Anna Akbari

Dr. Anna Akbari is a sociologist, writer, speaker, and thought leadership advisor to high-profile individuals. She ghost writes books for celebrities, executives, and public figures, and is also the author of Startup Your Life: Hustle and Hack Your Way To Happiness, which teaches people to boost happiness and success by living their lives like a Silicon Valley startup.

Akbari is a former professor in the department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Visual Culture MA program at New York University, as well as Parsons The New School for Design. Her research focuses on visual and virtual self-presentation, technology and human intersects, and happiness and well-being.

A frequent public speaker and media personality, Akbari has written for and been featured by The New York Times, Forbes, The Atlantic, TIME, The Economist, Financial Times, TED, Bulletproof Executive, Psychology Today, Vogue, Refinery29, Google Talks, and dozens more. She is a regular contributor and guest on CNN and SiriusXM's All Out Show.

Akbari received her B.A. from New York University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from The New School. Passionate about criminal justice reform, she donates her time speaking to and mentoring incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations.

Ric Burns

Ric Burns is an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker and writer, best known for his eight-part, seventeen and a half hour series, New York: A Documentary Film, which premiered nationally on PBS to wide public and critical acclaim when broadcast in November 1999, September 2001, and September 2003.

Burns has been writing, directing and producing historical documentaries for over 25 years, since his collaboration on the PBS series The Civil War, (1990), which he produced with his brother Ken and co-wrote with Geoffrey C. Ward.  Since founding Steeplechase Films in 1989, he has directed some of the most distinguished programs for PBS including Coney Island (1991), The Donner Party (1992), The Way West (1995), Ansel Adams (2002), Eugene O’Neill, Andy Warhol (2006), We Shall Remain: Tecumseh’s Vision (2009), Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World (2010), Death and the Civil War (2012), American Ballet Theatre (2015), Debt of Honor (2015), The Pilgrims (2015), VA: The Human Cost of War (2017), and The Chinese Exclusion Act (2018).

His work has won numerous film and television awards including six Emmy Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards,  two Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards,  three Writer’s Guild of America Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing;  the Eric Barnouw Award of the Organization of American Historians, and the D.W. Griffith Award of the National Board of Review.

Burns was educated at Columbia University and Cambridge University. He lives in New York City with his wife Bonnie Lafave and two sons.

Stephanie Danler

Stephanie Danler is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. Her memoir, Stray, is forthcoming from Knopf on May 5, 2020. She is the author of the international bestseller, Sweetbitter, and the creator and executive producer of the Sweetbitter series on Starz. Her work has appeared in the Sewanee Review, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, and The Paris Review Daily. Her nonfiction received an Honorable Mention in Best American Essays 2018, and her criticism won the 2019 Robert B. Heilman award from the Sewanee Review. She is based in Los Angeles, California.

Christina Greer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University - Lincoln Center (Manhattan) campus. Her research and teaching focus on American politics, Black ethnic politics, campaigns and elections, and public opinion. Prof. Greer's book Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press) investigates the increasingly ethnically diverse black populations in the US from Africa and the Caribbean. She finds that both ethnicity and a shared racial identity matter and also affect the policy choices and preferences for black groups. Professor Greer is currently working on a manuscript detailing the political contributions of Barbara Jordan, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Stacey Abrams. She recently co-edited Black Politics in Transition, which explores gentrification, suburbanization, and immigration of Blacks in America. 

She is a member of the board of The Tenement Museum in NYC,  The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT, Community Change in Washington, DC, and serves on the Advisory Board at Tufts University in Medford, MA.  

She is a frequent political commentator on several media outlets, primarily MSNBC, WNYC, and NY1, and is often quoted in media outlets such as the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, and the AP. She is the co-host of the New York centered podcast FAQ-NYC, is a political analyst and host of podcast The Blackest Questions at thegrio.com, is a frequent author and narrator for the TedEd educational series, and also writes a weekly column for The Amsterdam News, one of the oldest black newspapers in the U.S.

Prof. Greer received her BA from Tufts University and her MA, MPhil, and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University

Tom Healy

Tom Healy is a writer, activist and educator. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award, Tom is the author of three books of poetry, as well as many artist monographs and critical essays.

