Annette Yoshiko Reed is an Associate Professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Program in Religious Studies at New York University. Her research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity. Publications include Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge 2005), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (ed. with R. Boustan; Cambridge 2004), The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. with A.H. Becker; Mohr Siebeck 2003; Fortress 2007), and Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire (ed. with N. Dohrmann; UPenn Press, 2013). She is currently working on two monographs: one on the origins of Jewish angelology and demonology, and the other on the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the history of “Jewish-Christianity.”

Mustafa Ali Faruki is the founding partner and creative director of theLab-lab, a Brooklyn-based architecture practice that is dedicated to completely reinventing the outputs of architectural design. He was the winner of The Architectural League of New York’s 2017 League Prize for his Intake Facility proposal. For a site on Governors Island, Faruki designed a complex for “an anonymous client” intended to process extraterrestrial settlers (or angels) migrated to New York City from heaven. He created elaborate plans for various “Decelestialization” zones, in which his clients could assimilate to life on earth. TheLab-lab for architecture’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at LMCC Arts Center on Governors Island, and at the Nordisk Kunstnarsenter Dale in Norway, as well as at The Queens Museum and Hatton Gallery in Newcastle, UK. Mustafa is also the 2018-2019 Peter Reyner Banham Fellow, University at Buffalo School of Architecture.

Jacolby Satterwhite is a visual artist whose work weaves together video, 3D animation, printmaking, performance, and dance. Drawing upon the fantastic environments of the video games he played as a child, he incorporates personal ephemera and the drawings of his late schizophrenic mother to fashion his own Bosch-ian dreamscape. His recent developments into 3D animation are a culmination of his background in performance, dance, and more specifically voguing, in conjunction with his training as a painter and his religious upbringing in a home brimming with black magic. His virtual worlds act as entry ways into demonic (and angelic) post-human universes. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is in the public collections at Studio Museum in Harlem, Seattle Art Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Calder Zwicky is an Assistant Director in the Education Department at the Museum of Modern Art, overseeing Teen and Community Partnerships. Over the last decade he has been working to create programming for a wide-range of underserved and historically-overlooked audiences including incarcerated youth, post-incarcerated adults, HIV/AIDS service organizations, and homelessness initiatives, among others. He also oversees MoMA’s free programming for teens, including the long-running In the Making workshops and the MoMA + MoMA PS1 Cross-Museum Collective. In addition to his own studio practice, he has been involved with a variety of museums including the Walker Art Center, the Queens Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Susan Burton is the Founder and Executive Director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, an award-winning organization that has transformed the lives of more than one thousand formerly incarcerated women. Her memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (2017), included a foreword by Michelle Alexander, was the winner of an NAACP Image Award, and was named a “Best Book of 2017” by the Chicago Public Library. Susan has received the Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government (2010), and was named a CNN Hero (2010) and a Purpose Prize winner (2012). Most recently she was chosen by the National Women’s History Project as one of its honorees for Women’s History Month in the United States (2018).

Amanda Lawrence is an English actress who has received acclaim for her recent role as the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America on New York’s Broadway at The Neil Simon Theatre and in London’s West End at the National Theatre. She has appeared in more than fifteen films, including titles such as Pan (2015) and Suffragette (2015), in addition to work on a number of television shows.

Enrique Morones is the Founder of Border Angels, an all volunteer, non profit 501©(3) organization that advocates for human rights, humane immigration reform, and social justice with a special focus on the US-Mexican border. Border Angels works to dispel the various myths surrounding immigration in the United States, in addition to providing education and migrant outreach including water drops in the desert, food distribution, and free consulting to migrant families in both Spanish and English, amongst other initiatives. Enrique was honored with Mexico’s Othli’s Award and in 2009 received the Mexican Human Rights Award from President Felipe Calderon. Additionally, he has been named one of Hispanic Business Magazine’s “most influential” Latinos in the United States of America as well as one of San Diego Magazine’s “50 People to Watch.”

Ravi Ragbir is a community activist and a nationally recognized leader in the immigrant rights movement. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Ravi’s personal struggle with the immigration system, inspired him to become a dedicated community educator, spokesperson, and advocate. A former volunteer for the Families for Freedom, he went on to serve as Chair of the Board of Directors for the organization where he trained other community organizers and elected officials about immigration issues and how to reform the deportation system. In 2010, Ravi became a full-time organizer for the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, one of the largest coalitions in the city focused on immigrant rights, with over 20 faith-based and supporting organizations, representing over 3,000 New Yorkers.

Natalia Oberti Noguera is the Founder and CEO of Pipeline Angels, a network of women investors that is changing the face of angel investing and creating capital for women and non-binary femme social entrepreneurs. Natalia is also Creator & Host of Pitch Makeover, a podcast on startups, pitching, investing, and #morevoices (women, non-binary people, and men of color). She holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Economics from Yale, as well as an MA in Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She serves on the boards of Walker’s Legacy, Women 2.0, and iRelaunch. Inc. Magazine selected Natalia as one of “The Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs of 2016,” Latina.com included her in their list of “25 Latinas Who Shine in Tech,” and Women’s eNews recognized her as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century for 2012. StartOut, a network of LGBTQ entrepreneurs, honored Natalia with the 2017 Nixon Peabody Trailblazer Award.“

Mickalene Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work draws on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women (and “feminine” spaces) are represented in art and popular culture. Thomas received a B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 2000 and an M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art 2002. Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; MoMA PS1, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, CT; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2013); Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012); and the Timerhi Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010).

Jennifer Robinson is an Australian human rights lawyer and barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key free speech and human rights cases before courts and tribunals around the world, including the European Court of Human Rights and UN special mechanisms, and has conducted human rights missions for the International Bar Association. She founded the Bertha Justice Initiative, a global fellowship program supporting the next generation of human rights lawyers, and International Lawyers for West Papua, which advises the West Papuan movement for self-determination. Robinson is a founding board member of the Grata Fund, Australia’s first independent public interest litigation fund, and serves on the boards of Article 19, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association.

Wim Wenders is a film director, writer, and photographer. He is also president of the European Film Academy, and an honorary professor at the University for Television and Film in Munich. He became a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin in 1984, and holds four honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne, Paris (1989); the Theological Faculty of Fribourg University, Switzerland (1995); the University of Louvain, Belgium (2005); and the Architectural Faculty of the University of Catania, Italy (2010). He is considered one of the most important figures to have emerged from the “New German Cinema” in the 1970s and was a founding member of the German film distribution company “Filmverlag der Autoren.” He received the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 1984 for Paris, Texas, the Golden Lion at the 1982 Venice Film Festival for The State of Things, and won best director at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for Wings of Desire. He has also been nominated three times for the Academy Awards for his films Buena Vista Social Club (2000), Pina (2012), and, most recently, The Salt of the Earth (2015).