Cited by Indiewire as one of the “exciting trans filmmakers shaking up Hollywood”, Sam’s films explore the intersection of visibility and politics along the lines of race, class, and gender in trans lives while working towards higher ethical standards in filmmaking. Sam’s films have been programmed by Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, CPH:DOX, MOMA PS-1, The British Film Institute, The Hammer Museum, and in hundreds of film festivals around the world. The Netflix Original Documentary, DISCLOSURE (Sundance, 2020) is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender. KATE BORNSTEIN IS A QUEER AND PLEASANT DANGER (2014), a portrait of trans icon Kate Bornstein, was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by The Advocate, won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and multiple best feature film awards. Sam’s work has been supported by Ford/JustFilms, Fork Films, California Humanities, The Jerome Foundation, Perspective Fund, Threshold, IFP Film Week, Good Pitch USA/Doc Society, MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo artist residency.

Sunny Fischer works as a consultant to nonprofits and foundations. She served as Executive Director of The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation (1992-2013), and of The Sophia Fund (1983-92), the first private women’s foundation in the country devoted exclusively to women’s issues and was a co-founder of The Chicago Foundation for Women. From 1997-99, she was the director of the Chicago/Cook County Welfare Reform Task Force. Currently, she chairs the board of The National Public Housing Museum, which she co-founded. She volunteer her time in numerous other organizations including the Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Futures Without Violence, Project &, and The Driehaus Museum. She is also on the Illinois Holocaust Museum’s collections and exhibit committee. Sunny grew up in New York City public housing in the Bronx. She graduated with a BA in English from Hunter College of the City University of New York, and has a Masters degree from The University of Chicago School of Social Services Administration.

Sonny currently serves as the board chair for Project& and has over 25 years of experience as a senior executive or board member across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He launched and ran the Energy division at Uptake Technologies and immediately prior to that was a member of the Executive Committee at Exelon Corporation, a Fortune 100 company, where he was the Chief Information and Innovation Officer. Sonny also served as an Assistant to former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and was appointed a White House Fellow by President William Clinton. Sonny also currently serves on the non-profit boards of The Invisible Institute, the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Sonny has a B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.P.P. from Harvard. He and his wife are reluctantly adjusting to empty nesting.

Tony Gerber is a two-time Emmy winner and recently directed and executive produced Kingdom of the White Wolf, a 3-part natural history series for National Geographic, filmed on location in the High Arctic. He is a producer of the PGA award-winning film Jane about the life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall. For CNN Films he directed, and co-wrote with Meryl Streep, We Will Rise chronicling former First Lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Africa to raise awareness of the importance of girl’s education which won an American Television Academy Honor and a Cine Golden Eagle. His independent films include Full Battle Rattle (Berlinale premiere and SXSW Special Jury Prize) and The Notorious Mr. Bout (Sundance premiere.) In 2005, Gerber co-founded NY-based production company, Market Road Films with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. Nottage and Gerber are currently developing a feature film, Everlasting Yea! for Amazon Studios and are Executive Producers of Deep South, a 10-part podcast for Stitcher investigating an unsolved 1950s lynching and the conspiracy of silence in a small southern town. Gerber is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Mia Henry (she/her) is the founder and principal of Freedom Lifted, a consulting firm that supports social justice leadership development through specialized facilitation, online education and curation of Civil Rights tours to the Deep South. Mia was born and raised in the U.S. Deep South, the daughter of a Civil Rights activist who desegregated her junior high school in Alabama in the 1960s. Mia grew up learning about Civil Rights history not only in school, but from her parents and extended family in Alabama. She has more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit management, youth development, intergenerational community organizing, and civic and history education. Mia served as the Executive Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College which provides education and capacity-building to activists of all ages. Mia was the founding director of the Chicago Freedom School, a nonprofit organization that builds capacity for youth-led social change. She has also been a lecturer and staff administrator in higher education, a high school history teacher and a coordinator for the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Mia has served as a trainer and consultant nationally to several organizations including the Public Libraries of America, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Ashoka Foundation, Safe Places for the Advancement of Community and Equity (SPACEs), and the Chicago History Museum. Mia earned her B.S. from Rutgers University and her M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Andres L. Hernandez is a Chicago-based artist, designer, and educator who re-imagines the environments we inhabit, and explores the potential of these spaces to support creative production, public dialogue, community building, and social action. Hernandez’ projects include Tucson Tête-à-Tête for the University of Arizona School of Art; Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See A Line) with Amanda Williams and Shani Crowe for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; and A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) with Amanda Williams for PXSTL, organized by Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. As part of the collective Dark Adaptive with Torkwase Dyson and Zachary Fabri, Hernandez has co-developed performances presented at national and international venues. Hernandez is the MCA Chicago SPACE artist-in-residence at Curie Metropolitan High School; a 2018-2019 visiting artist-in-residence with University of Arizona School of Art; a 2018 Efroymson Family Fund Contemporary Arts Fellow; and from 2017-2019, an exhibition design team member for the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center. Hernandez received a B.Arch. degree from Cornell University and an M.A. degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor.

