CHAMPION of EQUITY & INNOVATION

He is the CEO and Managing Partner of the Equity Alliance, a fund dedicated to providing capital to emerging, underrepresented venture capitalists and early-stage founders who are women or people of color. He is the founder of TRACE and TRUE Africa (funded by Google), two media companies focused on Black culture. He is a Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative.

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY PROFESSOR

Fredara is currently teaching at the prestigious Juilliard School. Her work has been featured in press outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Billboard Magazine, and in academic publications such as American Music. She has contributed to the PBS docuseries, Gospel, Little Richard: I am Everything, and the Emmy-award-winning The 1619 Project.

POET & WRITER

He holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MFA from New York University. The author of Leadbelly (2005) and Olio (2016), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, his other honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Chicago Sun-Times Poetry Award, a Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is President of Cave Canem, a nonprofit championing Black poets.

ATTORNEY, AUTHOR, & HISTORIAN

Jacques holds degrees in economics and law from Amherst, Johns Hopkins, and George Washington University. Fluent in French and Spanish, he has worked with the World Bank and traveled extensively across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. He authored The Master and the Diva, a historical fiction about his grandparents, Will Marion and Abbie Mitchell, African-American pioneers in music and culture, blending their love story with triumph over racism.

AUTHOR, PROFESSOR, MUSICIAN, & PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

Dr. Christy Pichichero is an author, professor, musician, and public intellectual specializing in women’s leadership and anti-racism. An opera singer and award-winning historian, she teaches at George Mason University and advises the President on Internationalism. Her expertise has been featured by the NSF, BBC, NPR, and Forbes. She holds leadership roles in global historical organizations and is an NAACP award recipient.

CHARTERED ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT ANALYST

He is a seasoned leader in the London hedge fund industry, and has driven operational excellence at firms such as SS&C Globeop, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Lighthouse Partners LLP. Marcus is also the Founder & Managing Director of PointGuard Investments, focusing on residential and commercial property conversions in London. ​

STORYTELLER, AUTHOR & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHER

Dr. Carolyn Finney is interested in issues related to identity, difference, creativity, and resilience. Along with public speaking, writing, media engagements, and consulting, she served on the National Parks Advisory Board and is the author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship between African Americans and the Great Outdoors.  She was a Fulbright Scholar, and a Canon National Parks Science Scholar and has received two Mellon Fellowships.  She is an artist in residence at Middlebury College.

MARKETER, CREATOR, & PRODUCER

Trevor currently serving as Global Social Marketing Lead, Podcasts at Amazon Music. He is the creator and executive producer of Amazon’s Webby and Shorty award-nominated podcast series, Bars and Nuggets. He has previously held roles at SiriusXM, HBO, and BET, where he worked on programs such as 106 & Park, The Game, and The BET Awards. Trevor is an alumnus of Montclair State University and a guest lecturer at New York University and Syracuse University.

TECH INDUSTRY LEADER

Named one of the Top 15 People in Enterprise Artificial Intelligence by Business Insider in 2023, she has led engineers, designers and researchers at top companies such as Microsoft and Capital One, designing and developing machine learning, artificial intelligence and enterprise software solutions for over a decade. She is currently the Director of UX, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at Google.

JOURNALIST, WRITER, & AWARD-WINNING FILMMAKER

Widely recognized for her work which dismantles the barricades of racism and sexism through the promotion of equality and pluralism, she is a contributing writer to the Washington Post and a researcher in residence for the Gender+Justice Initiative in Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She is a commentator for leading French news channels and RTL radio station.

AUTHOR & PHOTOGRAPHER

Born in London and raised in Boston, she holds a BA in American Studies from Yale and an MP in International Relations from Oxford. In 2005, she published the seminal essay “Bye-Bye, Babar (Or: What is an Afropolitan?),” sparking a movement among transnational Africans. Her debut novel, New York Times bestseller, Ghana Must Go, was on The Economist’s 10 Best Books of 2013 list.

CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR

Nova Reid is a TEDx speaker, producer, and best-selling author of The Good Ally. With a background in mental health, she works internationally with leading organizations, fostering transformative change through courageous conversations. Nova’s powerful storytelling and advocacy for healing and equity have her featured in The Guardian, Vogue, and Elle, and she was named one of Black Magic Network’s Top 100 Black British Women and a Precious Award recipient for Social Impact.

AUTHOR, WRITER, LECTURER, CURATOR, ARTS & CULTURE CRITIC

She is a weekly columnist for the Financial Times weekend newspaper. Her column, “The Art of Life,” reflects her broader research and writing interests: how the intersection of art, philosophy, spirituality, ecology and culture can speak to the human condition and interrogate how we live with ourselves and one another, and how we relate to the more-than-human.

FOUNDER & CEO, My Emollient 

“From Diagnosis To Purpose: Nourishing Skin and Empowering a Community”

FOUNDER & CEO, Tela

"The Art of Travel: How Immersive Experiences Help Us Rediscover Our Younger Selves.”

FOUNDING & MANAGING PARTNER, Achebe Capital

“The Journey to Launching a VC Fund for Africa and Her Diaspora”

ARTIST & CREATIVE DIRECTOR

“Developing & Nurturing your Multidimensional Self”

FILM & DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER

“Bringing High on the Hog to Life: Stories That Feed the Soul”

ENTREPRENEUR, SUSTAINABILITY EXPERT, LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST

'“Beauty, Identity & Empowerment”

WRITER & RESEARCHER

“Writing In Between: On Fiction, Identity, and the Spaces That Don’t Fit”