Adrian Burrell is a third-generation Oakland artist utilizing photography, installation, and experimental media. His work examines issues of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, Inviting moments where collective storytelling could be a site for remembering.

Burrell has lived and worked on four continents. He is a US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Stanford University (MFA). At Stanford, he lectured, served as Black Graduate student community outreach chair, and was a visiting Artist with Stanford's Institute for Diversity in Arts.

He was in residence at the Black Freedom fellowship in Salvador, Brazil, in 2023, was a resident at SF FILM, was a YBCA creative cohort fellow between 2021 and 2022, and was awarded the renowned Black Rock residency in Dakar, Senegal, in 2022. His solo exhibition, "Venus Blues," opened at the Minnesota Street Foundation 20,000 square feet space in October 2023. His first solo exhibition was on view at the ICA San Jose, California, from September 2022 through February 2, 2023.

Burrell's work has been featured in the New Yorker, Black Star Film Festival, PopUp Magazine, Photo Ville, the Pingyao International Photography Festival China, and SXSW, among others. In 2021, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired "It's After the End of the World Don't You Know That Yet." This collective self-portrait examines normalized violence inflicted on black lives.

Tiffany M. Griffin is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Co-Owner of Bright Black, a North Carolina-based social enterprise that pioneered the art of using scent to share positive stories about the beauty and brilliance of Blackness. Since launching in 2019, Bright Black has gained national and international notoriety, attracting the attention of Beyonce, Zendaya, Jordan Peele, Nike, and others.

Uniquely, Bright Black synthesizes cooperative economics theory with revenue-sharing practices to amplify their social and economic impact through strategic partnerships. These collaborations have included partners such as the NBA and WNBA, Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and have resulted in over $30,000 in donations to social organizations working to improve the lives of Black people around the world.

Before founding Bright Black, Tiffany was a Strategic Advisor in the Center for Resilience at the US Agency for International Aid (USAID), where she helped to spearhead the Agency’s first resilience policy and corresponding programming and evaluation frameworks. Before her work at USAID, Tiffany was a health and safety nets policy staffer for Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Tiffany has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she focused on decision-making as a conduit of racial discrimination. She also has dual BAs in Psychology and Communications from Boston College.

Sidney McLaurin is the CEO of Fleet Robotics. Sidney and his co-founders started Fleet as a simple, automated mobile robot platform to help industrial companies proactively maintain large industrial structures. Starting with the maritime industry, their collaborative robots live permanently on commercial ships and help simplify inspection, maintenance, and cargo operations. The robots are best known for their novel walking ability on vertical surfaces in harsh conditions — even underwater while the ship is in motion.

Sidney incubated the concept for Fleet while he was a Partner at Material Impact, a Boston-based venture fund. Before the fund, he worked at Lime where he joined as its first GM in 2017 and helped scale the company from a single market to the global presence it is today.

McLaurin credits his interest in climate to growing up around the outdoors in Mississippi. He is a mentor and advisor for a variety of folks within the climate startup ecosystem, including the formation of a new start-up incubator in London. Sidney is an engineer by training — he started his career at Siemens in Industrial Automation and holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Florida. He transitioned into climate entrepreneurship with an MBA and an Environmental Management degree from Duke University.

As the Founder & CEO of Latimer.ai, John founded and launched the inclusive large language model (“LLM”) Latimer.ai. Latimer is building the premier online Artificial Intelligence resource for accurate historical information and bias-free interaction for Black and Brown audiences.

Unlike other LLMs, Latimer builds its training platform using licensed content from esteemed sources, such as the recently announced exclusive partnership with New York Amsterdam News. Using licensed content improves data accuracy and the fairness of economic sharing between content creators, owners, and data deliverers. Latimer's construction is a Retrieval Augmented Generation model ("RAG" Model), which has several key advantages.

John served as co-founder and CEO of the venture-backed, video-based travel platform VoyageTV which raised $10 million in an A-Round led by Syncom Venture Partners. It was sold to Next 1 Interactive in 2013.

He recently served as a partner at the Family Office, TRS Capital, and at Movita Organics, an organic supplement company led by filmmaker Spike Lee’s wife, Tonya Lewis Lee. John sits on the Board of Directors of Outward Bound USA. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York and a B.A. in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Dr. Sian Proctor is a Geoscience Professor with the Maricopa Community Colleges, an Afrofuturism Space Artist, and an Astronaut. She is the Chief Inspiration Astronaut of Space2inspire and founder of The Proctor Foundation for Art and Science. She was the mission pilot for SpaceX Inspiration4, the first all-civilian orbital mission. She is the first female commercial astronaut spaceship pilot and the only African American woman ever to be a mission pilot. She is also the first African-American commercial astronaut, and the first African-American to paint in space.

She currently serves as a member of the National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group representing the Maricopa Community Colleges. Her motto is Space2inspire where she encourages people to use their unique strengths and passion to inspire themselves and those within their reach. She uses her unique artistic style and poetry to share her love of human spaceflight and to bring her EarthLight experience down to Earth. She believes that we need to actively strive for a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive (J.E.D.I.) space both on Earth and beyond.

Ayana Holloway Arce is an Associate Professor of Physics at Duke University. She works on particle physics, using data from the Large Hadron Collider to understand phenomena beyond the Standard Model. Holloway Arce has a BA with honors from Princeton University, and a PhD from Harvard University. She has worked at the Collider Detector at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Audrey Bowden is Associate Professor of Biomedical and Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University. She has a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, and Postdoctoral training in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Bowden's research interests include light-based biomedical photonic tools for applications to medicine and biology, such as for early detection, diagnosis and therapy for cancer; development and deployment of low-cost, high-performing point-of-care technologies for rural and global health applications

Dario Calmese was the first African American to photograph the cover of Vanity Fair. He has a Master’s in photography from the School of Visual Arts and is the Founder of the Institute of the Black Imagination, in association with the Ford Foundation. Calmese serves on the global advisory board for Estee Lauder Companies. He is a professor at The New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Rayvon Fouche is the Division Director, Social and Economic Sciences - National Science Foundation, He is a Professor of American Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University Fouche has a Masters and PhD in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University, and a BA in Humanities (History & Philosophy of Science) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Asegun Henry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where he directs the Atomistic Simulation & Energy (ASE) Research Group. He was an Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech from 2012 to 2018. Asegun has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida A & M University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. His primary research is in heat transfer, with an emphasis on understanding the science of energy transport, storage and conversion at the atomic level, along with the development of new industrial scale energy technologies to mitigate climate change.

Byron Jones is a cornerback for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL) He holds the unofficial world record for the standing long jump at 12 feet 3 inches. Jones has a BA in Political science at the University of Connecticut and is a member of I Am Nation, a prestigious collective of professional athletes interested in community development, legacy building and investing.