Social Transformation Project

Natasha is a facilitator, consultant, educator and counsellor in diversity, inclusion, social justice and transformative change, with over 25 years of experience. She specializes in inclusive leadership, diverse teams, intercultural competence, emotional intelligence, transformative organizational development, equity, social justice and anti-oppression.

Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles

Gregory Joseph "Greg" Boyle is an American Jesuit priest. He is the founder and Director of Homeboy Industries, former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles and author of Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.

Peter T. Coleman is Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds a joint-appointment at Teachers College and The Earth Institute. Dr. Coleman directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR), is founding director of the Institute for Psychological Science and Practice (IPSP), and is executive director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4).

Dr. Coleman is a renowned expert on conflict resolution and sustainable peace. His current research focuses on conflict intelligence and systemic wisdom as meta-competencies for navigating conflict constructively across all levels (from families to companies to communities to nations), and includes projects on adaptive negotiation and mediation dynamics, cross-cultural adaptivity, optimality dynamics in conflict, justice and polarization, multicultural conflict, intractable conflict, and sustainable peace.

University of Wisconsin

Katherine is an American political scientist. She is a professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cramer is the author ofThe Politics of Resentment, the fruit of almost a decade of studying political attitudes in rural Wisconsin through ethnography.

University of Colorado Leeds School of Business

Phil is a professor at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business. He is the Co-Author of The Knowledge Illusion and the recipient of the Consumer Research 2018 Early Career Award for his influential work in the field of consumer research, adjacent disciplines, and public discourse.

Storied Media Group

Aaron is head of Unscripted at Storied Media Group, overseeing and guiding the unscripted slate for all traditional and digital outlets, as well as managing relationships for all of SMG’s clients. Prior to Storied Media Group, Aaron was an Executive at Thinkfactory Media where he oversaw Current, Development, Digital, Casting and staffing. Aaron has helped develop, sell and show-run over 30 shows, supervised over 15 in current, launched over 10 new series and 5 digital series. Aaron has 15 years experience in the industry where he began working in scripted projects as a writer/director. Since his segue into the unscripted world, he has produced such shows as The Amazing Race (4 Emmy wins during tenure), Undercover Boss (Nominated for Emmy during tenure), Dance Moms (#1 rated show on Lifetime during tenure), R&B Divas: Atlanta (GLAAD award winner), R&B Divas: Los Angeles, Lifetime’s hit series, Preachers’ Daughters, Queens Of Drama for POP!, JUMP! For Lifetime, amongst many others.

Harvard Kennedy School

Archon is the Director of Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His work focuses on understanding how participation, deliberation and transparency can make contemporary public governance more fair and effective.

University at Buffalo, Department of Psychology Faculty

My primary area of interest is the social nature of the self. Within that broad area, my students and I have examined Social Surrogacy – the tendency for humans to form psychological relationships with non-human (on non-physically available) entities, the social functions of the self, the need to belong, and how our relationships shape our feelings about ourselves (and vice versa). We also study the psychological importance of spending time in large, anonymous crowds such as at concerts, sporting events, rallies, and religious gatherings. Much of our research is guided by the proposition that humans are a fundamentally social species and thus a great deal of human behavior can be best understood as being in service of connecting to others. Even when we think we are not being social (i.e. when we watch TV or surf the web) social motivations are behind our actions.

University of Pennsylvania

Kathleen is an American Professor of Communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The Annenberg Public Policy Center runs FactCheck.org, a nonprofit devoted to examining the factual accuracy of U.S. political campaign advertisements.

More in Common USA

Stephen is the Research Director and Senior Associate at More in Common USA. Since 2016, Stephen has led More in Common’s studies on polarization and division in the United States and across Europe. Stephen has a background in measuring and advising on public opinion for political candidates, Fortune 100 companies such as Microsoft and Ford, and public sector organisations such the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UNHCR.

Alexandra is an award-winning writer based in Indianapolis, currently working on a book on American civic renewal. Her project shares the lesser-known stories of hope of citizens across the nation who are healing their neighborhoods and communities through creative problem-solving. She earned a Masters degree in Social Policy at the London School of Economics as a Rotary Scholar, and has served at the local, state and federal levels of government and public policy—most recently holding an appointment at the US Department of Education. Now a full-time writer and speaker, she has appeared on Fox News and contributes to The Wall Street Journal, Politico Magazine, Washington Examiner, Commentary Magazine, and Quillette.

Coordinator of the National Rural Assembly

Whitney is focused on building civic courage in communities across the United States in her role as coordinator of the National Rural Assembly, a rural movement made up of activities and partnerships geared toward building better policy and more opportunity across the country. In 2017, she was a featured speaker at the inaugural summit of the Obama Foundation and a guest on the radio program On Being with Krista Tippett. In 2018, she spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Sally is one of the leading progressive voices in America today. A frequent guest on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, Sally's first book The Opposite of Hate was published in April 2018. Sally is a popular keynote speaker at business conferences and college campuses talking about political division, hate, otherizing, diversity and identity — and how we can solve the deep problems of our past and present.

Katapult

Gerry is an American serial entrepreneur in media and technology. She led the team that created Nickelodeon in the 80's and 90's, past president of Disney-ABC Cable Networks and co-founded Oxygen Media.

W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair Professor of Government

Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. Levinson is the author of approximately 400 articles, book reviews, or commentaries in professional and popular journals--and a regular contributor to the popular blog Balkinization. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2010.

