Melvina Young and her work have been featured in the New York Times, on CNN.com, the Grio, Emmy Award winning daytime talk show The Real, and elsewhere. An academic expert trained in African American history and Black cultural studies, Melvina Young is a Hallmark Master Writer and Creative, Cultural Sensitivity Consultant, and Hallmark global DEI trainer, as well as Mahogany Brand specialist and Brand Ambassador for both Mahogany and Hallmark Cards. She is also the creator of Vibrant Voices, an in-house blog making space for respectful discussions of identity, compassion, connection, and the power of empathy through storytelling.

Dr. Crystal M. Moten is an award-winning public historian and leader in the Galleries, Archives, Libraries and Museum (GLAM) sector. Her academic and intellectual interests center on Black women’s history, specifically the intersection of gender, class and labor. Dr. Moten currently serves as Associate Director of Collections at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York. Dr. Moten has vast experience in the field, having served as a college professor in the small liberal arts sector, as well as a museum curator at multiple cultural institutions, including the Obama Presidential Center Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Currently, as Associate Director of Collections at the Schomburg, she provides leadership and vision for its four research divisions, playing a critical role in shaping the future of the Schomburg’s significant and historic collections, ensuring that it remains a leader in the field. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, her research has appeared in books, journals, documentaries, and other media. Her most recent monograph is Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee (Vanderbilt University Press, 2023).

Bob Trondson is the director and owner of Cloud North Films in Madison, Wisconsin. Bob is the former drummer for the Chicago punk rock band Blue Meanies, and now is a writer, producer, and director. He’s done hundreds of promos and microdocs, music videos for Hawthorne Heights, Rise Against, and Disturbed, and documentaries on Andrew Bird and civil rights icon Vel Phillips.

Dr. Tanisha C. Ford is professor of History and Biography and Memoir at The Graduate Center, CUNY.  She is the author of Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2023), which won the 2024 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Biography/Autobiography. It received Honorable Mention for the Organization of American Historians’ coveted Darlene Clark Hine Award for Best Book on African American Women’s and Gender History. Our Secret Society was also named one of Vanity Fair’s and Ms. Magazine’s Best Books of 2023. Ford has also written three other books: Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul (UNC Press, 2015), winner of the OAH Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for Best Book on Civil Rights History; Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion (St. Martin’s, 2019); and Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful (Aperture, 2019). Her scholarship has been published in the Journal of Southern History, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, the Black Scholar, and QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. She writes regularly for public audiences, with stories in the Atlantic, New York Times, Time, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, among others. In 2019, Ford was named to The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans list for her innovative, public-facing scholarship. She is an OAH Distinguished Lecturer. Her research has been supported by institutions including New America/Emerson Collective, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Dr. LaShawn Faith Washington is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Research at the University of Oklahoma in the Department of Educational Psychology – Science of Psychology, Data, and Research in Education program. She joined the OU faculty in August 2023. Dr. Washington earned her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (Higher Education Research) with a minor in African American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A Dallas, Texas native, Dr. Washington is a proud first-generation non-traditional student, community college graduate, and a two-time alumna of The University of Texas-Austin receiving an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction – Cultural Studies in Education, and a B.A. in Government (Honors).

Her overarching research explores the historical and contemporary inequities in higher education and how issues of race and gender intersect in ways that impact the experiences of Black women in academia.