Samina Ali is an award-winning author, activist and cultural commentator. Her debut novel, Madras on Rainy Days (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), was the winner of France’s prestigious Prix Premier Roman Etranger Award and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award in Fiction. The book, about a young woman’s arranged marriage and political awakening, was partly inspired by Samina’s real-life experience growing up bi-culturally in Hyderabad, India and St. Paul, Minnesota.

At the heart of Samina’s work is her belief in personal narrative as a vital force for achieving women’s individual and political freedom – and in the power of new and traditional media as platforms for social transformation. As the curator of the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed virtual exhibition, Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, Samina illuminated the multi-dimensional realities of women’s lives to challenge fears and misconceptions of Muslims and Islam within and beyond Muslim communities.

Weaving her personal story with a passionate appeal for women’s equality and justice, Samina’s current project is an account of her near-death experience delivering her firstborn and an unsparing look at gender bias and the crisis of preventable maternal deaths in one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. In this memoir-in-progress, Samina describes how she defied the odds by boldly charting her own path to recovery, from relearning to walk alongside her son’s first steps, to retraining her mind — word by word — to write what would become her debut novel.

Samina has spoken extensively at a wide range of universities, from Harvard and Yale Universities to community colleges, as well as at other institutions worldwide, including as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, a Master Teacher for the Mama Gena School of Womanly Arts and a featured presenter at the Nobel Women’s Initiative 2017 International Conference. The recipient of fiction awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she has been featured in The Economist, The Guardian, Vogue, National Public Radio (NPR) and elsewhere. A regular contributor to The Huffington Post and Daily Beast, she has written for The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications.

Never one to say no to a challenge, Samina defied the odds — again — and gave birth to a second child. She now lives happily with her husband, son and daughter in California.

Sonya Renee Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, world-renowned activist and thought leader on racial justice and transformational change, international award winning poet, and founder of The Body Is Not an Apology (TBINAA), a global digital media and education company exploring the intersections of identity, healing, and social justice through the framework of radical self-love.

Sonya is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love (1st and 2nd editions), Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook, Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!), poetry collection A Little Truth on Your Shirt, The Book of Radical Answers (That I Know You Already Know) (Dial Press 2022), and co-editor with Cat Pausé of The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors over the past two decades, from her National Individual Poetry Slam Championship award in 2004 to her 2016 invitation by the Obama administration to participate in the White House Forum on LGBT and Disability Issues. More recently, she served as an inaugural Edmund Hillary Fellow in Aotearoa (New Zealand) from 2017-2020.

Sonya resides in Aotearoa / New Zealand and continues to share her insights globally as a highly sought-after international speaker, artist and educator on issues of radical self-love, social justice, and personal and global transformation.

Amy Ziering is an Oscar nominated and two-time Emmy and Peabody award winning investigative filmmaker whose groundbreaking documentaries have single-handedly transformed and shaped our culture.

Ziering’s works include: NOT SO PRETTY (HBOMAX 2022) a four-part original investigative expose of the cosmetics industry that led to Johnson and Johnson removing products off of shelves; ALLEN v. FARROW (HBO 2021), a seven-time Emmy nominated series examining the accusations of sexual abuse against Woody Allen by Dylan, his daughter with Mia Farrow; ON THE RECORD (HBOMAX 2020) a searing examination of the unique plight women of color face in the wake of assault crimes; The Oscar-nominated THE INVISIBLE WAR (PBS 2012) which broke the story of the epidemic of rape in the US military and led to five congressional hearing and the passing of 35 reforms through congress; THE HUNTING GROUND (CNN 2015) an expose of the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses that ignited sweeping policy reforms at hundreds of institutions; THE BLEEDING EDGE (NETFLIX 2018), the first ever comprehensive critique of the medical device industry’s corruption and malfeasance; compelling industry giant Bayer to remove a harmful device from the market and catalyzing a worldwide debate about regulation and patient safety.

Ziering, along with collaborator Kirby Dick, were the first filmmakers to create a short film for Vanity Fair that debuted as a part of a groundbreaking multimedia project on sexual harassment during the Old Hollywood studio system in their March 2022 issue. Ziering also directed and produced the two-time Webby winning ALLEN v. FARROW podcast (APPLE PODCASTS).

Ziering also co-directed and produced the award-winning DERRIDA (2002), a complex portrait of the world-renowned French philosopher and putative “father of deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida. Other films include OUTRAGE (2009) an expose of closeted politicians who actively legislate against LGBTQI rights – which was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism; Ziering also executive produced Kirsten Johnson’s award-winning CAMERAPERSON, and Josh Fox’s AWAKE – A Dream from Standing Rock.

