Cappy McGarr is president of MCM Interests. He has been involved in investing for the last 40 years. McGarr is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He serves on the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is only one of a few people that have been appointed to The Kennedy Center by two different Presidents. He also serves on MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors, the Foundation for the National Archives Trustee's Council, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, and Ken Burns’ Better Angels Society.

Mary Matalin is one of the most celebrated and popular conservative voices in America. As an author, television and radio host, and widely sought after political contributor, pundit and public speaker, she has become noted for her straightforward manner and insightful political repartee. Among her many roles and accomplishments, she has served under President Ronald Reagan, made her mark as George H.W. Bush's Campaign director and more recently as assistant to President George W.

Melissa M. Martin grew up on the Louisiana coast and has lived in New Orleans for 20 years. After graduating from Loyola University in New Orleans, she worked as an adult literacy teacher until she evacuated to Northern California during Hurricane Katrina. While living there, she worked at some of the top Napa Valley vineyards and restaurants, and this is where she honed her self-taught culinary skills to a professional level.

Jonathan Martin is the politics bureau chief and senior political columnist at POLITICO, where he writes a reported column.  Prior to starting his column in 2022, Martin was the national political correspondent for The New York Times, where he served as the publication’s top political reporter for nearly a decade.  He is the co-author of the New York Times best-seller This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, which gave readers in-the-room access to the extraordinary events of the 2020 election and i

Robert Mann holds the Manship Chair in Journalism at Louisiana State University's Manship School of Mass Communication. A former political writer for several Louisiana daily newspapers, he served as a senior aide to US Senators Russell Long and John Breaux as well as Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. Mann is the author of critically acclaimed books about the American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the 1964 presidential election, American wartime dissent, and Ronald Reagan. His latest book is a memoir, Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics.

Dr. Robert Livingston is a social psychologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on the science underlying bias and racism in organizations. For two decades, he has served as a diversity consultant to myriad Fortune 500 companies, public-sector agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Don Lemon spent three decades on local and national TV, a trusted voice after the Sandy Hook massacre, in war-torn Eastern Europe, and during the riots of 2020. Anchoring Don Lemon Tonight on CNN, he was known for hard-hitting interviews with public officials and compassionate dialogue with everyday people. The Don Lemon Show is now streaming on all platforms. His latest book, I Once Was Lost, is a deeply personal follow-up to his #1 bestseller This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends about Racism. 

Nicholas Lemann was born, raised and educated in New Orleans. He began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American history and literature and was president of the Harvard Crimson.

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division  and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times.

Kris Lane holds the France V. Scholes Chair in Colonial Latin American Historyat Tulane University. He is the author of Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires and Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition. He is currently writing a book on the colonial history of Potosí, Bolivia.