Hodari Davis is a militant intellectual and futurist who’s poetic tongue and renegade speech is known all over the world.  His revolutionary pedagogy and critical engagement practices are informed by the radical philosophies of Paulo Freire and the Pan-African humanism of Alaine Locke. He has vast experience in Youth Development, Anti-Racism, De-colonial Education, Future Foresight and African American children. Hodari is known for his years as the Executive Producer of the most renowned youth poetry festival in the world, Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam. He is also known for his work on the Bigger Picture Project, an award-winning campaign to stop the type-two diabetes crisis in young people. He and his wife are in high demand for their work leveraging entertainment, technology and art in the practice of education to challenge common approaches to teaching and learning. Their consulting company Edutainment for Equity works with companies, organizations, city governments and school districts applying innovative practices to dismantling systems of oppression. They have traveled, and presented at Conferences, Festivals and Universities all over the world, including in Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and extensively in Africa.  Hodari is also currently a faculty member at the Institute for the Future and a 3rd-year doctoral student at the UC Davis School of Education. 

Martha Diaz (MD) is an award-winning social entrepreneur, media producer, archivist, curator, educator, and founder of the Hip-Hop Education Center. MD has traversed the Hip-Hop entertainment industry, the public arts and education sector, and the academy over the past 30 years. Through her exhibitions, and publications of research reports, books, and curricula, she has chronicled Hip-Hop history to preserve its cultural value and memory. MD curated the first Hip-Hop movie series presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served as a guest curator at the Museum of the Moving Image. A graduate of New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, MD has worked on archival projects with Parkwood Entertainment (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter), Tupac Shakur Estate, and The Paley Center for Media to name a few. MD has served as a Senior Fellow at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation - National Museum of American History, Nasir Jones Fellow at Harvard University, and Senior MacArthur Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.  MD is currently a Visiting Scholar at Virginia Union University, and Chair of Archives, Curatorial, and Education at the Universal Hip Hop Museum. 

Holly Bass is a multidisciplinary performance and visual artist, writer and director. Her work has been presented at spaces such as the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Museums, the Seattle Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach (Project Miami Fair) and the South African State Theatre. Her visual art work includes photography, installation, video and performance and can be found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the DC Art Bank, as well as private collections. A Cave Canem fellow, she has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies. She studied modern dance (under Viola Farber) and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her Master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. As an arts journalist early in her career, she was the first to put the term “hip hop theater” into print in American Theatre magazine. 

She has received numerous grants from the DC Arts Commission and was a 2019 Red Bull Detroit artist-in-residence and a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow. She is a 2020-2022 Live Feed resident artist at New York Live Arts. A gifted and dedicated teaching artist, she directed a year-round creative writing and performance program for adjudicated youth in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services for four years as well as facilitating workshops nationally and internationally. She is currently the national director for Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program which uses the arts strategically to transform schools facing severe inequities. 

With 25 years of expertise as cross-disciplinary performer, poet, educator, filmmaker and social engagement artist, RobertFaridKarimi brings nourishment, playfulness and interactive storytelling to spaces worldwide — from General Mills to Off Broadway to Nuyorican Poets Café to HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Hawaii International Film Festival, The Smithsonian and South by Southwest. With his Iranian-Guatemalan heritage as a point of departure, Karimi plays a diverse group of characters in his solo shows, from the mystical Disco Jesus to pop star Freddie Mercury to the idealist cook Mero Cocinero, who has cooked for luminaries MF Doom, Yuri Kochiyama and families and change-makers worldwide.

Karimi made healthy messaging delicious with the Diabetes of Democracy: a culinary engagement project which inspires audiences to exchange their cultural culinary histories, connect with one another over humor and food and discover their own power towards personal balance. DoD served over 60000 people from 2009-2019.

A Creative Capital artist, Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, Robert Farid Karimi featured their work on NPR, The Smithsonian, South by Southwest (SXSW), HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Los Angeles Times, Callaloo, Mizna, Total Chaos: an anthology of hip-hop theory, Asian American Literary Review and A Good Time for The Truth: Race In Minnesota and various platforms/spaces worldwide. 

Karimi now designs games and interactive performance experiences to spark audiences/players, in all manner of civic spaces, to imagine worlds of mutual community nourishment. New work includes a series of interactive analog immersive game experiences involving topics such as police brutality, the Muslim ban, the illegal detention of Central American immigrant youth and the disproportionate amount of people of color who cannot swim. Karimi serves as Associate Professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theater department at Arizona State University.

Dr. Toby S. Jenkins is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration and Interim Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Graduate School at the University of South Carolina. Jenkins has published five books focused on culture, diversity and inclusion in education. “My Culture, My Color, My Self: Heritage, Resilience and Community in the Lives of Young Adults” (Temple University Press, 2013) was named by the Association of American University Press to the list of “Top100 Books for Understanding Race Relations in the U.S.” Prior to becoming a professor, Dr. Jenkins worked for 10 years as a student affairs administrator in the areas of Diversity & Inclusion, Student Leadership, Student Activities, Fraternity & Sorority Life and Education Abroad. One of the campus-based programs that she created at the University of Maryland received a White House Award from the President of the United States and the Governor of Maryland and has run successfully on that campus for over 20 years. Her research, teaching and professional studies have taken her to over 35 countries. Dr. Jenkins is the mom of a super-active seven-year-old son, a wife, daughter, sister and friend. She is a breast cancer survivor who is also living with lupus. Culture, in the form of art, poetry, music, storytelling, elder wisdom, historical resilience and street knowledge feeds her soul.