Dr. Michael White is a renowned New Orleans clarinetist, bandleader, composer, historian, and educator, recognized as a leading authority on traditional New Orleans jazz. He has performed worldwide, recorded over 50 albums, and collaborated with legends like Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton, and Paul Simon.
Inspired by George Lewis, White began his jazz career in the 1970s, playing with brass bands and forming the Original Liberty Jazz Band in 1981. His recordings, including Blue Crescent and Adventures in New Orleans Jazz, highlight his deep connection to the city’s musical heritage.

Eric Waters is a photographer and social practice artist who has been documenting Black social life and cultural traditions in and around New Orleans for over forty years. Waters received his undergraduate degree from Dillard University and studied photography independently under the tutelage of the late Marion J. Porter, a well-known and respected Black New Orleans photographer.

Based in the New York office, Amanda Urban represents both fiction and non-fiction titles for many world-renowned authors and prize-winning journalists, ranging from literary novels to memoirs, biographies, and books on current affairs. She has represented a long list of writers, including Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jennifer Egan, Michael Pollan, Isabel Wilkerson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Walter Isaacson. She joined CAA in 2022 following the agency’s acquisition of ICM.

Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick were born and raised in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. As husband and wife team, they have been documenting Louisiana and its people for more than 25 years. In New Orleans, they have documented the music culture, which consists of Brass Bands, Jazz Funerals, Social and Pleasure Clubs, Benevolent Societies, and the Black Mardi Gras Indians.

Amanda M. Maples is Françoise Billion Richardson Curator of African Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She has taught university courses in African arts and served in curatorial and scholarly capacities at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center, the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, the High Desert Museum, and UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Sarah LaBrie is the author of No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir, which was a New York Times Editor's Pick and 2024 Notable Book. She was born in Oakland, grew up in Houston and now lives in Los Angeles where she works as a TV writer. She's written for shows including Minx (Starz and Max), Love, Victor (Hulu), Blindspotting (Starz) and Made For Love (Max). Her fiction and non-fiction appear in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Guernica, Joyland, Taste and elsewhere.

Cherice Harrison-Nelson is an educator, narrative visual and performance artist, and arts administrator. As the co-founder and curator of the former Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, she was the co-editor of 11 publications and coordinated numerous exhibitions and panel discussions focused on West African inspired cultural traditions from New Orleans. Her creative expressions have been performed, presented and exhibited throughout the city and world. She has been featured in numerous documentaries, exhibitions and printed publications, including an NPR American Routes Carnival edition.

Virginia Hanusik is an artist and writer whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured in The New Yorker, Aperture, National Geographic, British Journal of Photography, Places Journal, The Atlantic, MAS Context, and Oxford American among others, and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation, Pulitzer Center, Graham Foundation, Landmark Columbus Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.

Kathe Hambrick is the Founder and former Executive Director of the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville, established in 1994 as Louisiana’s first African American museum. She also previously served as the Chief Curator and Director of Interpretation for the West Baton Rouge Museum. Her career as a museum professional includes an expertise in program development, interpretative planning, curation, grant writing, fundraising, and board governance.