Natasha S. Alford is an award-winning journalist, host and millennial media executive driven by the power of storytelling to inspire and change people’s lives. As the Vice President of Digital Content and a Senior Correspondent for theGrio digital network, Natasha leads strategic creative vision and production for all original content on theGrio. Natasha is also a CNN Political Analyst, where she offers commentary on the news, politics and movements of the moment. Alford's writing and on-air commentary has appeared on numerous other outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, Vogue, MSNBC, The Breakfast Club and The Oprah Magazine. 

William García-Medina is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of American Studies at the University of Kansas. In 2016, García-Medina earned an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from Teachers College–Columbia University in New York City with a focus on historical literacies in elementary schools. He also has a BA and MA in history from the University of Puerto Rico-Recintode Río Piedras. He tweets from @afrolatinoed.

Ed Morales is an author and journalist who has written for The Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Jacobin and the Guardian. He was a staff writer at the Village Voice and columnist at Newsday. He is the author of Latinx: The New Force in Politics and Culture (Verso Books, 2018), Living in Spanglish (St. Martins, 2002) and The Latin Beat: From Rumba to Rock (Da Capo Press, 2003). His new book, Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico, was published in September 2019 by Bold Type Press. Morales is a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Dr. Carmen Phillips is the Editor-in-Chief of Autostraddle.com, the longest running and largest independently owned LGBTQ women's digital publication of its size, a legacy brand with over 2.5 million views per month. She’s been at Autostraddle for more than four years, first as a freelance writer and then eventually working her way up to Senior Editor, and now EIC. Carmen is a Black Puerto Rican feminist writer, educator and editor. She's proud to be an up-and-coming leader in independent queer media, and equally proud of her past work mentoring in the classroom. She holds a PhD in American Studies (with an emphasis in African American and Latinx political history and pop culture) from New York University. She looks forward to mentoring other writers and thinkers, especially Puerto Rican writers, that are shaping how we talk about our investments in pop culture, the conversations that surround them, and cultural criticism at this moment. She claims many homes, but left the largest parts of her heart in Detroit, Brooklyn and Buffalo, NY.

Sandra D. Rodríguez Cotto is a journalist with decades of experience in Puerto Rico, the United States and several Latin American countries. She works as a news and policy analyst, radio commentator, television producer, columnist and blogger. She conducts her syndicated radio program En Blanco y Negro con Sandra Monday through Friday at 1 p.m. local time in more than 10 radio stations that belong to networks Cadena WIAC, X-61, Radio Raíces and Radio Grito. She is also a political analyst for WPAB 650 AM Ponce. Additionally, she's a contributor to several media outlets in the U.S. (El Diario La Prensa, All Digitocracy, Huffington Post, USA Today, Politico Magazine) and the Public Relations Portal of Latin America, based in Argentina. She has authored more than five books on communication and journalism.

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living between Brooklyn and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work has appeared in many venues including The Believer, Bookforum, The Common, Virginia Quarterly Review and the New York Times Magazine, where she is a contributing writer. Alongside Ricardo Maldonado, Raquel Salas Rivera and Erica Mena, she edited the bilingual poetry anthology Puerto Rico en mi corazón to raise funds for hurricane relief. Her forthcoming book, The Other Island, won a Creative Nonfiction Grant from the Whiting Foundation in 2020.