He has had a long career in the New York arts world, founding one of the first galleries in Chelsea in the early 1990s and receiving the New York City Mayor’s Award from Michael Bloomberg for his work leading rebuilding efforts for the downtown arts scene after 9/11. He has taught at NYU and the New School and served as a consulting curator at The Brooklyn Museum.

Under President Obama, Tom chaired the international Fulbright Scholars program, traveling to 40 countries to promote peace through the international exchange of artists, scientists, and scholars. And under President Bill Clinton, he served on the White House Council on HIV/AIDS.

Tom is a frequent podcast host and interviewer of prominent artists, celebrities and public figures from Questlove to Hillary Clinton, Iggy Pop to Pete Buttigieg, Salman Rushdie, Eric Schmidt, Edwidge Danticat to David Byrne, Charles Blow and Beeple.

Tom is the chair of the O, Miami, poetry festival and a trustee of the Bass Museum and PEN America, the country’s leading advocate for freedom of expression. He is a juror for the Gotham Book Prize and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mitchell Moss

Mitchell L. Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, has been described as a “New Yorkologist” by The New York Times. Professor Moss served as Director of the Rudin Center for Transportation at NYU's Wagner School from 2010 to June, 2022. In spring, 2022, Mayor Eric Adams appointed Professor Moss to be a member of "The New New York Committee" which was charged with developing an economic development agenda for the City of New York. In 2019, Professor Moss served on the Mayor's expert panel on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway Project. In 2017, he served on the Governor's  "FIX NYC" advisory group to identify ways to raise revenue for mass transit and to reduce congestion.

Professor Moss has been on the faculty of New York University since 1973 and is also an Affiliated Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering in NYU's Tandon School of Engineering.  He was an adviser to Michael R. Bloomberg during his first campaign for Mayor in 2001. From 1988 to 2003 he was Director of NYU’s Taub Urban Research Center and from 1983 to 2004 he was deputy to the Chairman of the Governor’s Council on Fiscal and Economic Priorities. 

Professor Moss has directed research projects for the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and has been a consultant to leading corporations and government agencies.  He has testified before the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and has been an expert witness in litigation before the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Moss has been a guest lecturer at the Fire Department of New York's Advanced Management Institute and has also lectured to US Army officers for the Institute for Defense and Business.  His essays have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post,  The New York Observer and Politico.com, as well as in leading scholarly journals.

Professor Moss was named an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter in 2018. Moss directs the Bloomberg Public Service Fellows Program at NYU's Wagner School. 

Safiya Sinclair 

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir How to Say Babylon. She is also the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Sinclair’s other honours include a Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, Poetry, Kenyon Review, the Oxford American, and elsewhere. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.

Dennis Walcott

Dennis M. Walcott is President and CEO of Queens Public Library, one of the largest and busiest public library systems in the United States, dedicated to serving the most ethnically and culturally diverse urban area in the world. A non-profit institution that receives 95 percent of its funding from government sources, QPL offers free access to a collection of more than 5 million books and other materials in multiple languages, technology and digital resources, and more than 87,500 educational, cultural, and civic programs and welcomes 11.5 million people each year. QPL consists of 66 locations, including branch libraries, a Central Library, seven adult learning centers, a technology center, two universal pre-kindergartens, and two teen centers. Dennis was named QPL’s President and CEO in March 2016 following a lifelong career in public education and human services. The former chancellor of the New York City public school system and a deputy mayor under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Dennis joined the Library after serving as the New York State- appointed monitor of the East Ramapo School District in Rockland County, initiating a series of reforms to ensure the equitable delivery of service and opportunity to the district’s students. Before working at City Hall, Dennis was the President and CEO of the New York Urban League for more than 12 years and served as the Executive Director of the Harlem Dowling Westside Center. He began his career as a kindergarten teacher. Dennis is a Queens native and a graduate of New York City public schools. He received a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and a master’s degree in education from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. He also holds a master’s degree in social work from Fordham University. Dennis and his wife Denise live in Queens, have four adult children and are grandparents.