Forum Network

Ira A. Jackson is the Henry Y. Hwang Dean of the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, where he is also a professor of management. Jackson has served as Executive Vice President of BankBoston for a dozen years. During his tenure at BankBoston, the company consistently received Outstanding Community Reinvestment Act ratings from federal regulators for leadership in strengthening inner-city communities.

Pushcart prize winning poet, translator and professor, Dr. Ravi Shankar has published 17 books including most recently the Memoir Magazine Book Prize and Connecticut Book Award finalist 'Correctional' (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). He teaches creative writing at Tufts University.

Dr. Suraj Yengde is completing his doctorate at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. He is the author of the bestseller, Caste Matters (2019) and a co-editor of the award-winning anthology, The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections (2018). Caste Matters was listed as the “Best Non-fiction Book of the Decade” by The Hindu.

Chellamal Keshavan, BS, is a dedicated and fervent advocate for racial equity and systemic change. She is the former chair of the Medford Human Rights Commission, and a certified doula and lactation counselor.

Billy Costa, an Emmy award-winning radio and television personality, is host of High School Quiz Show. Costa has been entertaining radio audiences on KISS 108 weekday mornings for the past 30 years and currently co-hosts “Billy & Lisa in the Morning”. He is also co-host of “Dining Playbook”, a televised restaurant review and lifestyle show on NESN. In 2017, Billy was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcaster Hall of Fame.

Dr. Lombardo is currently employed at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. His teaching focuses on electronics, engineering design, and the intersection of engineering and human centered design with a focus on low resource settings.

Boris Martin believes that every engineer today can play a role in helping humanity heal and adapt to climate change, and that profound impact happens when engineers embrace their own acts of generosity as a journey of personal transformation.

Odie "Odienator" Henderson is the chief film critic of the Boston Globe and runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of OdieNary Madness.

Candace McDuffie is the Senior Writer at The Root who focuses on the intersection of race, gender and entertainment.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government. Nye has held numerous government positions serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as Deputy Under Secretary of State, and won distinguished service awards from all three agencies. He is a world-renowned authority on American power in the modern era whose work has influenced generations of scholars and policy-makers.

Emily Cleveland Manchanda, MD, MPH is the Director for Social Justice Education and Implementation within the Center for Health Equity at the American Medical Association (AMA), and an emergency physician at Boston Medical Center. At the AMA, she leads and oversees the AMA Center for Health Equity’s education portfolio. Her work focuses on coordinating effective action across sectors to promote social justice and equity in health, pushing health systems to address social and structural drivers of health, and creating a pipeline of leaders equipped to effectively advance justice in healthcare for patients, families, staff, communities and populations.

Charles Harvey is internationally recognized for outstanding research in multiple areas of the field of environmental engineering. He has received numerous awards and has appeared in PBS (Frontline) and BBC productions. He is a Fellow of both the American Geological Society the American Geophysical Union.