Jonathan Taplin is an author and director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Taplin’s book Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, published by Little, Brown & Co., was nominated by the Financial Times as one of the Best Business Books of 2017. Taplin has produced music and film for Bob Dylan and the Band, George Harrison, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Gus Van Sant and many others. He was the founder of Intertainer, the first streaming Video On Demand Platform in 1996. Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He was a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism from 2003 to 2016. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He currently sits on the boards of The Authors Guild, Americana Music Association, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Council on Technology and Innovation. His commentary has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Medium, the Washington Monthly, and the Wall Street Journal.

Oscar F. Clarke established the Herbarium at the University of California, Riverside, and studied and taught natural history throughout his life. Supported by his wife, Marsia Alexander-Clarke, Oscar assembled a team to complete Flora of the Santa Ana River and Environs, which represents a culmination of a lifetime of natural history study.

Laura Freeman is a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honoree. Her work on Hidden Figures written by Margot Lee Shetterly, was recognized with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children, reached the New York Times Best Seller list and was listed as one of “Ten Books All Georgians Should Read”. Her art has been honored at the Society of Illustrators in NYC and in the Annuals for Communication Arts and American Illustration.

She has illustrated over thirty children’s books. In addition to illustrating books, Laura’s art can be found on a wide range of products, from dishes and textiles to greeting cards. And her editorial images are frequently seen in the NY Times and other periodicals.

She is a native New Yorker residing in Atlanta with her husband, two sons, two cats and a fish. Visit her website, lfreemanart.com.

Michael Wertz is an illustrator and printer whose clients include the San Francisco Chronicle; Bill Graham Presents; Chronicle Books; the de Young Museum; the Exploratorium; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Gingko Press; Oaklandish; Random House; the New York Times; Nike; the Oakland Museum of California; Scholastic; SFMOMA; the United Way; and Wired. He is the author of A Dazzling Display of Dogs and A Curious Collection of Cats, and he lives in beautiful Oakland, California. His website is wertzateria.com.

Analisa Tripp is an artist, a writer, and an auntie to fourteen nieces and nephews. She is a graduate of the Native American Studies Program at UC Berkeley. Over the years she has had the privilege of working with youth of all ages as a nanny, preschool teacher, elementary and high school tutor, and university recruiter. A member of the Karuk Tribe, she currently lives with her family in their ancestral territory located in beautiful northwestern California.