war-free community for professional moms.
Eric Liu
Eric Liu is an author, educator, civic entrepreneur and founder / CEO of Citizen University and executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program.
Duff McDonald
Duff McDonald is a New York-based journalist and author. Previously a contributing editor at New York and Fortune, he has also written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, WIRED, Esquire, Business Week, Conde Nast Portfolio, GQ, Newsweek, and others.
Alexa Meade
Alexa Meade is an American artist best known for inventing a new approach to portraiture. She applies paint directly to models and the surrounding scene, creating the illusion that real-life people and places are inside the world of a 2D painting. Her artwork has been exhibited at The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The Saatchi Gallery, the Grand Palais, and the UN.
Natalia Oberti Noguera
Dubbed "The Coach" by Marie Claire, Natalia Oberti Noguera is Founder and CEO of Pipeline Angels, a network of women investors that's changing the face of angel investing and creating capital for women and non-binary femme social entrepreneurs.
Kevin Poulsen
Kevin Poulsen is a hacker turned journalist, a contributing editor at WIRED magazine and The Daily Beast, and the author of Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion Dollar Cyber Crime Underground (Crown, 2011).
Ramesh Srinivasan
Ramesh Srinivasan studies the relationship between technology, politics and societies across the world. He has been a faculty member at UCLA since 2005 in the Information Studies and Design|Media Arts departments. His book, “Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World” urges us to re-imagine what the Internet, mobile phones, or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspective of diverse cultures.
Alan Alda
Alan Alda, seven-time Emmy Award winner, is a passionate science advocate. He has won the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the National Science Board’s Public Service Award, the Scientific American Lifetime Achievement Award and the American Chemical Society Award for Public Service, among others.
Latricia Allen
Lieutenant Latricia Allen is Commander of the Community Engagement/Organizational Development Division and a 27-year veteran of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. She is committed to influencing positive change in her fractured community. She is a proud product of North St. Louis, namely the 3800 block of Labadie.
Platon
British photographer Platon has shot portraits of over one hundred world leaders for a range of international publications. In 2013, he founded a non-profit foundation named The People’s Portfolio, which aspires to create a visual language that breaks barriers, expands dignity, fights discrimination, and enlists the public to support human rights around the world.
Sinan Aral
Sinan Aral is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor. He is the David Austin Professor of Management at MIT, where he is a Professor of IT & Marketing, Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems and Society and where he co-leads MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.
Asperger’s Are Us
Asperger’s Are Us is a hilarious comedy troupe whose sketches consist of dark, observational, and absurd humor. The group met at summer camp and use their interviews and performances as an opportunity for autism-rights activism.
Ken Banks
Ken Banks is the founder of kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS. Ken devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world.
Eric Ben-Artzi
Eric Ben-Artzi is the Deutsche Bank whistleblower that turned down an $8.25M award from the SEC after exposing major accounting and risk violations at the bank. He believes the SEC did not do enough to punish the executives responsible for the wrongdoings.
De-Rance Blaylock
De-Rance Renette Blaylock played one of the title roles in A&M’s production of “Porgy & Bess,” opposite “American Idol” winner Ruben Studdard. She now sings with Chris & Kyle with True Spirit, and Jesse Williams & Total Praise.
De-Andrea Blaylock-Johnson
De-Andrea Blaylock-Johnson is licensed in the State of Missouri as a Clinical Social Worker and owns Sankofa Sex Therapy where she provides therapy to individuals and those in relationships of all types. She also serves as an executive board member of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network and a member of the Information and Education Committee of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri.
Rahzel
Known as the Godfather of Noyze, two-time Grammy Award-winning vocal percussionist and former member of the Roots, Rahzel, has mastered, then redefined the art of beatboxing, emerging as a true virtuoso in this quintessential musical art form.