Paul Gardullo is a writer, historian, and curator. He serves as Assistant Director of History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).  He also heads the Museum’s Center for the Study of Global Slavery, which co-convenes three international collaborative initiatives--the Slave Wrecks Project, the Global Curatorial Project, and the Slave Voyages consortium--all focused on advancing research and public history on slavery’s fundamental and continuing impact on our world. Since 2007, he’s served on the core team building the NMAAHC’s foundational collections as well as conceiving and crafting its inaugural exhibitions. He is co-director and lead curator for an international exhibition and global public history project entitled “In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World” that focuses on the history and afterlives of slavery and colonialism and charts pathways toward antiracist futures. Dr. Gardullo is a graduate of Rutgers University and The George Washington University as well as a former fellow at The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He serves as a visiting scholar of slavery and justice at Brown University and he lectures, curates, consults, and advises institutions nationally and internationally on several topics including slavery and the making of the modern world; Reconstruction and its legacies; The Power of Place, Race and Memory; Museums as sites of transformation, reckoning, and change; Ethics of collecting and collections; Community engagement; and Public History and Humanities.

Wawa Gatheru is a GenZ climate activist and Rhodes Scholar passionate about cultivating a climate movement that is made in the image of all of us. She is the founder and Executive Director of Black Girl Environmentalist, the only national organization dedicated to addressing the pipeline and pathway issue for Black girls, women, and gender expansive individuals in the climate sector. Under her leadership, BGE has grown as a trusted, national organization that has worked with 80 corporate and non-profit partners and hosted 120+ events across 14 HUB cities. In the summer of 2024, BGE launched the Hazel M. Johnson Fellowship Program - the first climate pipeline program created for and by GenZ of color. Forbes has called Black Girl Environmentalist “one of the largest Black youth-led organizations in the country”.

Outside of her role at BGE, Wawa sits on boards and advisory councils for the Environmental Media Association, Climate Power, Brian Eno’s Earth / Percent, Sound Future, National Parks Conservation Association, and EarthJustice. Wawa is also an inaugural member of the National Environmental Youth Advisory Council of the US EPA - the first federal youth-led advisory council in US history. In her role, Wawa advises Administrator Reagan on how to increase the effectiveness of the EPA’s efforts to address a range of environmental issues impacting youFor her work, Wawa has been recognized as a Glamour College Woman of the Year, a L’Oreal Paris Woman of Worth, a Climate Creator to Watch by Harvard, and has been named to several notable lists - including Forbes 30 under 30, Ebony Power 100, the Independent’s Climate 100, Grist 50, and AFROTECH Future 50 - and is an established public speaker who has presented at Harvard University, Yale University, the Washington Post Summit, the New York Times Climate Forward, and conferences around the world. She was most recently featured on the January 2023 digital cover of Vogue alongside Billie Eilish and 7 other climate activists.

Dr Michelle Gayle co-founded The World Reimagined in 2019; a groundbreaking educational art project to transform our understanding about The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans in order to create an environment for racial justice and harmony to thrive. The World Reimagined public art trails saw 3.7 million people engage with The World Reimagined globes, across 8 cities. Over 275 schools participated in its learning program and the charity awarded community grants to 80+ grassroots organisations. To date, it is the biggest art-education project in UK history.

Michelle is one of the rare people who have crossed over from child star, playing Fiona Wilson in Grange Hill, to adult success. She played Hattie Tavernier, in Eastenders, for four years, and from 2019 to 2023, Michelle was playing Hermione Granger in the multi award winning play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

BMG signed Michelle as a recording artist in 1993, whilst she was still in Eastenders. Over 2 albums she achieved six top 20 hits and 3 Brit Award nominations, selling a million records with “Sweetness,” being the biggest hit.

The first of her three published novels garnered attention from TV producers. Michelle has written for Wolfblood (BBC) and A Discovery of Witches (Sky) and has a number of projects in development for TV. She is passionate about telling stories that depict the struggles of women, minorities and the working class.