Throughout Ziering’s filmography, notable accolades her projects have amassed include: 2 Oscar nominations, 12 Emmy nominations, 2 Emmy awards, a Peabody award, an Independent Spirit Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, 2 Webby Awards, a Grammy, the Nestor Almendros Prize for Courage and Filmmaking, the Upton Sinclair Award, the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, a Gracie Award, and the George Polk Award.

Amy Ziering’s company Jane Doe films’ motto, “we don’t make films, we make history,” has proven true – as Ziering’s work has directly led to the penning and passing of 35 pieces of legislation, shifts in military policy, the removal of dangerous products off our shelves, and provided the necessary kindling that sparked the #metoo movement.

Ziering has worked with Oscar winning composers Ryuichi Sakamoto and Diane Warren, as well as Emmy nominated Michael Abels and Terence Blanchard, and global superstars Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige, and Keke Palmer. She has often appeared as a subject expert on CNN and MSNBC, and has appeared on The Daily Show and Good Morning America.

Kamilah Willingham is writer, national activist, and civil rights advocate. Kamilah’s work is grounded in advancing the rights of survivors of sexual violence in prisons, schools, and beyond, highlighting the culture of silence and inequity that dominates social and systemic responses to gender-based violence. In 2016 Kamilah spearheaded the viral social media campaign, #JustSaySorry. This campaign encouraged survivors of campus sexual assaults and gender-based violence to petition for an apology from their institutions, calling attention to the resilience of survivors and the failures of schools to to submit to basic measures of accountability.

Kamilah investigates the consequences of patriarchy and misogyny, at the intersections of race and sex, and illustrates how our culture, norms and institutions are complicit in this abuse. Kamilah has trained a variety of stakeholders, from prison guards to campus officials, on their responsibilities to prevent and address sexual violence among their ranks and within their environments. Through this work, Kamilah invites audiences to explore healing from trauma as a path to resistance and revolution. Through her nuanced and personal perspective Kamilah helps audiences imagine alternative systems for healing and reconciliation outside of our justice system.

Since graduating Harvard Law School in 2011, Kamilah’s scholarship has been published in Teen Vogue, VICE, Huffpost, The Nation, The Establishment, and others. Kamilah shared her personal experience of surviving sexual assault and civil rights violations as a student at Harvard Law School in the award-winning 2015 documentary THE HUNTING GROUND. She currently sits on the board of the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition and is a mother of two.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film. Born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, Marion is currently a Partner and an Attorney-at-law with her husband at their law firm, Sears & Co., in The Bahamas Marion was awarded a Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Law from Cambridge University, and has been a practicing attorney since 1986.

In 2013, Ms. Bethel produced and directed a documentary entitled Womanish Ways: Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas – 1948-1962, which examines the struggle for Bahamian women’s suffrage. Marion has also published two collections of poetry, and is currently working on a third manuscript of poetry and a memoir.

In 2016, Marion was nominated by The Bahamas and elected by the United Nations States Parties to serve as an international expert on the UN Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She is a 1997 Alice Proskauer Poetry Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Her work has been featured at the 3rd Congress of Caribbean Writers, Cave Canem, and international poetry festivals throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. Her debut film, Womanish Ways, has also been widely screened throughout the Caribbean and across the United States at documentary film festivals, cultural centers, and universities.

Mona Haydar is a young Syrian-American Muslim who spent her 20’s as a performance poet. In 2015 she gained national and international press for her and her husband’s “Ask A Muslim” project- a booth that invited dialogue and questions in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The Boston Globe, NPR, People Magazine, The New York Times and others all covered the project and the collaborations that followed. In 2017 she broke into the hip hop music scene with Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab) whose video- featuring Haydar seven months pregnant with her second son- went viral. Billboard Magazine named Haydar’s track one of the top feminist anthems of all time (alongside hits by icons Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, and M.I.A).

Mona’s first EP, BARBARICAN, dropped in 2018 and took aim at global patriarchy, orientalism, immigration policy, white supremacy, and suicide. That same year, she earned her Masters Degree in Theology, focusing on Christian Ethics, from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. AMERICAN, her most recent track, helps re-define the debate about who is an American, and calls out ICE and our current president.

For the last four years, Mona has been performing her poetry and music, leading writing and activism workshops, and speaking at universities and colleges about art, Islam, feminism, hip hop, theology, and inter-faith dialogue. She has performed internationally, spoken at churches, synagogues and conferences, and has been invited to speak at such institutions as Smith College, MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and the Parliament of World Religions.