Imani Barbarin is a disability rights and inclusion activist and speaker who uses her voice and social media platforms to create conversations engaging the disability community. Born with cerebral palsy, Imani often writes and uses her platform to speak from the perspective of a disabled black woman.  In the last few years she has created over a dozen trending hashtags that allow disabled folk the opportunity to have their perspectives heard while forcing the world to take notice. #PatientsAreNotFaking, #ThingsDisabledPeopleKnow, #AbledsAreWeird and others each provide a window into disabled life while forming community. Imani is from the Philadelphia and holds a Masters in Global Communications from the American University of Paris, her published works include those in Forbes, Rewire, Healthline, BitchMedia and more. She runs the blog CrutchesAndSpice.com and a podcast of the same name. She currently serves as the Communications Director for a nonprofit in Pennsylvania.

Melody Barnes is the chair of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Opportunity Youth Forum. She is executive director of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy where she is also the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs and a senior fellow at the Karsh Center for Law & Democracy. Melody was Assistant to the President and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during the Administration of President Barack Obama. Prior to her tenure in the Obama Administration, she was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Currently, Melody serves on the boards of Ventas, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Hewlett Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also narrator and host of the podcast, LBJ and the Great Society and co-editor of Community Wealth Building & The Reconstruction of American Democracy. Melody earned her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she graduated with honors in history and her J.D. from the University of Michigan.

Miya brings a decade of experience working in public health in the U.S. and globally. She is currently an Associate Director at FSG, a nonprofit firm that partners with organizations working to advance social change. Her work at FSG has centered on multi sector collaboration and foundation strategy development, with a particular focus on advancing physical and behavioral health equity for marginalized and underresourced communities. 

Before FSG, Miya taught Public Narrative with Professor Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School and worked with students on grassroots organizing efforts, such as organizing with hotel workers to secure their rights to fair labor conditions. She continues to coach and organize with community organizers and leaders across the country. 

Previously, Miya worked in Washington, D.C. as a political appointee for the Obama Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services and as a White House Associate in the Office of the Vice President. She also worked as a Supply Chain Analyst for Partners in Health in rural Rwanda, where she helped improve the management and distribution of essential medicines and medical supplies, worked to improve care for premature babies, and streamlined services at an HIV clinic for youth. 

Miya received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology-Behavioral Neuroscience from Yale University and her Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida and feels at home anywhere by the ocean.  

Cindy Santos joins the Aspen Institute with over 10 years of experience working on a national level. Her career has focused on increasing the organizational capacity of child and family serving systems to develop effective strategies and implement scaleable and sustainable solutions. Cindy served as a State/Territory Liaison with the Center for States, working closely with the Children’s Bureau and child welfare agencies in NY, NJ, PR, and USVI. In her most recent role, Cindy served as a National Partnerships Advisor at Casey Family Programs. Her work focused on improving cross-systems and multi-disciplinary collaboration between Child Welfare Agencies and Dependency Courts, achieving equitable services and supports for kinship caregivers and narrative change.

Journalist, National Humanities Medalist, and bestselling author Krista Tippett has created a singular space for reflection and conversation in American and global public life. She founded and leads the On Being Project (www.onbeing.org)—a groundbreaking media and public life initiative pursuing “deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy to renew inner life, outer life, and life together.” As the creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning On Being podcast, heard on over 400 public radio stations across the US, Tippett takes up the great animating questions of human life: What does it mean to be human, how we do want to live, and who will we be to each other? Her most recent creation is The Wisdom app. In its foundational course, Hope is a Muscle, she is student and teacher at once.

Tippett and her conversation partners—from theologians to social activists, physicists to poets—explore meaning amidst the ruptures and callings of twenty-first century life. The On Being podcast has been downloaded and played more than 300 million times and has been recognized as a “Best Podcast” by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Podcast Academy’s Awards for Excellence in Audio, and iheartradio Podcast Awards, among others.

Photo credit: Chris Daniels 

Ruchika Tulshyan is the best-selling author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work. The book was called “a transformative book” by Dr. Brené Brown.

Ruchika is the founder of Candour, a global inclusion strategy firm. She is also a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and the New York Times.

Close to 50,000 learners have learned from her first LinkedIn Learning course, “Moving DEI from Intention to Impact.”

Ruchika co-wrote a paradigm-shifting article, ‘Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome’ for Harvard Business Review, with Jodi-Ann Burey. The article was named among 20 most impactful HBR articles of all time.

Ruchika is honored to be selected a LinkedIn Top Voice for Gender Equality in 2022. She was selected to Thinkers50 Radar 2019 and Hive Learning's Most Influential D&I leaders list for the past four years. In 2022, she received the Jeanette Williams Award from Seattle Women’s Commission for her work on advancing gender equality in the region.

She has previously been adjunct faculty in Communications at University of Washington and Seattle University. Ruchika also wrote, “The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace.”

A global citizen and Singaporean foodie, Ruchika has lived in four countries. She currently calls Seattle home.