Jen Marlowe is an author/filmmaker/playwright and human rights activist. Her most recent book is I Am Troy Davis written with innocent death row prisoner Troy Davis and his sister. Her previous books include The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker, and Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival. Her films include Remembering the Gaza War, Witness Bahrain, One Family in Gaza, Rebuilding Hope: Sudan’s Lost Boys Return Home and Darfur Diaries: Message from Home. www.donkeysaddle.org.

Nada Elia is a Palestinian born in Baghdad and raised in Beirut, where she worked as a journalist covering the (un)civil war. Now Seattle-based, her activism focuses on resisting institutionalized systems of oppression (racism, sexism, criminal injustice). Elia teaches Arab American Studies at Western Washington University, and is a regular contributor to Mondoweiss and Middle East Eye. She co-edited INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color’s Law Enforcement Violence Toolkit for Activists, as well as Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, and is working on a manuscript about the politics of solidarity.

Katrina Johnson is the Senior Community Organizer with VOCAL-WA with an emphasis in building power for marginalized people. Before joining PDA, Katrina worked for Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST) for just under two years as support staff in REST’s emergency receiver shelter in South Seattle. Katrina became a social justice activist/advocate and spokesperson for her family in June of 2017, after her first cousin Charleena Lyles was killed in her home in North Seattle after police officers responded to the location to investigate a burglary Charleena had reported. Katrina works with other families who have lost loved ones to the use of deadly force in Washington state and nationally. I has been a guest speaker in various cities and states on police reform, served as a panelist locally, nationally, and internationally on police reform, state sponsored violence, and bridging the gap between police and communities for healing. Katrina organizes events, and authored an op-ed piece for BET.com.

Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud is a curator, arts advocate, and historian of art and performance. She is Assistant Professor of Arts Leadership in the Department of Performing Arts and Arts Leadership at Seattle University, where she teaches classes including “Public Policy and Advocacy in the Arts,” and “Black Lives Matter: Art Leadership, Theory, and Practice.” She previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis, where her courses included “Urban Ethnography in St. Louis.” Her research and teaching engage performance studies, theater history, Black aesthetics, visual culture, aesthetic experimentation, race, feminist and queer of color critique, cultural policy, urbanism, and geography.

An essayist, scholar, and arts journalist, her writing and interviews appear in Modern Drama, Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, Women & Performance, as well as in Art Forum, ASAP/J Online, Canadian Art Review, Common Reader, Howlround, Hyperallergic, LitHub, and the South Seattle Emerald, where she writes a regular column centering BIPOC artists. Committed to arts advocacy, she currently serves as a Governor Inslee appointed Washington State Arts Commissioner, board president of Intiman Theatre, and a board member of On the Boards.

Nabra Nelson is a community organizer and theater creator from Egypt, Nubia, and California. She is also the Director of Arts Engagement at Seattle Rep. As an arts administrator, director, playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist, she works with theaters, universities, and community organizations to create positive change, strengthen community, and amplify under-heard voices through theater. She is a founding company member of Dunya Productions and Heard Space Arts Collective, and is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara.