Temple Grandin is the author of several best-selling books, which have sold more than a million copies, and one of the world’s most accomplished and well-known adults with autism. The HBO movie based on her life, starring Claire Danes, received seven Emmy Awards. Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University. Her new book is The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum.

Frans de Waal is the author of Our Inner Ape, Chimpanzee Politics, The Age of Empathy, and most recently, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. He has been named among Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University’s Psychology Department.

Dr. Amy Parish is a biological anthropologist, primatologist, and Darwinian feminist, who has conducted ground-breaking research on patterns of female dominance and matriarchal social structure in one of our closest living relatives, the bonobo. Formerly a professor at the University of Southern California for 13 years, she has now affiliated with faculty at Georgetown University and is a research associate at University College London.  Parish is currently working on a book about love, marriage, and the experience of being a wife.

Alexandra Katona-Carroll has been working in the specialty coffee industry for nearly seven years. She is the programs manager for the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) and a member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) Sustainability Council, where she worked for two years. While in college, Katona-Carroll worked with a coffee cooperative in Chiapas and helped co-found a student-run coffee business. She has also lived and worked in Ecuador with a cacao cooperative and is involved in the Women in Coffee Leadership Program.

Jay Ruskey is the founder of Good Land Organics (GLO), an organic farm in Goleta, CA, that grows and markets organic and rare fruits locally and nationally, including coffee, cherimoya, passion fruit, avocado, lychee, longan, and micro-citrus. GLO has been collaborating on the coffee growing project with Mark Gaskell of the University of California Cooperative Extension. This trial evaluates all aspects of growing coffee in California with over a dozen named varieties. Ruskey also developed a crop risk model design and applied beta testing for evaluating crops over long periods of time with uncertain variables. He works and collaborates with several agricultural business boards.

Angel Orozco is the founder of Cafecito Orgánico, a locally based roaster and brick-and-mortar coffee shop with four locations in Southern California. Prior to opening Cafecito Orgánico, Orozco worked with community advocacy groups, such as Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Mama’s Hot Tamales Café, and the Salvadoran American Leadership and Education Fund. He also helped lay the groundwork for the City of Los Angeles’ Plastic Bag Ban.  Orozco’s passion and commitment to working for economic and social justice translates perfectly to working in the coffee industry and in influencing working conditions in his native Guatemala.

Peter Giuliano has worked for a quarter century in specialty coffee as a coffee educator, taster, roaster, and buyer.  He was a founder and president of the Roasters’ Guild and served as president of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.  As co-owner and Director of Coffee for Counter Culture Coffee, he pioneered what has come to be known as Direct Trade Coffee, an approach that emphasizes quality, equity, and transparency in the supply chain.  Giuliano is currently the Director of the Specialty Coffee Symposium, a cutting-edge conference and community of thought leaders in coffee.

Gavin Newsom is the 49th lieutenant governor of the state of California, following his two terms as the youngest mayor elected in San Francisco in over one hundred years. Previously, he founded fifteen small businesses in the San Francisco Bay area and now hosts The Gavin Newsom Show on Current TV. His newest book is Citizenville: Connecting People and Government in the Digital Age.

Patt Morrison is a writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and she hosted the daily Patt Morrison public affairs program on KPCC. She has won six Emmys and ten Golden Mike awards for Life & Times Tonight on KCET and for her KPCC show, which won three Golden Mike Awards for Best Public Affairs Show in its six-year run. She’s the author of the best-selling Rio LA, Tales from the Los Angeles River, and her interview subjects include Salman Rushdie, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Ray Bradbury.

Eric Lax is the author of Faith, Interrupted; Conversations with Woody Allen; Life and Death on 10 West (A New York Times Notable Book of the Year); The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat (A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2004); and co-author, with A. M. Sperber, of Bogart (nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography). His biography Woody Allen was a New York Times and international bestseller and a Notable Book of the Year. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. He is an officer of PEN International.

Dr. Robert Peter Gale, M.D. is the author of more than twenty books, eight hundred scientific articles, and numerous pieces on medical topics and nuclear energy for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. For twenty years, Gale was on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine and has served as chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry. Dr. Gale was appointed by the Soviet Union government in 1986 to lead the medical relief efforts for victims of the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident, and in 2011, the Japanese government requested that Gale be in charge of treating radiation victims from the deadly Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Photo Credit: Jeremy Sutton Hibbert for Greenpeace. Image taken in Fukushima, Japan.

Hanna Rosin is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder of DoubleX, Slate’s women’s section. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, and is the recipient of a 2010 National Magazine Award.

