Speakers
Elizabeth Acevedo
Elizabeth Acevedo is an award-winning poet, novelist, and educator whose work explores identity, family, culture, and belonging. A former National Poetry Slam Champion and the 2022 Young People’s Poet Laureate, she is the New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award and numerous other honors. Her acclaimed works also include With the Fire on High, Clap When You Land, and the NAACP Image Award-winning Family Lore. She continues to inspire readers worldwide through her powerful storytelling.
Ruha Benjamin
Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Ruha is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship.
Jane McGonigal
Jane McGonigal is a futurist, game designer, and the bestselling author of titles including SuperBetter, Reality is Broken, and Imaginable. As the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, her research focuses on how games are transforming the way we lead our real lives and how they can be used to anticipate hard-to-predict futures, ready ourselves for any future scenario, and increase our resilience and well-being.
Heather McGhee
Heather McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. Throughout her career in public policy, including her time serving as the president of the non-partisan “think and do” tank Dēmos, Heather has crafted legislation, testified before Congress, and helped shape presidential campaign platforms. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather is an educator and most recently served as a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in Urban Studies at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. An influential voice in the media, she regularly appears on NBC’s Meet the Press and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Deadline White House, and All In.
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Zaretta Hammond
Zaretta Hammond is a national consultant and author of two books: Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice and Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students. She is a former high school and community college writing teacher. For the past 25 years, she has supported schools and other institutions in deepening their understanding and application of culturally responsive practices, the science of learning, and the science of reading.