Gina Athena Ulysse is a feminist anthropologist, artist and activist, and self-described post-Zora interventionist. She is Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University. Her research interests focus on Black diasporic conditions. Her ethnographic work has appeared in several journals and collections. Her creative projects include spoken word, performance art, and installation pieces. Her latest award winning book Because When God Is Too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD (2017) is a collection of poetry, performance texts and photographs. She was awarded the 2018 Anthropology in the Media Award by the AAA. She is a also the recipient of Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Haitian Studies Association award for Excellence in Scholarship in 2015. Her presentation acknowledges the work of Anténor Firmin, Jamaica Kincaid, Ian F Lopez, Toni Morrison, Arlene Torres and Michel-Rolph Trouillot.

Lennard J. Davis is a Professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition, he is Professor of Disability and Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences of the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as Professor of Medical Education in the College of Medicine. He is also director of Project Biocultures a think-tank devoted to issues around the intersection of culture, medicine, disability, biotechnology, and the biosphere.

Park McArthur is a New York-based visual artist who works in sculpture, installation, sound, and text. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally, including at the SFMOMA, San Francisco; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Yale Union, Portland; Lars Friedrich, Berlin. She was included in the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016) as well as the Whitney Biennial (2017). A 2014 winner of the Wynn Newhouse Award, she is represented by Essex Street Gallery in New York.

Dr. Nora D. Volkow, M.D., is the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health. As a research psychiatrist and scientist, Dr. Volkow has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain. She has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences and has been named one of Time magazine’s “Top 100 People Who Shape Our World”, “One of the 20 People to Watch” by Newsweek magazine, Washingtonian magazine’s “100 Most Powerful Women” in both 2015 and 2017, “Innovator of the Year” by U.S. News & World Report, and one of “34 Leaders Who Are Changing Health Care” by Fortune magazine.

Nan Goldin is a photographer known for her intimate portraits. She is particularly celebrated for The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, a filmic slideshow, which documents hundreds of images of the lives of her friends and loved ones throughout the 1970s and 80s. Most recently, through her founding of P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), she has used activism to ‘make the personal political’ to combat the opioid crisis. As a survivor of the opioid crisis herself, and as an artist, Nan has particular stake in pressuring the Sackler family (the manufacturers of the opioid crisis) to be held accountable, and for museums to reject Sackler donations.

Yarimar Bonilla is Associate Professor, Anthropology and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. An accomplished scholar and a prominent public intellectual, Yarimar is a leading voice on questions of Caribbean and Latinx politics. Her second book project American Disaster — for which she was named a 2018 Carnegie Fellow — examines the politics of recovery in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria and the forms of political and social trauma that the storm revealed. She is developing a multi-media political atlas of the Caribbean entitled, Visualizing Sovereignty and is a principal collaborator in the #PuertoRicoSyllabus project. She has been the recipient of multiple grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Chateaubriand Fellowship Program, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, and the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University. She is currently Section Editor of Public Anthropologies for the journal American Anthropologist, and serves on the editorial committee for Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism.

James Keir Cecil Martin is Associate Professor, Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He is the author of a number of academic and media publications on Papua New Guinea and the global economy. He was formerly a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and is a recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Award for work likely to make an outstanding contribution to social anthropology. He is currently working on the growth of psychotherapy among new middle class populations globally and is a practicing member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He is the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for environmental leadership, and has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. He is currently Professor, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and previously served as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016. Prior to Columbia, he spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he served as the Director of the Center for International Development and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. His work on ending poverty, overcoming macroeconomic instability, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental practices has taken him to more than 125 countries.

Amanda Palmer is an American singer, songwriter, musician, author, performance artist, and former member of the acclaimed punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls. In 2008, she released her debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. She left her record label in 2010, and self-released Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukelele and Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, amongst other projects. She is known as “The Social Media Queen of Rock-N-Roll” for her intimate engagement with her fans via her blog, Tumblr, and Twitter (800,000+ followers), and has been at the vanguard of using both “direct to fan” and “pay what you want” (patronage) business models to build and run her business. Her book The Art of Asking (2014), was developed from her acclaimed TED Talk and subsequently became a New York Times Best Seller.

