Shortly after graduating from Howard University, Maurice worked at the Long Island Progressive Coalition, leading advocacy and electoral campaigns. He became the Organizing Director for Citizen Action of New York, and then ran the New York State Civic Engagement Table, a coalition of community and civic engagement groups working on issue and electoral campaigns to build progressive power.

In response to the police violence in Ferguson and St. Louis after Mike Brown was killed, as well as police violence against Black people nationally, Maurice co-founded and managed Blackbird, an anchor organization within the Movement for Black Lives. Maurice provided strategic support and guidance to activists and groups around the country.

She has been a counter-extremism consultant for various governments, NGOs, and commercial organizations worldwide including Google and Facebook. Hadiya co-authored the European Parliament report on women involved in violent extremism and provided the data for the United Nations report on women’s involvement in violent extremism. She was UK Ambassador for Women Without Borders promoting counter-extremism narratives and was a board member of the internationally renowned and award-winning peacekeeping organization The Bereaved Families Forum based in Palestine and Israel.

In 2005, she founded the Marina Orth Foundation that provide computers, STEM, English and leadership training in 21 schools in and around Medellin. In addition, the foundation’s robotics clubs teach coding and programming beginning in kindergarten. In 2015, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos awarded her the Cruz de San Carlos, Colombia’s highest civilian award for service to the country.

Tom Weis is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Design department at the Rhode Island School of Design. Weis works with a team of faculty to guide graduate students through their year-long thesis projects. His undergraduate courses include such topics as advanced prototyping, gun violence prevention, aquaponics and global security issues. His work has been featured in such places as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2010 and Mass General Hospital’s Russell MD Museum of History and Innovation.

Since 2015, Weis has explored how design and creativity might work to reduce nuclear threats. He has presented at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The International Atomic Energy Agency and has led collaborative workshops between design students and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and with teams at Sandia National Laboratories. Weis initiated a Global Security Fellowship at RISD funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Tom has kept a home in coastal Maine since the late 1990’s when he moved there to pursue an apprenticeship building traditional wooden boats.

Since 2015, Weis has explored how design and creativity might work to reduce nuclear threats. He has presented at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The International Atomic Energy Agency and has led collaborative workshops between design students and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and with teams at Sandia National Laboratories. Weis initiated a Global Security Fellowship at RISD funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Tom has kept a home in coastal Maine since the late 1990’s when he moved there to pursue an apprenticeship building traditional wooden boats.

Teddy is the Chief Technology Officer at Land O’Lakes, Inc. He has a passion for researching, developing and implementing innovative technology solutions to help retailers and farmers produce more nutritious food while using fewer resources in new and sustainable ways. He holds an MBA from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University. He has lived in three different continents and speaks fluent Ethiopian and Italian. He currently lives in Minneapolis, MN with his wife Michele and 6-year-old son, Teddy Jr.

From 2009 to 2017, Sarah Hurwitz worked in the White House, serving as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama and as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama. Prior to working in government, Hurwitz was the chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton on her 2008 campaign for president. Hurwitz is the author of a recently published book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There).

Angana P. Chatterji is Co-chair, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative, and Research Anthropologist at the Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley (and Founding Co-chair of the precursor, Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, 2012-2015). A cultural anthropologist, she focuses her scholarly work on issues of political conflict; gender, power and violence; majoritarian nationalism, minoritization and racialization; religion in the public sphere, religious freedom; and reparatory justice and cultural survival. Chatterji’s scholarship bears witness to post/colonial, decolonial conditions of grief, dispossession, and agency.

In Kashmir, Chatterji co-founded (2008), and was co-convener of (2008-2012), the People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice. She was a Member of the Drafting Committee on Minimum Standards, Second World Congress on Psychosocial Restitution in 2010. In 2005, Chatterji founded the People’s Tribunal on Religious Freedom and Human Rights in Odisha. In 2004, Chatterji served on a two-person independent commission on displacement and rehabilitation in the Narmada Valley. In 1984, Chatterji worked in the post-violence camps for Sikh victims-survivors in Delhi. In 2017, she was appointed a Research Fellow at the WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University. In 2015-2016, Chatterji was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) at Columbia University.

Chatterji has served on human rights commissions and offered expert testimony, including at the United Nations, European Parliament, United Kingdom Parliament, and United States Congress. Chatterji holds a B.A. in Political Science, an M.A. in Political Science, and a Ph.D. in the Humanities. Chatterji has served on the board of directors of International Rivers Network and Earth Island Institute, and the Advisory Board of the Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Chatterji is a founding member of the South Asia Feminist Preconference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Charlotte McCurdy is an interdisciplinary designer from New York City. Her project “After Ancient Sunlight” is now on view as part of “Nature — The Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.” It won the 2019 Experimental Category of the Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards and has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Wallpaper, OZY, FastCompany, Core77, Women’s Wear Daily, Curbed, Grist, Gizmodo, and beyond. She is a Global Security Fellow at the Rhode Island School of Design with the support of the MacArthur Foundation and a member of the New Museum’s cultural incubator, NEW INC with the support of Science Sandbox. Her research focuses on making existential threats more tractable through design. She holds a Master of Industrial Design from RISD, and a Bachelor of Arts in Global Affairs from Yale University.