Abby Ajayi - Creator of “Riches” - Writer/Producer “Inventing Anna” “The First Lady”

Abby Ajayi - Creator of “Riches” - Writer/Producer “Inventing Anna” “The First Lady”

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Creator of the Amazon series Riches
Writer/Producer on Inventing Anna · The First Lady · How to Get Away with Murder

I do feel that if one has the desire and the ability to be a much more big-picture showrunner, I think that's to the best. That benefits the show because there's a creative voice running all the way through. This isn't a movie, where it's a director's medium. It is the writer's medium, so I think the writer should be across producing and also empowering the director, but there is a clear vision. I think Riches has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life.

Highlights - Nina Hall - Author of “Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era”


Highlights - Nina Hall - Author of “Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era”


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Author of Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
Assistant Professor · International Relations · Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe)

Digital advocacy organizations are recognized as influential actors by the media, politicians, and some academics. In 2016, GetUp, an Australian digital advocacy organization, was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of the top ten actors with ‘covert power’ in Australia.1 Campact in Germany has powerfully mobilized public opinion against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. MoveOn was one of the ‘leading advocacy organizations’ mobilizing people against the Iraq War in the United States. Meanwhile, Leadnow, a digital advocacy organization in Canada, helped to unseat Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian federal election. This new model of advocacy organization has spread around the world. Nineteen digital advocacy organizations claim to have a total of over 20 million members. What drove the global spread of digital advocacy organizations?

Nina Hall - Author of “Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local”

Nina Hall - Author of “Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local”

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Author of Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
Assistant Professor · International Relations · Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe)

Digital advocacy organizations are recognized as influential actors by the media, politicians, and some academics. In 2016, GetUp, an Australian digital advocacy organization, was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of the top ten actors with ‘covert power’ in Australia.1 Campact in Germany has powerfully mobilized public opinion against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. MoveOn was one of the ‘leading advocacy organizations’ mobilizing people against the Iraq War in the United States. Meanwhile, Leadnow, a digital advocacy organization in Canada, helped to unseat Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian federal election. This new model of advocacy organization has spread around the world. Nineteen digital advocacy organizations claim to have a total of over 20 million members. What drove the global spread of digital advocacy organizations?

Highlights - Sam Levy - Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Confess, Fletch” “Frances Ha”

Highlights - Sam Levy - Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Confess, Fletch” “Frances Ha”

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Award-winning Cinematographer of Lady Bird · Frances Ha · While We’re Young · Confess, Fletch

Every movie is different. Every story is different. I think if we're lucky in our lives, we can choose the path that we want to go down, whether it's something creative or in the arts or something else. And I think if you're lucky, you can spend your life or your career following something you really love or spending time following the path, whether it's a hobby or your career. And spending that time paying the attention that the craft or the hobby or the creative pursuit wants.

Sam Levy - Award-winning Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Frances Ha” “While We’re Young”

Sam Levy - Award-winning Cinematographer of “Lady Bird” “Frances Ha” “While We’re Young”

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Award-winning Cinematographer of Lady Bird · Frances Ha · While We’re Young · Confess, Fletch

Every movie is different. Every story is different. I think if we're lucky in our lives, we can choose the path that we want to go down, whether it's something creative or in the arts or something else. And I think if you're lucky, you can spend your life or your career following something you really love or spending time following the path, whether it's a hobby or your career. And spending that time paying the attention that the craft or the hobby or the creative pursuit wants.

Highlights - Oberon Sinclair - Founder CEO of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie

Highlights - Oberon Sinclair - Founder CEO of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie

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CEO & Founder of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie

If someone comes to me, and they say, “Oh, I have a new brand. It's a startup.” First of all, I have to like the person, they have to like me. It's a two way street. And that's the most important thing with anyone in life, not just work. In life, why do we make friends with who we make friends with? They are relationships. And if you connect with someone, magic will happen. If you don't connect with someone, and someone doesn't understand or have the same aesthetic or a similar way of thinking – you have to have something in common with someone. And if you have those qualities, which I look for, honesty and loyalty, and they're genuine, and you just know if you're going to get on with someone or not.

Oberon Sinclair - Founder CEO of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie - Queen of Kale

Oberon Sinclair - Founder CEO of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie - Queen of Kale

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CEO & Founder of Creative/Branding Agency My Young Auntie

If someone comes to me, and they say, “Oh, I have a new brand. It's a startup.” First of all, I have to like the person, they have to like me. It's a two way street. And that's the most important thing with anyone in life, not just work. In life, why do we make friends with who we make friends with? They are relationships. And if you connect with someone, magic will happen. If you don't connect with someone, and someone doesn't understand or have the same aesthetic or a similar way of thinking – you have to have something in common with someone. And if you have those qualities, which I look for, honesty and loyalty, and they're genuine, and you just know if you're going to get on with someone or not.

