MARCELLE BIENVENU is a cookbook author and food writer who has been preparing Cajun and Creole dishes since the 1960s.

Casey Michel was an adjunct fellow with Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative. Michel is also an American writer and investigative journalist who covers corruption, illicit finance, and transnational money laundering. He is the author of American Kleptocracy: How the US Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History, which The Economist named as one of the top five books to read to understand financial crime.

Lauren Moser is senior editor at The Onion, and former associate editor and senior writer at ClickHole.

Jessi Klein is the author of You’ll Grow Out of It and the Emmy and Peabody award-winning head writer and an executive producer of Comedy Central's critically acclaimed series Inside Amy Schumer. She is an actor and consulting producer on the hit Netflix show Big Mouth, and has also written for Netflix’s Dead to Me and Amazon's Transparent as well as Saturday Night Live. Klein has been featured on the popular storytelling series The Moth, and has been a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Oskar Eustis has served as the Artistic Director of The Public Theater since 2005. He came to The Public from Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI where he served as Artistic Director from 1994 to 2005. Eustis served as Associate Artistic Director at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum from 1989-1994; and prior to that he was with the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, serving as Resident Director and Dramaturg from 1981-1986 and Artistic Director from 1986-1989.

Gary Phillips (b. 1955) is a critically acclaimed author of mysteries and graphic novels. Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Phillips grew up reading comics, classic pulp and detective fiction, and the likes of Iceberg Slim and took inspiration from all this when he created his first series character, Ivan Monk, in the early 1990s. A private detective adept at navigating the racial tensions of modern L. A. and beyond, Monk has appeared in four novels and one short story collection, Monkology (2011).

Based in New Orleans, Nini Nguyen is a chef, instructor, and recipe developer. After starting her career in some of the country’s most innovative kitchens, such as Eleven Madison Park in New York, she ventured into the culinary spotlight by participating in Top Chef Season 16 and later in Top Chef: All-Stars Los Angeles, earning a dedicated fan following.

Doris is often called upon by the news media and late night TV hosts as well as hundreds of companies, educational institutions and nonprofits to share her vast knowledge of leadership and provide historical context for events of the current day, as our democracy is challenged, international wars rage, we continue to recover from the impacts of COVID intersected with the economic fallout, polarization, and social and racial unrest during a time filled with fear and anxiety about our future both individually as citizens and collectively as a country.