Aaron Trammell is an Assistant Professor of Informatics  at UC Irvine. He is interested in how tabletop games further values of white privilege and hegemonic masculinity in geek culture. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Analog Game Studies and the co-editor for the Tabletop Gaming series at University of Michigan Press. He has two books: Repairing Play (2023 MIT Press), a theory of play that centers BIPOC people, and The Privilege of Play (2023 NYU Press), a history of games and race in the 20th Century.

Kayla Henry-Griffin (they/them) is a Media Collection Specialist for the Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. They received their master’s from New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, where they studied digital preservation and the philosophy behind community archiving. Kayla wrote their thesis on the ever-changing topics in video game preservation from 2013 to the present and produced plans for a second iteration of Pressing Restart, a 2013 video game preservation conference hosted by New York University. They worked at the Museum of the Moving Image and produced a collection assessment on the museum’s video game collection, which includes arcade games, handheld games, console games, and digital games. Kayla is a big fan of the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series and their love for the series has pushed them to preserve video games.

Gordon Bellamy is a Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts at USC and co-founder of the USC Bridge incubator program, which helps to cultivate the next generation of leaders in our craft. He has played key business and product leadership roles at Tencent, Electronic Arts, and as a designer on Madden NFL Football, and MTV Networks. In 2020, Bellamy was honored by Games for Change as their Vanguard Award winner for his contributions to the craft. In 2019, he was awarded the first ever Jerry Lawson Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2018 he was featured in Nickelodeon’s Black History Month. Currently, he is featured in Netflix’s Game Documentary, High Score, and on The World According to Jeff Goldblum on Disney +. Gordon serves as the Executive Director / CEO of the Gay Gaming Professionals and on the Board of Directors of Wave and has served as Executive Director of both the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and the International Game Developers Association. He is a graduate of Harvard College with a BA in Engineering. He resides with his husband Joe Heally, and their dog, Colby Janet, in Los Angeles, California.

Shana T. Bryant, producer and 21-year industry veteran, has had a hand in crafting some of your favorite videogames (and might’ve even canceled a few!). From Devil May Crys and Resident Evils to Outer Worlds and even HoloLens, Shana has produced and developed profound experiences, spanning generations of platforms, genres, and media.
She is a published author and avid comic artist, expounding ideas with a spoonful of charm and a touch of snark. Her literary contributions include Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins (2018, edited by Tanya DePass) and Women in Games: 100 Professionals of Play (2018, edited by Meagan Marie). She won’t stop talking about inclusivity in design, and she mentors on career management for underrepresented professionals. Shana is a steering committee member of the International Game Developer Association’s Women in Games SIG and supports Black in Gaming.

Tanya DePass is the founder & Director of I Need Diverse Games, Rivals of Waterdeep Producer & Cast Member, a partnered Twitch variety broadcaster, and RPG developer/writer/consultant. She’s the Creator & Creative Director for Into the Mother Lands RPG. Additionally, she’s a Senior Annenberg Civics Media Fellow at USC and she is part of the Inaugural TGA Future Class of 2020. She was also named as one of Gamers of the Year 2020 by Kotaku along with three of her contemporaries. Her work to make the industry more inclusive has been highlighted in Game Changer, a film directed by Tina Charles–WNBA star,  olympian, and filmmaker. The short documentary film premiered at Tribeca 2021, as part of the Queen Collective. Most recently, Tanya has been named Board Chair for Take This.

Terri Francis is associate professor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami and the author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism (Indiana University Press, 2021). Francis is a 2022 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grantee for her forthcoming book Make that Art!: Kevin Jerome Everson’s Body of Work. Her essays have appeared in exhibition catalogs as well as the publications Mubi Notebook, Another Gaze, Bitch, Seen,  Revue Initiales: Joséphine Baker Directed by Women, Lithub, Salon, and Shadow and Act. Her academic writing about black performance, film, and the conundrums of black representation has been featured in the journals Film History, Black Camera, Transition, Feminist Media Histories, ASAP, and Film Quarterly. From 2017–21 Francis directed the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University and secured the donation of African filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s written archive in addition to curating several film series and hosting several speakers series that cover historical and avant-garde film and media. Additionally, Francis edited the open-access dossier Film Programming as Social Justice Work in the Wake of Covid-19, featuring essays from programmers, platform founders, and writers about their work during the summer of 2020.