He has been a visiting faculty member of the Boston University, Georgetown, Harvard, New York University, and Yale law schools in the United States and has taught abroad in programs of law in London; Paris; Jerusalem; Auckland, New Zealand; and Melbourne, Australia. He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1985-86 and a Member of the Ethics in the Professions Program at Harvard in 1991-92. He is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jewish Philosophy in Jerusalem. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

National Institute for Civil Discourse

Dr. Lukensmeyer is the Executive Director Emerita of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, an organization that works to reduce political dysfunction and incivility in our political system. As a leader in the field of deliberative democracy, she works to restore our democracy to reflect the intended vision of our founding fathers.

Dr. Lukensmeyer previously served as Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, an award-winning nonprofit organization that promoted nonpartisan initiatives to engage citizens and leaders through the development of innovative public policy tools and strategies. During her tenure, AmericaSpeaks engaged more than 200,000 people and hosted events across all 50 states and throughout the world. Dr. Lukensmeyer formerly served as Consultant to the White House Chief of Staff from 1993-94 and on the National Performance Review where she steered internal management and oversaw government-wide reforms. She was the Chief of Staff to Ohio Governor Richard F. Celeste from 1986-91, becoming the first woman to serve in this capacity.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Evan Mandery is a professor in the department of criminal justice and an expert on the death penalty. He is the author of three novels, three works of non-fiction including, most recently, A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America (W.W. Norton) and is a regular contributor to Politico. He is the co-creator of ARTIFICIAL, a live interactive series on Twitch, for which he won a Peabody and an Emmy Award in 2019.

Out Boulder

Mardi grew up in rural Colorado and returned from Seattle to lead Out Boulder. Out Boulder is focused on the needs of the whole LGBTQ community and under Mardi’s leadership created the Transgender Leadership Academy.

In Seattle, she started an innovated company to raise money from smaller donors to benefit LGBT citizen rights and start the Pride Foundation.

As Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Moss spent the last two decades practicing and preaching a Black theology that unapologetically calls attention to the problems of mass incarceration, environmental justice, and economic inequality.

Dr. Moss is part of a new generation of ministers committed to preaching a prophetic message of love and justice, which he believes are inseparable companions that form the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was recently recognized as one of the “12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking World” by Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

Harvard Kennedy School

Khalil is professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Harlem-based branch of the New York Public Library system and one of the world’s leading research facilities dedicated to the history of the African diaspora. He is the great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam.

National Immigration Forum

Ali is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization promoting the value of immigrants and immigration. Growing up as the son of Pakistani immigrants, Ali quickly learned how to forge alliances among people of wide-ranging backgrounds, a skill that has served him extraordinarily well as one of the nation’s most innovative coalition builders. He is the author of There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration and the host of Only in America Podcast.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

Pamela Paresky is Senior Scholar in Human Development and Psychology at FIRE, where she served as chief researcher and in-house editor for The Coddling of the American Mind. She is the author of A Year of Kindness, a guided journal for recording daily acts of kindness and thoughts of gratitude. She also writes for PsychologyToday.com and directs the Aspen Center for Human Development. Pamela is currently developing a course for the Democracy Initiative at the University of Chicago titled, Habits of a Free Mind: Psychology for Democracy. The course and eventual book teach practices and mental habits for contributing to and thriving in a liberal democracy, including for engaging across lines of difference without feeling traumatized and without dehumanizing others.

Xavier University Communications Faculty

Dr. Rasmussen teaches a variety of courses in public relations, advertising, and social media. Her classes have partnered with local organizations like the Music Resource Center (Evanston), Findlay Market Farmstands, and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens. She also serves as the Communication Department internship coordinator. Her research in public relations and social media examines social media as a vehicle for mobilizing publics for a number of reasons, and in different contexts. Her recent research includes the examination of influencers as a public relations mediators, online trolling challenges to crisis communication, and channeling trolling as part of a broader strategy.

Publications include: Rasmussen, L. (2018). Parasocial interaction in the digital age: An examination of relationship building and the effectiveness of YouTube beauty celebrities. Journal of Social Media in Society, 7(1), 280-294.

The Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University

Professor Richeson’s research examines multiple psychological phenomena related to cultural diversity. Her work generally concerns the ways in which sociocultural group memberships such as race, gender, and socio-economic status impact the way people think, feel, and behave, especially during interactions with members of different sociocultural groups. Her current research is largely focused on dynamics and consequences of increasing racial, ethnic, and other forms of cultural diversity, most notably the rising racial/ethnic diversity of the nation.

Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Patricia is also the author of Demagoguery and Democracy (2017), Fanatical Schemes: Proslavery Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus (2009), Deliberate Conflict: Argument, Political Theory, and Composition Classes (2004), and Voices in the Wilderness: Public Discourse and the Paradox of the Puritan Rhetoric (1999).

John Hopkins University

Cynda is the Anne and George L. Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics in the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the School of Nursing and the author of Moral Resilience: A Capacity for Navigating Moral Distress in Critical Care.

Jaki is a writer and poet, a North Carolina native whose publications include Dead on Arrival, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Blue Opal (a play), and Feeding the Light. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Crucible, Obsidian, Essence Magazine, Callaloo, and Black Gold: An Anthology of Black Poetry, among many others. In 2014 the North Carolina native was inducted into the state’s Literary Hall of Fame and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize; in 2009 she served as the North Carolina Piedmont Laureate. Among other honors, she was named the 2016 Lenoir-Rhyne University Writer-in-Residence and received a 2007 Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina and a 2003 North Carolina Award (literature), the state’s highest civilian honor for significant contributions to the state and nation in fine art, literature, public service, and science.

Award-winning Educator, Internationally recognized Organizer, and Vocational Healer

Johnaé developed her tireless work ethic at The University of Chicago and cultivated a deep commitment to civil and human rights while volunteering as a founding member and co-chair of BYP100. She established her career as a primary educator and Restorative Justice Coordinator for Chicago Public Schools, having worked with youth around social justice for ten years.