K.A. (Kristin) Leigh is a Florida-born animal lover with a passion for helping others through her writing. She and her illustrator husband, Derek Roberts, created the Brudders® book series to give kids an engaging way to learn different social emotional concepts.

Betsy Fischer Martin is an Emmy-winning journalist and TV news executive. Currently she is Executive Director of AU School of Public Affairs' Women & Politics Institute and an SPA Executive in Residence. She is also a former co-host of Bloomberg Politics' Masters in Politics Podcast. She also founded her own consulting business, Fischer Martin Media, where she specializes in providing media training to corporate executives.

Freddi Williams Evans is an independent scholar and author of award-winning books for children as well as adults.

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond to stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19.

Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs. In the 1990s, he was COO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Harlem’s largest community development organization.

Michael Strecker is an award-winning author and standup comedian.

Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of the novels The Story of Land and Sea, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and one of Vogue’s Best Books of 2014; Free Men; and The Everlasting, a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2020. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Granta, and elsewhere.

Nathaniel Rich, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of Cloudthief (Summer 2026) and three previous novels, all New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selections: King Zeno (2018); Odds Against Tomorrow (2013); and The Mayor's Tongue (2008). He has also written two works of nonfiction on environmental themes: Second Nature (2021), which includes the story that serves as the basis for the film Dark Waters; and Losing Earth (2019), which is currently being adapted into a film directed by Tom McCarthy, shooting in New Orleans.