Jim Hodges was born in 1957 in Spokane, Washington, and lives and works in New York. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including: the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Camden Art Centre, London; the Aspen Art Museum; CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently a major traveling retrospective of Hodges’s work was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Dallas Museum of Art; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. The artist recently unveiled the work I dreamed a world and called it love, a monumentally scaled installation commissioned by the MTA and permanently installed in New York’s iconic Grand Central Station. Hodges has received multiple awards and grants including the Association International des Critiques d’art, the Albert Ucross Prize, Washington State Arts Commission, and the Penny McCall Foundation Grant.

E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University. He is a 2020 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Johnson is a prolific performer/scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance Studies, Gender and Sexuality studies.

He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003); Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (2008); Black. Queer. Southern. Women.—An Oral History (2018); and Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to several edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays.

Johnson’s written and performance work dovetail intimately. His staged reading, “Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales,” has toured to over 100 college campuses since 2006. The full-length stage play, Sweet Tea—The Play, premiered in Chicago, toured across 8 other cities, and to the National Black Theater Festival.

Johnson is also among the subjects and co-executive producer of the film, Making Sweet Tea, which has received several awards, including Best LGBTQ Film at the San Diego Film Festival, Best Documentary Audience at the Out on Film Festival, and the Silver Image Award from the Association of American Retired Persons (AARP) for Positive Representation of LGBTQ People over Fifty at the Chicago Reeling LGBTQ Film Festival.

Sam Kirk is a multidisciplinary artist, who explores culture and identity politics. Her artwork focuses on a variety of intersections which encompass a call to celebrate differences and enact change. Throughout her childhood, her family’s frequent moves throughout Chicago sparked a fascination with the nuances of the human experience and a curiosity about the cultures of the city and the world. Kirk’s artwork shares narratives via vibrant color palettes, intricate line-work, and multi-toned figures - highlighting cultural communities and the role personal engagements and life experience plays in the development of our identity. She has been recognized for her public art practice and how she has intentionally used the public space to uplift the stories of marginalized individuals by O Magazine, Forbes, and recently was listed as one of the top 50 Artists of 2020 in Chicago by New City Magazine. Her collaborations include global brands and US based non-profit organizations such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Xfinity/Comcast, Vans, World Business Chicago, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and WBEZ. She is the Creative Director and Founder of Provoke Culture, a cause related creative group specializing in community murals and digital illustration.

David Todd Lawrence is Associate Professor of English and American Culture and Difference at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, where he teaches African American literature and culture, folklore, and cultural studies. His book, When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics and Community in Pinhook, Mo (2018), co-authored with Elaine Lawless, is an ethnographic project done in collaboration with residents of Pinhook, Missouri, an African American town destroyed during the Mississippi River Flood of 2011. He is also co-creator of the George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art Database and co-director of the Urban Art Mapping research project.

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. She is best known for representations of people whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized.

Ms. Lehrer’s work has been seen in venues including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the State of Illinois Museum.

Awards include the 2020 Disability Futures Fellowship of the Ford Foundation; the Nick and Keven Wilder Award for Excellence in Teaching, SAIC; the 2017 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship for writing; 2015 3Arts Residency Fellowship at the University of Illinois; the 2014 Carnegie Mellon Fellowship at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges; the 2009 Prairie Fellowship at the Ragdale Foundation.

