Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for the New York Times and political analyst for CBS News, covers U.S. politics, public policy, elections, and race.

Jamelle’s political instincts provide audiences with unique insight on the past, present, and future of our national politics, policy, and the state of race relations. As he did while writing for Slate and the Daily Beast, Jamelle shares eye-opening perspectives on issues concerning the issues at play in America today.

Jamelle Bouie appears regularly on CBS’s Face the Nation. His writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, TIME, and The New Yorker. Jamelle uses his unique perspective to take audiences to the front lines of the nation’s most significant news events, from civil unrest to political partisanship. He has emerged as a leading voice on the national scene, being named to Forbes “30 Under 30 in Media” in 2015.

Jamelle stimulates provocative, much-needed thinking on critical national affairs issues. He helps audiences analyze current events through the lens of human history and in the age of social media. He deftly illustrates how the past reveals itself in the present, and how policy-makers, citizen activists and cultural influencers can seize the power of information to make a difference.

Natalie Moore is WBEZ’s South Side Reporter where she covers segregation and inequality.

Her enterprise reporting has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Natalie is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.

Natalie writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her work has been published in Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. She is the 2017 recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award. In 2010, she received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2009, she was a fellow at Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, which allowed her to take a reporting trip to Libya. Natalie has won several journalism awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Other honors are from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Association of Black Journalists, Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club. The Chicago Reader named her best journalist in 2017.

Dr. Evelynn Hammonds is the author of Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City , 1880–1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). She co-edited with Barbara Laslett, Sally G. Kohlstedt, and Helen Longino Gender and Scientific Authority (University of Chicago Press, 1996). She has published articles on the history of disease, race and science, African American feminism, African American women and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and analyses of gender and race in science and medicine. She is also the author of the article is “Gendering the Epidemic: Feminism and the Epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the United States, 1981-1999” which appears in Science, Medicine, and Technology in the 20th Century: What Difference Has Feminism Made? (2000). Professor Hammonds’s current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical, and socio-political concepts of race in the United States. She is completing a history of biological, medical, and anthropological uses of racial concepts entitled, The Logic of Difference: A History of Race in Science and Medicine in the United States , 1850–1990. She is also completing the MIT Reader on Race and Gender in Science co-edited with Rebecca Herzig and Abigail Bass. Professor Hammonds was named a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (2003–2005) by Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. She has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and a Fellow in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In July 2005, Professor Hammonds was named Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University, and in March 2008, Professor Hammonds was named Dean of Harvard College.

Evonda Thomas-Smith is Assistant Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. and former Director of the Evanston Department of Health and Human Services. Throughout her more than 25-year career in public health, Thomas-Smith has worked to address the social inequities that impact health and improve access to healthcare for all. Her leadership, advocacy and knack for building relationships led to the opening of the Erie Family Health Center, the first federally qualified health center in Evanston, providing access to medical, behavioral and oral health services for thousands of medically underserved families.

Sylvia Puente is the Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum, a nonprofit that works for equity, justice, and economic prosperity on behalf of Latinos in Chicago and Illinois through public-policy advocacy and analysis on issues including education, housing, and immigration. Over more than a decade at the helm of the Forum, Puente has grown the organization into a central voice on Latino issues and has established herself as a thought leader in the arena.

Puente was selected by Governor JB Pritzker to serve on his transition team as part of the Educational Success Committee. She was appointed by previous Illinois governors to the Illinois Early Learning Council, on which she still serves, and the Illinois Education Funding Advisory Board. She is also a board director of Advance Illinois, a public policy agency working to improve education in the state.

Puente is frequently cited as an expert on Latino issues and has published numerous reports and articles that articulate the vital role they play in society. She has been recognized by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.”