Timnit Gebru, PhD

Timnit Gebru, PhD, is the founder and executive director of the Distribute AI Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team. Timnit also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian and Jamaican highschool students. She has received a number of accolades including being named one of Nature’s Ten people who helped shape science and one of TIME 100’s most influential people. She is currently writing The View from Somewhere, a memoir + manifesto arguing for a technological future that serves our communities instead of one that is used for surveillance, warfare, and the centralization of power by Silicon Valley.

Connect with Dr. Timnit Gebru.

Émile P. Torres, PhD

Émile P. Torres, PhD, is a philosopher of human extinction, the author of a number of books, including most recently, Human Extinction, A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence at Case Western University. Émile began their career writing about ideologies they now critique and have published numerous articles about topics like human enhancement, machine superintelligence, and the future of humanity. And since 2019, Émile  has been a vocal critic of a group of ideologies that they believe are both philosophically flawed and potentially dangerous but are driving many technologists.

Connect with Dr. Émile P. Torres. 

Angela Saini

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist based in New York, a 2024 Moynihan Public Scholar at the City College of New York, and a lecturer in science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, National Geographic, Foreign Policy, the Times Literary Supplement, and Wired. An Undark magazine series on race science she co-edited was a finalist for a US National Magazine Award in 2023. 

Connect with Angela at https://www.angelasaini.co.uk

Brett Maricque, PhD & Chelsey Carter, MPH, PhD

Chelsey R. Carter, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health with an affiliation in the Department of Anthropology. She is a native of St. Louis and a Black feminist anthropologist with specializations in medicine, public health, and race. Her research broadly examines the relationship(s) between anti-Black racism, class, gender, and chronic illness in the United States. Chelsey has taught cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, and ethnography at UMSL, Webster University, WashU, and WashU’s Prison Education Project. You can learn more about Chelsey’s work, writing and activism at www.crcarter.com.

Brett Maricque, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) and a faculty member at the McDonnell Genome Institute. Prior to joining the WUSM faculty, he was the Coordinating Manager of Young Adult Services at NYC Health + Hospital Correctional Health Services, where he coordinated mental and physical health services and delivered project-based education programs to adolescents and young adults that were incarcerated. Brett has taught college-level human genetics, genomics, and data science courses in the Illinois and New York state prison systems.

Connect with Chelsey Carter or Brett Maricque

Arielle Silverman, PhD

Arielle Silverman, PhD, is the director of research for the American Foundation for the Blind and the author of Just Human: The Quest for Disability Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion as well as many peer-reviewed research articles. She regularly speaks on disability research and does inclusion training and workshops for nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and professional associations. She has also worked for the National Rehabilitation Information Center, the University of Washington Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, and a pre-employment transition program for blind and low-vision youth in Virginia.

Connect with Arielle Silverman.

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, is the dean of the UCLA Division of Humanities where she has faculty appointments in the UCLA departments of English and history and in the Institute for Society and Genetics. She is author of several books and the founder and co-director of the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research team that is reconstructing and analyzing the history of eugenics and sterilization in five U.S. states. 

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Blair stevens, MS, CGC

Blair K. Stevens, MS, CGC, the Director of Prenatal Genetic Counseling Services and Associate Professor at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and serves as a clinical supervisor and research mentor for genetic counseling students, maternal fetal medicine fellow, pediatric genetics residents, and obstetrics and gynecology residents. She is a board-certified genetic counselor with over 15 years of experience in reproductive genetics. Blair has a special interest in prenatal genetic screening and testing and counseling families with fetal anomalies identified on ultrasound.

Lisa Schlager, VP at Force

Lisa is a recognized consumer advocacy leader for the hereditary cancer community. At FORCE, Lisa combines her personal knowledge and experiences as a BRCA1 mutation carrier with over 20 years in public affairs and advocacy. She spearheads FORCE’s legislative and regulatory policy efforts, advocating for the unique needs of people who carry inherited genetic mutations that increase their risk of cancer, and the broader hereditary cancer community. 

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KENDRA SCHAA, ScM, LGC

Kendra Schaa, ScM, LGC is the founder of Allay Life, a telehealth, crisis counseling practice to support people who receive unexpected news during their reproductive journey. She is also the supervisor of prenatal genetic counseling at a large, academic medical center. Over her career, Kendra has helped over 4,000 people navigate their reproductive journey. Recently, Kendra launched monthly peer supervision groups for genetic counselors and genetic counseling students to join that I will lead. These groups will focus on developing their counseling skills.

Connect with Kendra Schaa