Grants include the 2009 Critical Fierceness Grant, the 2008 3Arts Foundation Grant, and the 2006 Wynn Newhouse Award for Excellence, (NYC), as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the University of Illinois, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lehrer’s memoir, Golem Girl, was published by the One World imprint of Penguin/Random House in October 2020, won the 2020 Barbellion Prize for Literature; was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and shortlisted for the Chicago review of Books 2020 CHIRBY Awards.

Riva Lehrer is represented by Regal Hoffman & Associates literary agency, NYC, and by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago.

Ms. Lehrer is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and instructor in the Medical Humanities Departments of Northwestern University.

Nancy leads Otherwise Incorporated, a Chicago-based branding consultancy, in all facets of its strategic visual communications practice. With more than 30 years spent breaking ground in the branding arena, she has a passion for exploring the space where creativity, strategic thinking, visual design and technology merge, and has helped companies, social enterprises, cultural organizations and communities engage with clarity, intelligence and inventiveness. Nancy mentors fellow entrepreneurs, coaches senior executives, grooms up-and-coming staff, and champions the challenges of building—and often rebuilding—brands, leveraging her experience in surprising ways across systems and conventional wisdoms. Nancy’s ability to see what others overlook is at the heart of the Otherwise brand illumination experience. Nancy holds an A.B. in American Studies from Barnard College, Columbia University. She serves as an advisor to alt_space, Sunshine Enterprises and LiftUp Enterprises. She was a founder and long-time board member of Lycée Français de Chicago, is president of the Board at the Renaissance Society and sits on the Library Council of MoMA, New York and the Exhibition Committee at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Howell J. Malham Jr. is the founder of GreenHouse::Innovation, and co-founder of Insight Labs, the world’s first philanthropic think tank. A former creative director and recovering brand strategist, Howell conducts GreenHouse’s Movable Forums which bring together business and government leaders, domain experts, and designers to develop new approaches for tackling the most pressing social issues of our time including women’s health, democracy in America, and racism. He continues to spearhead GreenHouse’s ongoing commitment to the nonprofit sector by helping organizations uncover the hidden business value of mission-driven work to create radically new yet financially sound incentives for corporate investors. He is a freelance writer, blogger, and author of I Have A Strategy (No You Don’t), an illustrated guide to strategy. He lives in Chicago and is fast at work on his second book.

Aarya Malik is a Zoroastrian-Indian woman born and raised in the UAE, currently achieving her further professional education in the United States. She has obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Global and International Studies at Loyola University Chicago and has worked with various international law firms in India, the United States, and the UAE. Aarya is a human and women’s rights advocate, with a keen interest in human rights law, gender equality, public interest law and criminal justice, and will begin her Juris Doctorate education in 2022. In the past year, she has worked with the Glasgow Actions Team on their mission to achieve climate justice at the 26th Conference of Parties in Glasgow, Ireland through policy research and action organization. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aarya was a part of the Case Management Team for the Marjorie Kovler Center in Chicago—a center dedicated to providing survivors of political torture with opportunities to heal and to access justice and resources. Currently, she also works with the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities and is completing Sexual Assault Intervention Certification and Training as a Rape and Sexual Assault Victim Advocate.

As Culture Change Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Kristina Mevs-Apgar leverages the power of culture to change perceptions and behaviors related to and impacting domestic workers and the communities that comprise the sector including women of color and immigrants. Kristina develops opportunities to drive and amplify NDWA's culture change goals and strategies by coordinating the development of unique content, creative partnerships, and cultural organizing campaigns. Kristina led NDWA’s award winning Roma social impact campaign alongside Participant. Kristina has over 15 years of experience in the entertainment industry as an actress (90210, Privileged, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Before moving into the culture change field, she worked in communications and development at several domestic and international nonprofits. Kristina was a regional field organizer with Organizing for America, President Obama’s grassroots re-election team in 2012. She is on the advisory board of Komera, a nonprofit in Rwanda that empowers girls through education, community and sport. Kristina is on the Coordinating Committee of Storyline Partners, a collective of non-profit organizations that collaborates with the entertainment industry to seed new narratives in television and film. Kristina graduated magna cum laude from UCLA with a B.A. in Political Science.

Karina Muñiz-Pagán (she/they) is a queer Xicana writer, literary translator and Creative Strategies Lead Organizer for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She is nurtured and motivated by the fierce and courageous leadership and narrative power of domestic workers in our movement today and carries with her the ancestral legacy of her domestic worker grandmothers. She has an MFA in Prose from Mills College where she was awarded the Community Engagement Fellowship while serving as the Political Director for Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA). She co-founded the writers’ collective, Las Malcriadas, and edited and translated the bilingual anthology Mujeres Mágicas: Domestic Workers Right to Write. She has also earned MAs in Urban Planning and Latin American Studies from UCLA and has written about and led campaigns focused on cultural organizing and place-based storytelling. Karina is a contributing author of the books, Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Writers of Color and Working for Justice: The LA Model of Organizing and Advocacy. She is an alumna of Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), Macondo Writers Workshop and member of the AWP Latinx Writers Caucus Leadership Team.

AI For the People (AFP) is a nonprofit communications firm, founded by Mutale Nkonde. AFP’s mission is to produce content that empowers general audiences to combat racial bias in tech. Prior to starting AI for the People, Nkonde worked in AI Governance. During that time, she was part of the team that introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, the DEEP FAKES Accountability Act, and the No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act to the US House of Representatives. In 2021 Nkonde was the lead author of Disinformation Creep: ADOS and the Weaponization of Breaking News, Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, which kicked off her work in mis and disinformation. AI for the People recently co-produced a film with Amnesty International to support the ban the scan campaign a global push to ban facial recognition.

Neysa is a curator, lecturer, writer, and educator with a focus on feminism, African diaspora, social practice and public art. Based in Kansas City since 2020, she curates, produces and consults on public art, street art and monuments. Formerly she was executive director of the Department of Exhibitions and Performance Spaces at Columbia College Chicago and the director and chief curator of the Wabash Arts Corridor. Neysa has produced over 300 exhibitions and public art projects nationally and internationally, including: Inequality in Bronze: Monumental Plantation Legacies, a monument to Dinah, a formerly enslaved woman in Philadelphia; international mural exchanges with Sister Cities International in Casablanca, Morocco and Toronto, Canada; Street Level: Wabash Arts Corridor Public Arts Festival; Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice; Vacancy: Urban Interruption and (Re)generation, with the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond touring for 7 years to 9 museums; Vodou Riche: Contemporary Haitian Art and a recently launched mural and monument project to Illinois Womens Suffrage. Neysa has lectured and written extensively on public art & monuments, feminist art, African disapora and social-engaged practices. Recently she co-authored with Melissa Potter the Feminist Social Practice Manifesto (John Hopkins University Press) and published Feminism in Your Face: Public Art Resistance in Where the Future Came From (Soberscove Press).

Rashida Phillips joined the American Jazz Museum as Executive Director in January 2020, now leading strategic re-envision and revitalization of the near 25-year signature institution. Phillips spent 16 years at some of Chicago’s most impactful organizations, including a previous role organizing turnaround at the Old Town School of Folk Music, the largest community arts school with acclaimed concert venue in the nation, deep work with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education and the Chicago Children’s Museum. She is also a jazz vocalist with a M.A. in Jazz History and Research from Rutgers University and has a B.A. in English, minoring in African American Studies from Oberlin College.

Her career reflects a commitment to the intersection of arts, culture, community, and education. In New York, she helped launch the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, building support, visibility, and audience, while co-producing “Harlem's Song,” at the White House, programmed Chicago-area Jazz and Humanities festivals, developed arts integration research and curriculum models for schools, and supported justice-centered work of youth and community.