Katherine Spillar is the executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and the Feminist Majority, national organizations working for women’s equality, empowerment, and non-violence. She is also the executive editor of Ms. Magazine. Under her oversight, Ms. won the prestigious “Maggie Award” for the best feature article for its investigation into the network of extremists connected to Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller. Spillar also led the magazine’s investigative report on human trafficking and working conditions akin to indentured servitude in the garment factories on the U.S. Territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, which led to the passage of labor and immigration reforms in Congress.  Spillar is a trained economist and researcher and a specialist in community organizing and speaks to diverse audiences nationwide on a broad range of domestic and international feminist topics.

Tani Ikeda is an award-winning director of narratives, documentaries, music videos, and commercial films. She is also co-founder of imMEDIAte Justice, a summer workshop and community outreach program for girls devoted to revolutionizing sex education through filmmaking. As the current executive director of imMEDIAte Justice, she was recently named one of the "25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World" by the Utne Reader. Ikeda was selected as one of Film Independent’s 33 Emerging Filmmakers as a Project: Involve Directors Fellow. She tours the country speaking at universities and national conferences and has launched film production programs on the Quinault Reservation in Washington, a media justice camp for girls in Uganda, and a film summer camp in China.

Carol Downer is an American feminist lawyer. In 1972, Downer’s arrest, trial, and acquittal in a case dubbed "The Great Yogurt Conspiracy" brought national attention to the women’s health education project that she and her colleagues started, the Feminist Women’s Health Centers.  She is the co-author of A New View of a Woman’s Body and How to Stay Out of the Gynecologist’s Office.

Dr. Amy Parish is a biological anthropologist, primatologist, and Darwinian feminist. She taught at the University of Southern California in the Gender Studies, Arts and Letters, Public Health, and Anthropology departments for thirteen years. She is currently affiliated faculty at Georgetown University and a research associate at University College London.  She conducted ground-breaking research on patterns of female dominance and matriarchal social structure in one of our closest living relatives, the bonobo.  She is currently working on a book about love, marriage, and the experience of being a wife.

Diego Luna is a renowned film, television, and stage actor who has participated in over 30 films, including the award-winning Y Tu Mamá También. Luna has been a professional actor since he was seven years old and recently made his directorial debut with the documentary J.C. Chávez, followed by the fictional film Abel. His latest feature as a director is Chavez, based on the life of legendary farm worker and union leader, Cesar E. Chavez.

NPR correspondent Mandalit del Barco has reported and produced radio stories and photographed everything from street gangs to Hollywood, police and prisons, marijuana, immigration, natural disasters, arts, and urban street culture (including hip hop dance, music, and art). Every year, she covers the Oscars and the Grammy awards for NPR. Her news reports, feature stories, and photos filed from Los Angeles and abroad can be heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, alt.latino and npr.org

Nick Flynn is the author of three memoirs, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, The Ticking Is The Bomb, and most recently, The Reenactments. Flynn has worked as a ship’s captain, electrician, and caseworker for the working poor. His film credits include work as a field poet and artistic collaborator on Darwin’s Nightmare, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and executive producer/collaborator on Being Flynn. Each spring, he teaches poetry, nonfiction, and collaboration at the University of Houston, and the rest of the year, he is in, or near, Brooklyn.

Elvis Mitchell is the host of the pop culture radio show The Treatment on KCRW 89.9 FM and film curator of the Film Independent at LACMA film series. Previously, he hosted the TCM interview program Under the Influence and was also the chief film critic for “Movieline” and a visiting lecturer at Harvard in Visual and Environmental Studies and African American Studies. Prior to this, Mitchell served as the film critic at the New York Times and was the entertainment critic for NPR’s Weekend Edition. He produced and co-created The Black List, Volume One, a documentary focusing on achievement in the African American community, and was nominated by the WGA for his work on The AFI Lifetime Achievement Award on Sidney Poitier.

Pankaj Mishra was born in northwest India and lives in London and Mashobra, India. The author of An End to Suffering and Temptations of the West, as well as a novel, The Romantics, he writes for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian.

Nicholas Goldberg joined the Los Angeles Times in 2002 as editor of the op-ed page. He became deputy editor of the editorial pages in 2008 and a year later was named editor of the editorial pages, a position that gives him overall responsibility for The Times' opinion coverage. He is a former reporter and editor at Newsday, where he worked as Middle East bureau chief from 1995 to 1998. His writing has been widely published.

Attica Locke’s first novel, Black Water Rising, was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK in 2010 and nominated for an Edgar Award as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Attica has spent many years working as a screenwriter, penning movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, among others. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a member of the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Most recently, she wrote the introduction for the UK publication of Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. Her second book is The Cutting Season.

Erica R. Edwards is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside and the author of Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership. Her work on African American literature, politics, and gender critique has appeared in journals such as Callaloo, American Quarterly, American Literary History, and Women and Performance; she is currently working on a book about African American literature and the War on Terror.