Monique Verdin is an transdisciplinary artist who documents the complex relationship between environment, culture, and climate in southeast Louisiana. She is a citizen of the Houma Nation, director of The Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange and a Bvlbancha Liberation Radio collaborator. Monique is supporting the Okla Hina Ikhish Holo (People of the Sacred Medicine Trail), a network of indigenous gardeners, as the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network Gulf South food and medicine sovereignty program manager.

Rebecca Snedeker is an Emmy Award-winning nonfiction storyteller and the James H. Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, where she supports cutting-edge research and artworks, and designs public-facing programming that relates the local to the global and planetary.

John M. Barry is an award-winning and best-selling author whose books have also involved him in policy making. The National Academies of Science named his 2004 book The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine.

General John R. Allen

Eve Abrams is an audio producer, writer, editor, and educator whose work centers on amplifying the voices from her adopted hometown, New Orleans. She produced the award-winning podcast Hot Farm, about climate change and food, and the Peabody Finalist Unprisoned, which tells stories at the intersection of the criminal legal system and human lives. Eve has edited the award-winning shows Banned, TriPod, and Fine Gorilla Person.

Bellen Woodard is the beloved trailblazer and CEO of More than Peach®️, LLC. As the World’s 1^st Crayon Activist®️ and pioneer of “skin-color” crayons, Bellen has transformed an entire industry with a first-of-its-kind, innovative and inclusive project and art brand that have now become a global movement. She’s received many notable awards and has been featured by Scholastic, TIME, Vogue, TODAY, Nickelodeon, and many others.

Alessandra Stanley is the Co-Editor of AIR MAIL alongside Graydon Carter. Before that, she was a writer at The New York Times, first as a political reporter, then as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow and in Rome. She also served as the chief television critic of The New York Times for twelve years. Alessandra lives in New York City.

Traci Swain has been involved in children’s publishing since 2011. She helps foster the joy of reading by producing content with students, renowned authors, and educators who go above and beyond for their young readers.

Her love of writing began after taking creative writing courses at a summer day camp when she was 12. Her class was assigned to write in a journal each day, and thus her love of sharing stories began.

When Chicago native Traci N. Todd was born, her parents decided her initials should stand for dynamite, just like her father's. He raised her on Ray Charles and Nina Simone, and her mother read her every good book. Traci is the author of Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and is also a children's book editor.