Gabor Maté (pronounced GAH-bor MAH-tay) is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in twenty-seven languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection; Scattered: How ADD Originates and What You Can Do About It; and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.

X Gonzalez is an 21 year-old gun control advocate born and raised in Parkland, Florida. A survivor of the Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High School shootings, X was instrumental in organizing the historic #MarchForOurLives protest, the largest student demonstration in American history. While in high school, X also served as the President of the Marjory Stoneman-Douglas Gay-Straight Alliance. In addition to their work with March For Our Lives, X is currently pursuing their undergraduate degree.

In 2020, Jon Batiste redefined what it means to be productive. Recording and releasing two Grammy-nominated albums, check. Cultural and social advocacy, check. Band leading and music directing on the Late Show, check. Practicing, learning, sharing, growing, check.

Was he done there? Batiste? Nah. He decided to build a studio in his dressing room at the renowned Ed Sullivan Theater and invited a few talented friends—including singer-songwriter Autumn Rowe and producer Kizzo—to lay the blueprint for what is destined to become a seminal masterpiece of black pop American music, his forthcoming album, WE ARE. Not to mention, he put all of this together in 6 days. Again, redefining productivity. He ended the year with his music and likeness being centrally featured in the Disney/Pixar film Soul. His composing and songwriting will be featured in his large-scale, genre-melding symphonic work "American Symphony," set to premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2021 and he has been developing a Broadway musical about the life of famed painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Jon balances a demanding performance schedule—which often includes his signature ‘love riot’ street parades—with public speaking engagements, masterclasses, brand partnerships, community activism, and acting roles. In the wake of George Floyd's murder and in the lead up to the election, he organized several peaceful protest marches, leading thousands in the streets of New York City. He played himself on the HBO series Tremé and appeared in Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.

Jenny Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it's birdwatching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. In one of her favourite projects, she created The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a searchable online archive of 200 objects salvaged from the San Francisco dump, each with photographs and painstaking research into its material, corporate, and manufacturing histories. She is compelled by the ways in which attention (or lack thereof) leads to consequential shifts in perception at the level of the everyday. Her visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D'Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), apexart (NY), and East Wing (Dubai). She has also been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, and the Internet Archive. Her book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published by Melville House in 2019.

Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L'Express, and more). He received a PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb wrote eight books and over 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the Universe. He had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy (2011-2020), Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative and is Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (2007-present) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. He also chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative (2016-present) and serves as the Science Theory Director for all Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space.

Suzanne Simard was born in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia and was educated at the University of British Columbia and Oregon State University. She is Professor of Forest Ecology in the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry. Her research has demonstrated that complex, symbiotic networks in our forests mimic our own neural and social networks. She has thirty years of experience studying the forests of Canada and is the author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.

Layla F. Saad is a New York Times and Sunday Times best-selling author, anti-racism educator, international speaker, and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation, and social change. She is the author of the ground-breaking Me and White Supremacy, an anti-racism education workbook that was initially offered for free in an Instagram challenge and in a self-published digital workbook in 2018 (downloaded by 100,000 people in the space of six months). Me and White Supremacy debuted on The New York Times and USA Today best sellers lists. It is also an Amazon, The Wall Street Journal, Indie, and Pacific Northwest best seller. Layla is an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman who was born and grew up in the West, and lives in Middle East. Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities from which she is able to draw rich and intriguing perspectives. Her work is driven by her powerful desire to become a good ancestor; to live and work in ways that leave a legacy of healing and liberation for those who will come after she is gone.

Layla has been featured in ELLE, PAPER, BBC News, BBC Radio 4, PBS, Glamour UK, MarieClaire UK, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29 UK, The Irish Times, Stylist, goop, NowThis News, Jezebel, Psychology Today, Forbes, and many more. Her work has been brought into homes, educational institutions and workplaces around the world that are seeking to create personal and collective change. Layla lives in Doha, Qatar with her husband, Sam, and two children, Maya and Mohamed.

Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, several plays and children's books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior, her many honours include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a musician and performer, Harjo has produced seven award-winning music albums including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and holds a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Coree Woltering is an ultra-runner from Illinois. Coree began his running career with the 400m and 800m distances, which he ran from middle school through college. He was en route to becoming a professional triathlete, when he discovered ultrarunning. Coree had never run longer than 25 km when he signed up for his first "ultra." Coree currently holds the fastest known time for running nearly 1931 km on the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin in 21 days, 13 hours, and 35 minutes.