Highlights - Gloria Pacis - Artist

Highlights - Gloria Pacis - Artist

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Artist

I just feel there is already a connection, something I have to come to, but that I'm trying to search it out or see what's already there. I feel that we are truly connected as a world. And I'm just trying to make people aware of an existing connection we already have, to send that message out there. And I like to do it in the form of...I guess you'd call it a mundane image, where it's not really about bells and whistles, but it's about something in it makes you want to look, and you want to know why. And it's because you've been there before, regardless of whether you are a dancer or that particular guy in the subway, you know you've been in his head in that mood that he's experiencing.

Gloria Pacis - Artist

Gloria Pacis - Artist

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Artist

I just feel there is already a connection, something I have to come to, but that I'm trying to search it out or see what's already there. I feel that we are truly connected as a world. And I'm just trying to make people aware of an existing connection we already have, to send that message out there. And I like to do it in the form of...I guess you'd call it a mundane image, where it's not really about bells and whistles, but it's about something in it makes you want to look, and you want to know why. And it's because you've been there before, regardless of whether you are a dancer or that particular guy in the subway, you know you've been in his head in that mood that he's experiencing.

Highlights - Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation - Chief of Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

Highlights - Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation - Chief of Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

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Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

I'm an addiction psychiatrist. When I use the word addiction, I'm really talking about having crossed the line from basically healthy use with an occasional slip to somebody who's really caught in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption with consequences and typically needing help from others. It's one of the main points of my book Dopamine Nation that we are living in this addictogenic world where almost all human behaviors and substances have become drugified in one way, right? Social media has drugified human connection. Our food has been drugified by the addition of salt, fat, sugar. Reading is drugified, the way that these genre novels fill this sort of gaping hole of compulsive consumption among their readership, people always wanting more. The Netflix binges, where you get the next episode automatically fills unless you do something to stop it. You know, these are all little ways in which our lives have been engineered to keep us clicking and swiping and eating and smoking and drinking to the detriment of the globe. I mean, 70% of global deaths are due to diseases caused by modifiable risk factors, and the top three are smoking, inactivity, and overeating or diet. So we're literally titillating ourselves to death.

Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Dr. Anna Lembke - Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

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Author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic

I'm an addiction psychiatrist. When I use the word addiction, I'm really talking about having crossed the line from basically healthy use with an occasional slip to somebody who's really caught in the vortex of compulsive overconsumption with consequences and typically needing help from others. It's one of the main points of my book Dopamine Nation that we are living in this addictogenic world where almost all human behaviors and substances have become drugified in one way, right? Social media has drugified human connection. Our food has been drugified by the addition of salt, fat, sugar. Reading is drugified, the way that these genre novels fill this sort of gaping hole of compulsive consumption among their readership, people always wanting more. The Netflix binges, where you get the next episode automatically fills unless you do something to stop it. You know, these are all little ways in which our lives have been engineered to keep us clicking and swiping and eating and smoking and drinking to the detriment of the globe. I mean, 70% of global deaths are due to diseases caused by modifiable risk factors, and the top three are smoking, inactivity, and overeating or diet. So we're literally titillating ourselves to death.

Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

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Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. –Fury Young

I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario. – BL Shirelle

Highlights - Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

Highlights - Fury Young - BL Shirelle - Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

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Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. –Fury Young

I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario. – B.L. Shirelle

Highlights - Maya van Rossum - Author of “The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment”

Highlights - Maya van Rossum - Author of “The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment”

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Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations · Leader of Delaware Riverkeeper Network
Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment

What is a Green Amendment? It is language that recognizes the rights of all people to clean water and clean air, a stable climate, and healthy environments, and obligates the government to protect those rights and the natural resources of the state for the benefit of all the people in the state, or if it was a federal green amendment in the United States, and they become obliged to protect those environmental rights and those natural resources for the benefit of both present and future generations, that's functionally what it does. But to help people understand what it accomplishes, a green amendment actually obligates the government to recognize and protect our environmental rights in the same, most powerful way we recognize and protect the other fundamental freedoms we hold dear. Things like the right to free speech, freedom of religion, civil rights, and private property rights. We all know how powerfully they are protected from government overreach and infringement. Well, when we have Green Amendments, now the environment and our environmental rights are added to that list of highest constitutional freedoms and protections.

