Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author, filmmaker and cultural theorist who is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence.

He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America, and the first major program of its kind in the sports culture and the military. In the 1990s, MVP introduced the “bystander” approach to the sexual assault and relationship abuse fields; Katz is a key architect of this broadly popular strategy. He has presented at over 2700 colleges and
universities, prep schools, high schools, professional conferences and military installations in 49 states, eight Canadian provinces, and on six continents, including multiple countries in Europe and Asia.

Selenis Leyva is one of the breakout stars of NETFLIX’s hit series “Orange Is The New Black,” which won the 2015 coveted Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble Cast in a Comedy Series. Leyva reprises her role as series regular and fan favorite Gloria Mendoza in Season 4 of OITNB and also made history as the first Latina Senator on HBO’s Emmy-winning series, “Veep,” starring opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Leyva recently wrapped production in the highly anticipated feature film “CUSTODY”, starring opposite Catalina Sandino Moreno, Viola Davis, and Raul Esparza with James Lapine directing.

Born and raised in New York City, Leyva is a proud Latina of Cuban and Dominican descent. In addition to being the first Hispanic Ambassador for the Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation for Cancer Research (her brother is a 2x cancer survivor), Leyva is also the recipient of the 2015 HOLA “Jose Ferrer Tespis Award”, 2015 Cosmo For Latina’s Women of the Year Award”, and she was honored at the 2014 ALMA Awards with a “Special Achievement Award” for breaking barriers in the arts. She is also an advocate for LGBTQ rights and works closely with LGBTQ Human Rights Organizations and Anti-Bullying Campaigns.

This is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever, seen through the eyes of a 20 year old college student, Bernard Lafayette. From May until November, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment – for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow Laws, the Freedom Riders met bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.
Dr, Lafayette, Jr. co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960 with his college roommate, Rep. John Lewis, and was a core leader of the civil rights movement in Nashville, TN, and in Selma, AL, in 1965. As part of the May 17th Nashville Student Movement Ride, Lafayette endured riots and fire bombings in Montgomery, AL, and arrest in Jackson, MS, and jail time at Parchman State Prison Farm during June 1961. He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962. He was appointed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.

Master language creator David J. Peterson offers a captivating overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien’s creations and Klingon to today’s thriving global community of conlangers. He presents the essential tools necessary for inventing and evolving new languages, using examples from a variety of languages including his creations, punctuated with references to everything from Star Wars to Michael Jackson.

Along the way, behind-the-scenes stories lift the curtain on how he built languages like Dothraki and Valyrian for HBO’s Game of Thrones and Shivaisith for Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World. His presentation is an inside look at a fascinating culture and an engaging entry into a flourishing art form-and it might be the most fun you’ll ever have with linguistics.

Attorney Judy Wood assisted in changing the law of asylum nationwide, allowing women to be designated a protected class – saving the lives of not only her clients, but thousands of other female refugees who would have been sent back to their home countries where they may have faced death.

Her clients have given her the name “SAINT JUDY”, because she values them over dollars, and has a compassionate nature as she tries to rescue the oppressed and stand up for justice.
SAINT JUDY is now a major motion picture starring Michelle Monaghan, Leem Lubany, Common, Alfred Molina, and Alfre Woodard.

Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, published writer, anti-sexism activist, and lecturer. He is also the former host of the Emmy-nominated television show, “REEL WORKS with BYRON HURT.” Since 1993, he has been using his craft, his voice, and his writings to broaden and deepen how people think about gender, race, sex, violence, music, and visual media. As an activist, Byron has served as a gender violence prevention educator. The former Northeastern University football quarterback was also a founding member of the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, the leading college-based rape and domestic violence prevention initiative for college and professional athletics. Hurt also served as an Associate Director of the first gender violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps.

Hurt began his professional film career with I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America. His most popular documentary to date, however, is Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (BBR). It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was later broadcast nationally on the Emmy award-winning PBS series “Independent Lens” (drawing more than 1.3 million viewers). Since then, it has screened at over 100 film festivals worldwide. The Chicago Tribune named it “one of the best documentary films in 2007.” In 2010, MSNBC’s TheGriot.com named Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes one of the Top 10 most important black films of the decade.

He has completed his newest documentary, Soul Food Junkies, a film about the history and legacy of soul food for PBS.

Elizabeth Flock is a reporter for PBS NewsHour and the author of the book “The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai,” about marriage in contemporary India. Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, Al Jazeera and Vice.

Her work is primarily in women’s issues, with a focus on love, sex and marriage. From North America to Asia, she examines the cultural shifts that are upending the institution of marriage around the world.

Flock examines how marrying for love has changed and continues to change in the West, but also how other kinds of unions continue to persist around the world. In Asia, more women today are choosing hybrid love-arranged marriages, where women ultimately choose their partner but others play a direct role in the process. As tradition collides with Western culture in India, add the layers of religious and ethnic change, as well as pop culture and technology, and the institution of marriage in India, as in America, is being upended every day.

Flock’s work examines the universal challenges, possibilities and promise of matrimony in its present state — and the lessons that can be learned about the institution by examining it across cultures.

Imagine if there was an proven way to restore more focus and steal back attention while increasing self-management and self-awareness? As the Series Producer of National Geographic’s hit series Border Wars, Stein can attest to the impact of human misery. He and his crews chronicled the unspeakable suffering of illegal migrants, coerced drug smugglers, violent crime victims and burnt out federal law enforcement officers. Over time, the stress of making Border Wars began to take a psychological toll on Stein’s resiliency as he suffered from his own and secondary trauma. It was back in 2012 that he healed himself via meditation and now, as a Certified Mindfulness Teacher, he is hired to bring this hard won knowledge to a stressed out population in dire need of help; cops. Specifically he works with veteran police detectives, patrol officers, US Border Patrol Agents and Customs Port Officers.

Stein’s no-nonsense approach, using images and footage from his series and beyond, he brings this subject alive for all audiences. Entertaining and engrossing, “Border Wars: From Mayhem to Mindfulness” will win over students and staff alike… and may even change some lives.