Kira Akerman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator known for her debut feature documentary, Hollow Tree, which won a Jury Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival and Best Documentary at Chicago’s International Children’s Festival. She has participated in prestigious programs, including the PBS Wyncote Fellowship, the Sundance Institute's Talent Forum, and the Redford Center's Climate Story Lab. Previously, Kira has consulted on place-based learning for Ripple Effect and Tulane University’s Center for the Gulf South. She teaches documentary filmmaking and leads workshops on new epistemologies for a time of climate change. She holds a master’s degree in Learning, Innovation, Technology, and Design from Harvard University. 

Jeffery U. Darensbourg is a Louisiana Creole and member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation who grew up in Itta Homma (of which “Baton Rouge” is a translation) and currently resides in Bulbancha, the only name he uses to refer to what others call “New Orleans.” His work intertwines academic research with autoethnography and memoir through essays, poetry, and public talks. His writing reflects Louisiana’s deep histories of ethnic mixing among European, African, and Indigenous peoples. A 2024 United States Artists Fellow, Darensbourg serves on various nonprofit boards and is a frequent juror for grants and residencies. A former librarian, occasional musician, and rivercane flute maker, Darensbourg holds a Ph.D. in cognitive science.

Kathe Hambrick is the Executive Director of the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans and the founder of the River Road African American Museum. With over 30 years of experience, she has curated more than 100 exhibits, including The Rural Roots of Jazz and Rural Black Doctors. Hambrick is a noted expert on Louisiana’s sugar plantation history and has been featured by local and international media. Her latest project focuses on the GU272, enslaved people sold by the Jesuits of Georgetown University. Her passion is slave cemetery preservation in communities along the Mississippi River.

Janie Verrett Luster is a celebrated Houma artist and cultural preservationist from Bayou DuLarge, Louisiana. The daughter of traditional artists John and Mary Verret, she creates beautiful jewelry and artwork from Alligator Garfish scales. Janie has reintroduced the Houma Half-Hitch Palmetto basket weaving technique to her tribe, the United Houma Nation, teaching it to her daughters and others in her community. A master artist and advocate, she has received numerous honors, including the United Houma Nation Cultural Preservation Award,  the Louisiana Division of the Arts Folk Life Fellowship, and Louisianian of the year in 2023 for the Art & Culture category of Louisiana Life magazine’s. Janie also shares her knowledge of herbal medicine and serves on the CODOFIL board.

Kristina Kay Robinson is a New Orleans-born poet, writer, and visual artist whose work explores the connections between global communities, focusing on the impact of globalization, militarism, and surveillance on society. Her ongoing installation project, Republica: Temple of Color and Sound, has been featured at Miami Art Week, the New Museum, and the New Orleans African American Museum. Robinson co-edited Mixed Company, an anthology of fiction and visual narratives by women of color, and has curated exhibitions such as Welcome to the Afrofuture and A Disappearance. She is a 2019 Rabkin Prize winner and serves as New Orleans editor-at-large for Burnaway magazine.

Rebecca Snedeker is an artist and public scholar dedicated to creating place-based, interdisciplinary experiences that relate the local to the global and planetary. She has produced several feature documentary films, including Land of Opportunity (ARTE France, 2010), Witness: Katrina (National Geographic Channel, 2010) and By Invitation Only (PBS, 2006), and coauthored with Rebecca Solnit Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (University of California Press, 2013). From 2015-2024, she served as James H. Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, where she supported bioregionalist research, teaching, and programming, particularly in Africana, Indigenous, and Environmental Studies. Snedeker has served on advisory councils for BOMB Magazine, HKW’s Anthropocene-Curriculum.org, and New Day Films, and she is a recipient of an Emmy Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.