Adriana Amaral is a professor at the School of Creative Industries at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) in Brazil. She is an expert on pop culture and fan studies in the context of digital culture and media.

An Xiao Mina works on program strategy and operations at Meedan, a technology nonprofit that builds software for newsrooms and NGOs to improve the quality of information online.

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.

Hussein Rashid is the founder of islamicate, L3C- a consultancy focused on religious liberty and cultural competency.

Constance Iloh is is a visual artist, anthropologist, photographer and qualitative methodologist. She illuminates forms of oppression and structural violence within social contexts and organizations.

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.

Angela Rye is principal and CEO of IMPACT Strategies, a political consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., that seeks to empower young professionals in economic development, civic engagement and political involvement.

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.

Ana López is a professor of communication, director of the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute, and associate provost for faculty affairs at Tulane University.

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.