Education and Lifelong Learning
Britt Hawthorne (they/she) is the author of the highly-anticipated, New York Times Bestseller, Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide (Simon Element, 2022). Britt is also an antiracist educator, teacher, speaker, visionary, and advocate committed to raising a generation of antiracist children by centering families of the global majority and fostering equitable learning environments for students and children of all ages and backgrounds.
Tiffany Jewell is a Black biracial writer, twin sister, first generation American, cisgender mama, anti-bias antiracist (ABAR) educator, and consultant. She is the author of the #1 New York Times and #1 Indie Bestseller, This Book Is Anti-Racist, a book for young folks and everyone to wake up, take action, and do the work of becoming antiracist.
Anthony R. Keith, Jr., Ph.D. (Tony) is a Black, gay spoken word artist, poet, and Hip-Hop educator. His debut, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, is a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry.
Davarian L. Baldwin is a leading voice on the topic of the future of higher education. He is an internationally recognized scholar, historian, and public advocate. He is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College. A foremost expert on Black social movements and African American history, he is often called upon to consult on everything from the politics of reparations to the global impact of the Harlem Renaissance. His academic and political commitments have focused on global cities and particularly the diverse and marginalized communities that struggle to maintain sustainable lives in urban locales. Baldwin is the award-winning author of several books including In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities (2021), Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (2007), and Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).
Jamilah Pitts is an author, educator, social entrepreneur, and wellness guide whose work centers the liberation, healing and holistic development of communities of the Global Majority. Jamilah has worked and served in various roles and spaces to promote racial justice and healing. Jamilah has served as a teacher, coach, dean, and as an Assistant Principal. She has worked in domestic and international educational spaces. Jamilah partners with schools, communities, universities and organizations to advance the work of racial, social and intersectional justice.
As a cultural historian, media scholar and lecturer, Siva Vaidhyanathan speaks on the impact of digitalization on society and democracy particularly within the sphere of education. In his speeches, he encourages audiences to consider how technological advances like artificial intelligence, corporations like Google and algorithm-fueled social media platforms shape the way we think and what we can do to foster a new Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world. At the University of Virginia, Vaidhyanathan serves as the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship. He is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues on public radio shows and news programs, notably BBC, CNN and NBC. Siva has authored several books, including Antisocial Media and The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). He also co-hosted the podcast Democracy in Danger. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and The Nation.
Noah Giansiracusa is a leading voice in math empowerment and an associate professor of mathematics at Bentley University (a business school near Boston), visiting scholar at Harvard, and co-host of the AI in Academia podcast. He is the 2026 recipient of a national communication award for "bringing mathematical ideas and information to nonmathematical audiences," an honor shared by past recipients including Nate Silver, Roger Penrose, and Martin Gardner. Noah has appeared on CNN live and BBC radio and written for Washington Post, Scientific American, TIME, Wired, Boston Globe, and others. His first book explores the algorithms impacting our information ecosystem, while his second book, Robin Hood Math, shows how people of all backgrounds can use math to help navigate life and take back control in a world dominated by algorithms.
Kathryn Hulick (she/her) is a freelance journalist who covers AI and computing for Science News and Science News Explores. She's also the author of books for young people or anyone who is curious. Her book The UFO Files (Quarto, 2025) combines a sci-fi story with scientific explanations of the marvels found on board an alien spacecraft. Her book Welcome To The Future (Quarto, 2021) is about how technology could change the world, and Strange But True (Quarto, 2019) uses critical thinking to explore the science behind paranormal mysteries.
Joel Christian Gill is the Inaugural Chair of Boston University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Visual Narrative and Associate Professor in the CFA School of Visual Arts. He is also a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize.
Gloria is a Colombian American writer, translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy. She is the author of This is the Year, Your Biome Has Found You, and Danzirly, which won the Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her other honors include an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship, Hedgebrook Fellowship, being a Macondista, Highlights Foundation’s Diverse Verse Fellowship, Lumina’s Multilingual Writing Award, and a part of Las Musas. She is proud to be St. Pete's first Latina poet laureate.
Priya Huq is a Bangladeshi Texan cartoonist living in New York who speaks widely on issues related to the comics industry, art, race, culture, identity and their intersections. Her appearances include the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Emerald City Comic Con, and New York Comic Con. In her talks, Priya focuses on practical advice for marginalized artists and cartoonists.
Kai Harris is the author of the acclaimed debut novel What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations, 2022), a Silicon Valley 2023 Read, A Marie Claire Book Club pick as well as being an NAACP Image Award nominee and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. She is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan, who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience.
An award-winning illustrator and scholar of black comics, John is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside; he is also the publisher of Megascope, an imprint of Abrams ComicArts dedicated to publishing works exploring the experiences of people of color. He speaks widely on the subjects of Afrofuturism and Black Comix.
Kristen Arnett is an intellectual freedom advocate and the queer author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the NYT bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her latest novel Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One (Riverhead Books, 2025) explores the themes of humor and community. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Key West Literary Seminar, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her next project is a collection of short stories. Kristen currently writes a popular column for LitHub. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida.
Lee Hawkins is a leading expert in how intergenerational trauma impacts education and learning. He specializes in how experiences of trauma can change ACEs scores. He is an American investigative journalist and author who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2022. His most recent book, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free, is an introspective journey into his family history, tracing its roots to pre-Revolutionary America.
Dr. Douglas Boin (B.A., Georgetown University; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a historian, teacher, and author. His books include Coming Out Christian in the Roman World, A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity, and Alaric the Goth: An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome, which was named by The Economist one of the best books of 2020. His next book, Clodia of Rome, will appear from W. W. Norton in August 2025. An experienced educator with more than two decades of experience, he coaches other educators and teaching strategies and the importance of historical storytelling in the age of Big Data and AI.
Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice (CRDJ) and Co-Director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She currently serves as a Director of the UCLA DataX Initiative, leading work in critical data studies for the campus. Professor Noble is the author of the best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic harm in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. In 2021, she was recognized as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her ground-breaking work on algorithmic discrimination. Dr. Noble is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment, and provides expertise to a number of civil and human rights organizations. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she is a chartering member of the International Panel on the Information Environment. In 2022, she was recognized as the inaugural NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award recipient.
Matthew Salesses is a groundbreaking educator who challenged the status quo of workshops in the creative writing space and pioneered new methods for teaching creative writing. He is the author of eight books, most recently The Sense of Wonder, the national bestseller Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (a Best Book of 2021 at NPR, Esquire, Library Journal, Independent Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Electric Literature, and others), and the PEN/Faulkner Finalist and Dublin Literary Award longlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear.
Omkari L. Williams is the Gold Nautilus award-winning and bestselling author of Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without A Bullhorn). Her book helps readers of all ages identify their “activist archetype" and map a personal action plan for engaging in small, change-making activities with potentially big impacts. Omkari has worked as an actor, political consultant, and coach. Though she has an affinity for supporting activists who identify as introverted or highly sensitive, as she does, she often works with educators and nonprofits and welcomes all people into the world of micro activism, a sustainable path to change-making based upon honoring the inherent dignity of all people. Omkari lives in Western Massachusetts where she enjoys being part of a vibrant community of artists.