Maya van Rossum - Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations - Delaware Riverkeeper


Maya van Rossum - Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations - Delaware Riverkeeper


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Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations · Leader of Delaware Riverkeeper Network
Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment

What is a Green Amendment? It is language that recognizes the rights of all people to clean water and clean air, a stable climate, and healthy environments, and obligates the government to protect those rights and the natural resources of the state for the benefit of all the people in the state, or if it was a federal green amendment in the United States, and they become obliged to protect those environmental rights and those natural resources for the benefit of both present and future generations, that's functionally what it does. But to help people understand what it accomplishes, a green amendment actually obligates the government to recognize and protect our environmental rights in the same, most powerful way we recognize and protect the other fundamental freedoms we hold dear. Things like the right to free speech, freedom of religion, civil rights, and private property rights. We all know how powerfully they are protected from government overreach and infringement. Well, when we have Green Amendments, now the environment and our environmental rights are added to that list of highest constitutional freedoms and protections.

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

Highlights - Britt Wray - Author, Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

Britt Wray - Author of “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis”

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Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Broadcaster and Researcher Working on Climate Change and Mental Health

I think the general waking up that I'm seeing around me in so many different parts of society, people from all walks understanding that this is here, it's not a future threat. It's active now. We need to get smart about addressing it. A lot of people are also asking themselves how can I be of service? What can I do at this time? How am I going to be? And you know, the more climate job boards and networking communities and sites of bringing people together to do that work of figuring out how they're going to go on their climate journey while infusing it with a sense of joy, with a sense of how can we make this fun, right? How can we reshift so this is not just focusing on the negative, but really focusing on what we want to be building and what is abundant and the better life that we're working towards? All of that has been popping up a lot and that gives me an honest sense of hope. So a lot of it is about that relationality, creating conditions of solidarity that bring a sense of stability and security. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the impacts will be and how they're going to affect us, each and every one of us, in the decades ahead. There needs to, amidst all that uncertainty, be other things that can undergird a child and make them feel held, safe, secure, and like they belong to a protective community that's thinking and feeling with them through this.

Highlights - Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science"

Highlights - Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science"

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Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist
Author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

I live my life embodying the teaching my grandmother instilled in me – that no matter which lens I walked on, I had to learn how to build relationships with the land and the Indigenous peoples whose land I reside on to become a welcome guest. As a displaced Indigenous woman, my longing to return to my ancestral homelands will always be there, and this is why I continue to support my communities in the diaspora. However, my relationships are not only with my community, but also the Indigenous communities whose land I am displaced on, and this is the foundation of my work while residing in the Pacific Northwest. I strongly believe that in order to start healing Indigenous landscapes, everyone must understand their positionality as either settlers, unwanted guests, or welcomed guests, and that is ultimately determined by the Indigenous communities whose land you currently reside on or occupy. This teaching has also helped me envision my goals in life. Every day I get closer to becoming an ancestor because life is not guaranteed but rather a gift we are granted from our ancestors who are now in the spiritual world.

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

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Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist
Author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

I live my life embodying the teaching my grandmother instilled in me – that no matter which lens I walked on, I had to learn how to build relationships with the land and the Indigenous peoples whose land I reside on to become a welcome guest. As a displaced Indigenous woman, my longing to return to my ancestral homelands will always be there, and this is why I continue to support my communities in the diaspora. However, my relationships are not only with my community, but also the Indigenous communities whose land I am displaced on, and this is the foundation of my work while residing in the Pacific Northwest. I strongly believe that in order to start healing Indigenous landscapes, everyone must understand their positionality as either settlers, unwanted guests, or welcomed guests, and that is ultimately determined by the Indigenous communities whose land you currently reside on or occupy. This teaching has also helped me envision my goals in life. Every day I get closer to becoming an ancestor because life is not guaranteed but rather a gift we are granted from our ancestors who are now in the spiritual world.

Highlights - Karina Manashil - Pres. of Mad Solar - Exec. Producer of “Entergalactic”, “Pearl”, “X”

Highlights - Karina Manashil - Pres. of Mad Solar - Exec. Producer of “Entergalactic”, “Pearl”, “X”

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President of Mad Solar · Creative Confidante & Industry Catalyst for Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi
Exec. Producer: Entergalactic starring Mescudi, Jessica Williams & Timothée Chalamet
Pearl · X starring Mia Goth

And what was so moving was when we went into Netflix to the theater to screen the finished product for the first time. You're sitting there and at the end of it, Scott was crying, and I looked over - it made me cry low-key - but Scott was crying and he said – This completely blows my mind because this is the first time I had a vision up here in my head and tried to express it, and then had to trust all 300 plus people, all around the world, working in different time zones, in different places, and each of them putting a hand to it and seeing exactly that vision. And then watching the product, and it is the best version of anything I could have ever possibly had in my head.
So, to us, that's the purest, most beautiful... Again, how fortunate that every hand was moving in tandem and moving in lockstep, and all of it. But that was the beauty of collaboration, this opportunity for a small vision to touch so many hands and become the big vision.