Uyiosa Elegon is a founder and the Marketing and Development Director of Shift Press. He and his team help young people move power through story sharing and media education programs for youth and adults. Uyiosa’s prior experience includes working on electoral and issue-based campaigns, producing African cultural events, and facilitating various youth civic education projects and initiatives across the US. All of his published writings center around the material realities of youth power, pleasure, and pain. He earned a BBA in Marketing from the University of Houston. Uyiosa is an Edo person residing on the homeland of the Karankawa, Coahuiltecan, Atakapa-Ishak, and the Sana people of Texas’s Gulf Coast region (now referred to as Houston, Texas).

Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI), a creative innovation lab and research center housed at American University’s School of Communication that produces, showcases, and studies media and social change; she is also a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Communication. She is the author of three books:, A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, with co-author Lauren Feldman (2020); Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change (2020), and her forthcoming book, The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power (2023). In partnership with cultural strategy group Moore + Associates and Comedy Central, Borum co-founded and co-directs the Yes, And Laughter Lab, a first-of-its-kind creative incubator of comedy for social justice. Also under leadership, CMSI launched the Comedy ThinkTanks and GoodLaugh programs, which bring together professional comedians and social justice organizations for co-creation, convenings, and research. As a documentary producer, her films and TV programs have aired internationally and nationally, across TV, streaming, and theaters. In 2020, she was named to DOC NYC’s inaugural list of New Documentary Leaders, a peer-selected award given to 16 members of the global documentary industry who have made a substantial positive impact on the field.

Ralph Bouquet is the Director of Education and Outreach for NOVA, the PBS science documentary series produced by GBH Boston. At NOVA, Ralph and his team support science educators through the creation of free classroom resources and engage new audiences for NOVA’s broadcast and digital productions through inclusive science communication events across the country. Their newest initiative, the NOVA Science Studio, offers high school students the opportunity to learn science reporting and short-form video production centered around issues in their communities. Before NOVA, Ralph taught high school biology and chemistry in Philadelphia and worked in ed-tech at a Boston-based startup. Ralph received his B.A. from Harvard University and studied secondary science methods and urban education while completing his M.Ed. at UPenn.

Doris Brown (She/Her, born 1949) is West Street Recovery’s Co-Director of Community Research, Organizing, and Special Events. She is also a co-founder of the NORTHEAST ACTION COLLECTIVE (NAC). She graduated from HCC with a degree in Human Service Technology and Certification in Mental Health. In 2016 she graduated from University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. She joined staff at West Street in June of 2020.

Resita Cox’s films are a poetic portrayal of her community’s irrepressible spirit and resilience in the face of racism. Born and raised in the South, her films center Southern, Black communities and use them as a lens to examine topics ranging from environmental justice to racial justice. She is the director of Freedom Hill, a documentary about the environmental racism that is washing away the first town chartered by Black people in the nation, with which she was named a 2021 Hulu/Kartemquin Accelerator Fellow and premiered at the 2022 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. She holds an MFA from Northwestern University in Documentary Film and is a 2021 North Star fellow with Points North Institute. Resita was recently named a 2022 Esteemed Artist by the City of Chicago and is one of Elevate’s 2022 Climate Changemakers.

Co-founder of OYA Media Group, Sierra Leonean-Canadian Ngardy Conteh George is a two-time Canadian Screen Award winning filmmaker. She is committed to working with systematically excluded, and often unheard communities, especially those that represent the rich cultures and complexities of the African diaspora.  Most recently, she directed, co-wrote and co-produced TV hour Mr. Jane and Finch (CBC, 2019), winner of two 2020 Canadian Screen Awards.

Ngardy co-founded OYA Black Arts Coalition, a not-for-profit organization focused on supporting Black filmmakers and entrepreneurs in the screen-based media industry.  She is also a member of the Director’s Guild of Canada and sits on the boards of Hot Docs and the Documentary Organization of Canada. She is currently in production producing two feature-length documentaries and was a 2021/2022 BPM & MIT Open Doc Labs visiting artist fellow.

Ronald Llewellyn Jones is an artist and documentary filmmaker based in Houston, Texas. Within his artwork, Jones explores barriers between creatives and audiences while engaging conversations regarding individuals and their respective communities within normative societal structures.

Jaison Oliver is the Founder and Principal of Selden Resources, which brings together people and institutions to facilitate collaborative policymaking and catalyze community-led change. As an organizer with the ImagiNoir Equity Group, he works alongside artists, academics, technologists, and educators building abolitionist learning spaces through which we might imagine and create more equitable communities where Black people can thrive. An avid supporter of the arts, Jaison works with Black Lunch Table and Art+Feminism to fill gaps in contemporary art history through Wikipedia edit-a-thons. Jaison is a Detroit native and an alumnus of Yale University.

Aaron Ambroso is a museum professional, educator, writer, activist, and artist. He received his Masters in Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has worked at the Nasher Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is also the co-founder of the Houston Climate Justice Museum & Cultural Center. He has presented at the Texas Association of Museums, the Southeast College Art Conference, and Texas Historical Commission, and his writing has appeared in Artnet Magazine.

Ben Johnson is a cinematographer, producer, and composer from New Orleans. Specializing in documentary film, Johnson highlights the complex and unique stories of Louisiana. Ben’s first documentary, ‘Big Charity,’ which told the story of the world-renowned Charity Hospital in New Orleans, was awarded the Best Louisiana Feature and the Audience Award at the 2014 New Orleans Film Festival. Currently, Johnson is the Senior Producer at Louisiana Public Broadcasting where he continues to direct more documentaries and tell Louisiana’s stories through film.

Dr. Stephanie Castillo is a science video producer with a Ph.D. in Science Communication from Vanderbilt University. Her SciComm research focused on how representation and storytelling affect audiences’ perception of science and scientists through video. Dr. Castillo’s science, teaching, journalism, and filmmaking training have equipped her to produce multimedia science stories for audiences 13 and up. She is now the Senior Producer at STEMedia, and the showrunner of ‘Why Am I Like This?’ on PBS Digital Studios’s Terra channel.