Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for twenty-five years. The founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, O'Meally is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.

James Perla is Special Assistant at the Carter G. Woodson Institute. He began working with Deborah E. McDowell in 2015-2016 on an early iteration of the Julian Bond Papers Project. From 2016-2019, he managed the Citizen Justice Initiative, a grant funded project that offered experiential learning opportunities to Charlottesville high school and undergraduate students. He produced the “Notes on the State” oral history and podcast series, which re-examined Thomas Jefferson’s legacy on the occasion of the University’s Bicentennial Celebration in 2019.

Dr. Joy Asekun is the Acting Dean of Academics at the FBI Academy, where she leads faculty development and instructional standards for the Bureau’s national training programs. Trained as an English Literature scholar with degrees from Lagos State University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Virginia, her intellectual formation was deeply shaped by the mentorship of Professor Deborah McDowell. Dr. Asekun’s career reflects the power of a liberal arts education to inform public service, and she remains committed to mentoring learners across diverse communities.