Dr. Kishonna Gray is an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, & Digital Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University. Dr Gray is the author or co-editor of numerous books including Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (LSU Press). Dr. Gray is a highly sought after speaker and regularly addresses both academic and industry audiences such as CHI, RightsCon, and GDC. She is the winner of a number of awards over the years including The Evelyn Gilbert Unsung Hero Award and the Blacks in Gaming Educator Award.

Cicero Holmes is a media producer, content creator, and host in the gaming and entertainment industry. He is known for his work as a co-founder and executive producer of the gaming website and podcast network, Spawn On Me. Holmes has been involved in the gaming industry for over a decade, working with companies such as Microsoft and Nintendo. He has also been an advocate for diversity and inclusivity in gaming, and has spoken at conferences and events about the importance of representation in media. In addition to his work in gaming, Holmes has also produced and hosted podcasts on topics such as music, pop culture, and social justice. He is a well-known figure in the podcasting community and has received numerous awards and recognition for his work.

Neil Jones, known by his alias Aerial_Knight, is a Detroit-based Games Developer, Designer, and Artist. His growing frustration with the games industry’s lack of opportunities for people of different backgrounds led Neil to start the development of his own games. By offering different takes on classic mechanics, Neil aims to create interesting short story games for an underserved market which started with his first solo-developed indie game Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield

Evan Narcisse is the Senior Writer at Brass Lion Entertainment. He’s worked as a screenwriter, producer, and narrative design consultant in video games, comic books, film, and TV, often focusing on the intersection of blackness and pop culture. As a journalist and critic, he wrote for The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Kotaku, and The New York Times, in addition to teaching game journalism at New York University and making appearances as an expert guest on CNN and NPR. He’s also the author of the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel, Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Atlas, and WWE: The New Day: Power of Positivity. As a narrative design consultant, he’s worked on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Redfall, Marvel’s Avengers, Gotham Knights, and the award-winning Dot’s Home. He also served as story producer on the HBO Max documentary Milestone Generations, documenting the rise, fall, and rebirth of the groundbreaking black-owned comics company Milestone Media. A native New Yorker, he now lives in Austin, Texas.

Elizabeth Patton is an Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of Easy Living: The Rise of the Home Office (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Her research interests center on media history, identity and space, and how media practices have informed popular understandings of work and leisure. Elizabeth’s current book project, Documenting Black Leisure as a Form of Resistance, examines the history of Black leisure and tourism in the US through Jim Crow-era media. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. She currently serves as co-managing editor of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture

Latoya Peterson lives at the intersection of emerging technology and culture. She is cofounder and CXO at Glow Up Games, an award-winning game studio centering storytelling around black and brown joy. Glow Up Games recently launched their first title set in the world of HBO’s Insecure and is working on a rap experience tied to live events. Previously, she was the Deputy Editor, Digital Innovation for ESPN’s The Undefeated, an Editor-at-Large at Fusion, and the Senior Digital Producer for The Stream, a social media driven news show on Al Jazeera America. In 2018, she soft launched AI in the Trap, a collaborative art project that explores the future of artificial intelligence and predictive policing through a hip-hop lens. In 2016, she produced a critically acclaimed YouTube series on Girl Gamers that was highlighted on Spotify. She is currently on the advisory board of the Data & Society Institute and the board of visitors for The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships. She is also part of the selection committee for the Museum of Play’s World Video Game Hall of Fame.

Vanessa B / PleasantlyTwstd (she/they) is a Community Coordinator for Crystal Dynamics, a GamesDoneQuick event organizer, and part-time content creator on Twitch, where they focus on community building, charity, and DEI in gaming. Her passion is in activism for Black & queer communities and for gaming design and development that focus on accessibility and engagement.  She has been featured on: FlameCon, VidCon, LiveWire, GenCon TV, St. Jude Play LIVE’s summit, Kotaku, The Verge, Launcher, E3, Valve, and The Jimquisition. They do challenge runs and speedruns in their free time, and occasionally write strategy guides/about gaming at large when her cats aren’t sitting on her laptop.