Terry Loftis is the president and executive director of The Arts Community Alliance, a nonprofit supporting the arts in North Texas through grant making, capacity building and thought leadership.

Karen Tongson is a professor of English, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies and ethnicity, and chair of the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.

Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician and pianist based in Chicago. She is the scientist in residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stephon Alexander is a musician and professor of physics and astronomy at Brown University.

Travis L. Gosa is an assistant professor of Africana studies at Cornell University and a faculty associate at Cornell’s Center for the Study of Inequality.

Bakari Kitwana is a cultural critic, journalist and activist specializing in hip-hop, youth culture and Black political engagement.

Nilanjana Bhattacharjya is an ethnomusicologist and popular music scholar who focuses on South Asian popular music and film in India, as well as in the South Asian diaspora.

Hisham Aidi is a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Jason King is chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and an associate professor.

Oliver Wang is a music writer and cultural critic whose work has been published in almost every major hip-hop magazine: The Source, XXL, Vibe, Scratch and others.

Hua Hsu is an assistant professor of English and director of American Studies at Vassar College and a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Jason Johnson is an associate professor in the School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University. He is also politics editor at The Root and a contributor to MSNBC.

Leila Cobo is a vice president and the Latin industry lead at Billboard. She’s the organizer and host of Billboard’s annual Latin Music Conference, and was host of Estudio Billboard, a weekly interview show.