Michelle’s mum was an activist who set up a magazine and a community organisation called Black Insight in Harlesden NW10, which provided an education and information service as well as legal advice. “I saw first hand the difference Black Insight made to peoples’ lives, some people still stop me in the street and ask me to thank my Mum. When you are the child of an activist, it never leaves you.” Michelle is passionate about leveraging entertainment and what she has learned from The World Reimagined, for global positive change.

Rhodes Scholar Tori Harwell (Missouri & Queen's 2024) is a passionate researcher and advocate for environmental justice with a strong commitment to global Black communities. By understanding the afterlives of colonialism and racialized capitalism, Tori advocates for climate change adaptation and mitigation rooted in material decolonization and the decentering of Eurocentric knowledge systems. They have worked to help Black communities implement their own climate change mitigation tactics on small, local scales.

During Tori’s latest research project as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, they focused on cocoa cash crop farming in Ghana, employing auto-ethnography and archival research to explore the impacts of colonialism in Kukurantumi, Ghana. Tori’s research seeks to better understand the narrative justifications for colonial land use and how colonisers displace Indigenous land stewardship and knowledge production. By putting colonial and Indigenous knowledge systems in conversation, Tori works to decenter and deconstruct Eurocentric epistemologies.

Tori’s work is grounded in community-based projects that address the lack of infrastructure supporting Black communities working to heal their connection to the land and the land itself. As a Goldman Fellow, Tori developed a dual-strategy project with Great Rivers Environmental Law Center to connect Black urban farmers in St. Louis with free legal support while addressing their immediate capacity needs. As a Youth Program Coordinator at the Organization for Black Struggle, Tori worked with students who experienced systemic racial violence, helping them reconnect with nature through urban gardens.

Tori’s research and community engagement projects highlight how climate change solutions should be led and shaped by the communities most impacted by colonialism. Their collaborative work emphasizes practical solutions for addressing systemic inequities in the context of climate change.

Dorah Marema is the Portfolio Head for Municipal Sustainability Portfolio at the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) leading the work to support municipalities in South Africa on issues of the environmental management, climate change, disaster management and fire services. She is a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity. Dorah has worked with a wide range of NGOs and in different sectors both rural and urban settings focusing on small-scale agriculture, environment, climate change, renewable energy, gender and land-rights at local, national and international levels. She founded GenderCC Southern Africa-Women for Climate Justice in 2008 where she worked with women and gender civil society organizations, activists, and gender experts from the Southern African region on issues of women’s rights, gender and climate justice.

She also co-founded the Green Business college in 2017, which is a social enterprise based in Johannesburg, dedicated to building ‘green’ entrepreneurs by uniting green skills with business know-how. Dorah also co-founded the Ubuntu Project in March 2020, a social-entrepreneurial initiative that supports small-holder farmers to access markets (through a veggie box-delivery service) while supporting derserving households with gardening startup packs.

Marvin Rees OBE is a British Labour Party politician. He served as the Mayor of Bristol from 2016 to 2024, becoming the first person of Black African heritage to be elected mayor of any major European City. Rees began his career with Tearfund, a leading international development agency, then moved to the USA to work with Sojourners, a social justice organisation. On returning to the UK he worked with BBC Bristol, before joining NHS Bristol’s Public Health team.

His mayoralty was characterised by a blend of political and social leadership, earning him an international reputation for impactful governance. He oversaw the delivery of over 14,00 new homes; Temple Quarter, one of the biggest regeneration schemes in Europe; and Bristol City Leap, a £1bn deal public private partnership to decarbonise the city’s energy system.

Marvin is a Yale World Fellow and graduate of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from Swansea University and is an Honorary Industrial Professor at the University of Bristol. He cities his experiences as the mixed-race son of a single mother growing up in 1970s and 80s Britain as the origins of his commitment to social justice, social ambition and urban transformation.

He was awarded a life peerage by the Prime Minister and is set to enter the House of Lords in February 2025.