Ai-jen Poo is an award-winning organizer, author, and a leading voice in the women’s movement. She is the Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Director of Caring Across Generations, Co-Founder of SuperMajority, Co-Host of Sunstorm podcast and a Trustee of the Ford Foundation. Ai-jen is a nationally recognized expert on elder and family care, the future of work, and what’s at stake for women of color. She is the author of the celebrated book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. Follow her at @aijenpoo

Melissa Hilliard Potter is a feminist interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator whose work has been exhibited and screened in numerous venues including Bronx Museum of the Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Cinneffable Film Festival. Potter has been the recipient of three Fulbright awards, which enabled her to build two papermaking studios in Serbia and Bosnia & Hercegovina. In addition, she collaborated with women felt artisans and activists in Georgia through her project, “Craft Power,” with Miriam Schaer. Her hand papermaking project, “Seeds InService” with Maggie Puckett, was recently included in a collection archived in the mountain of the Global Seed Bank in Svalbard, Norway. As a curator, Potter’s exhibitions include “Social Paper: Hand Papermaking in the Context of Socially Engaged Art” with Jessica Cochran and “Revolution at Point Zero: Feminist Social Practice” with Neysa Page-Lieberman. Her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others. She is an Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Abby is involved in initiatives sitting at the nexus of arts & culture, civic engagement and technology. As a cultural producer, she is interested in how we can leverage the collective power and resources of this next generation of wealth to find more sustainable solutions to building a just and equitable arts and culture ecosystem. Abby most recently worked on Madison Wells’ Chicago-based immersive art experience Nevermore Park, based on Hebru Brantley’s Flyboy. Film credits include Emily Cohn’s “CRSHD,” which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and was released in virtual theaters May 2020, “When Jeff Tried to Save the World,” starring Maya Erskine, and Erica Rose’s “Girl Talk” which premiered at Outfest in 2018. Additionally, Abby has invested in a number of Los Angeles and New York-based companies across the impact and media industries such as Seed & Spark and Breakwater Studios. Abby sits on the boards of The Marshall Project, Pioneer Works, Ghetto Film School and Run for Something.

Michele Robecchi is a writer and curator based in London, where he is a Commissioning Editor at Phaidon Press. He is the author, together with Francesca Bonazzoli, of From Mona Lisa to Marge: How the World’s Greatest Artworks entered Popular Culture (2014) and Portraits Unmasked: The Story Behind the Faces (2020). Over the years he has either authored or contributed to monographic publications on the work of Adel Abdessemed, Hernan Bas, Urs Fischer, Sarah Lucas, Ingeborg Lüscher, Kerry James Marshall, Robin Rhode, Christine Streuli and Reginald Sylvester II. He has organized or co-organized various exhibitions, including TIP: Trends, Ideas, Projects (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2004), Beauty So Difficult (Fondazione Stelline, Milan, 2005), Calling All the Stations (National Gallery of Kosovo, Pristina, 2010), Pretenzione Intenzione (Fabbrica Rosa di Szeemann, Maggia, Switzerland, 2015) and Brian Eno: The Ship (La Commun, Geneva, 2016).

Tara Rodriguez Besosa is one of the creators behind El Departamento de la Comida, a grassroots collective in Borikén (Puerto Rico) that works with small farmers, queer community, decolonizing agricultural practices and supporting the exchange of powerful plant knowledge in food, medicine, and culture. Through the creation of shared resources and alternative models like the Agroteca (a resource library with community seeds, tool-lending, and educational materials) and Cocina (a crop-processing experimental kitchen), this collective supports food sovereignty projects within their communities around the islands. Tara is also part of OtraCosa, a queer collective off-grid rural homestead located within the mountains of Caguas. OtraCosa has given Tara and chosen family the opportunity to unlearn many inherited unsustainable land practices, choosing instead to humbly learn from the ecosystem and non-human inhabitants of this place, observation being key. Tara mixes and connects architecture, systems design, hands-on experiential learning, agriculture, queerness, and the sharings of her community and surroundings into their life’s work.

Photo credit: Ana Paula Teixeira

A native New Yorker, Tricia Rose graduated from Yale University and then earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University. After teaching at NYU and UC Santa Cruz, she returned to Brown where she is Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives, and the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. She has received several awards and scholarly fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the American Association of University Women. Rose is the author of three highly regarded books, one of which is considered the foundational text for hip hop studies, an edited collection, and several articles. Now, she is working on a digital research project called: How Systemic Racism Works—a project designed to explain and make visible the influential but largely obscured power of systemic racial discrimination in present-day society. Rose is co-host with Cornel West on The Tight Rope, a new podcast discussing issues of justice, art, and race. For more information or to stay in touch, she encourages you to connect with her on her website www.triciarose.com or social media.