Andrew Brown is Associate Director of Research at the Van Alen Institute in New York. A researcher trained in empirical analysis of programs and public policy, Andrew oversees projects that explore the relationship between mental well-being and cities, and develops workshops that convene stakeholders to design strategies to urgent problems. In 2017, Andrew coordinated a workshop on potential mental health impacts of the impending shutdown of one of New York’s busiest subway lines, convening academic institutions, public health professionals, issue advocacy groups, community boards and other organizations of concerned citizens. Insights from the workshop were worked into a health impact assessment conducted by students at Cornell University, which provided recommendations for addressing health concerns during the subway disruption. Andrew received his Master of Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.

David van der Leer is the Executive Director of the Van Alen Institute in New York. As the Executive Director of a 124-year-old design nonprofit that develops cross-disciplinary research, David oversee provocative public programs and inventive design competitions to make cities better places. Prior to repositioning Van Alen Institute, David created and curated the Architecture and Urban Studies program for the Guggenheim Museum from 2008 to 2013. David has created, chaired, and led nearly 30 design competitions, and he has commissioned numerous design and art projects. He enjoys rethinking conventional design competition and commissioning processes and actively promotes new practices in events like the Design Competition Conference he developed and co-chaired at Harvard University in 2015. Born and raised in The Netherlands, David is a graduate of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and of the High Impact Leadership program at Columbia University’s Business School.

Daveen Trentman is a Co-Founder and Partner of The Soze Agency, a creative agency that consists of artists, strategists, filmmakers, activists, storytellers, immigrants, refugees, organizers, formerly undocumented, digital wizards, masters of design, writers, LGBTQ people, parents, allies and accomplices, that create campaigns, projects and strategies to promote equity and bring attention to important issues. As the Production Director and Curator for The Museum of Drug Policy Pop-Up, Daveen oversaw the initiative as it toured in four countries. She has also led the Truth to Power, the Right of Return Fellowship, which investments in formerly incarcerated artists.

Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. A member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, he is also a CIGH Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, and an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School. He has formerly held positions Acting Director, VA Center for Health Care Evaluation (2010 - 2011), Senior Policy Advisor, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (2009 - 2010), Chairman, Faculty Advisory Committee, Stanford Health Policy Forum (2007 - Present), Affiliate, Center for Health Policy, Stanford University (2003 - Present), and Director, VA Program Evaluation and Resource Center (2001 - 2009). His honors include Distinguished Contribution to the Public Interest, American Psychological Association (2009); Honorary Member, Psychiatry Journal Club, Ibn Rushd Hospital, Baghdad (2008); Public Health Book of the Year, British Medical Association (2010); Honorary Professor of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley, King’s College London (2009-).

Domenic Esposito is a visual artist and activist who has gained recent attention for his Purdue Spoon (2018) sculptural protest work. In June 2018 the artist and his gallerist Fernando Luis Alvarez delivered an 800-pound “heroin” spoon outside the headquarters of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. The intervention followed public outrage amidst the opioid crisis and the role of the Sackler family, as well as Dominic’s personal experience of his brother’s struggle with heroin addiction.

Graham MacIndoe is a photographer and an adjunct Professor of Photography at Parsons, The New School. A former heroin addict, Graham has spoken about art and media depictions of addiction at TEDx Stanford, Aperture, The New School, and Columbia University. His photographs have been published and written about in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times Magazine, Harpers, Fast Company, Rolling Stone, I.D., Vice, and Esquire. His work is also in the collections of The Scottish National Galleries, The New York Public Library, The British Council, The V&A Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Florida, The British Museum of Film and Television and various private collections. Born in Scotland, Graham holds at BFA in painting from the Edinburgh College of Art and an MFA in photography from the Royal College of Art in London.

L.A. Kauffman has spent more than thirty-five years as an activist, journalist, historian, strategist, grassroots organizer. Most recently L.A. is the author of Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism (2017). L.A.’s writings on organizing and social movement history have been published in The Guardian, The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Village Voice, n+1, The Baffler, and many other outlets. L.A. was a central strategist of the two-year direct action campaign that saved more than 100 New York City community gardens from bulldozing in 1999. L.A. was the mobilizing coordinator for the massive anti-war protests of 2003 and 2004, which remain some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. More recently, L.A. was a key organizer of successful campaigns to save two iconic New York City public libraries from being demolished and replaced by luxury towers. L.A. is currently involved in a range of organizing projects to oppose the Trump presidency.