Robin DiAngelo grew up poor and white, and has built her life’s work around examining the way race shapes society. After coining the term “white fragility” in an article, she went on to pen a best-selling book of the same name with a subheading Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race. DiAngelo will present on the socialization that inculcates white fragility, the ways it has historically reinstated white equilibrium and skills needed so that white people can engage more constructively across race.

Writer, performer, professor and cultural geographer Carolyn Finney has been a leading voice in the conversation that’s addressing the lack of diversity in the outdoors. The author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors will discuss strategies for developing greater cultural competency in the outdoor realm and engaging in relations of reciprocity with diverse communities.

As the non-binary child of Mexican migrant workers growing up in rural Washington State, Bam Mendiola’s childhood was storied. Later, they found their strength in climbing the volcanic peaks of the Pacific Northwest. Today, the outdoor advocate and diversity consultant’s work, which is informed by their social location as a queer person of color, has been featured by NBC, REI and the Race and Pedagogy National Conference. Mendiola will address equity, modeling accountability and the power of ancestral survivance.

In his blog Stuff That Needs To Be Said, writer, pastor and activist John Pavlovitz offers raw analysis of social and political events as observed through a faith-based lens. By breaking from the molds of traditional left or right viewpoints, Pavlovitz brings a fresh perspective that is largely based on hope, inclusion and positivity. The pastor, who is committed to equality, diversity and justice both inside and outside of faith-based communities, will talk about how to fix the country’s empathy problem.

Catherine Flowers made a name for herself by shining a spotlight on a lack of sewage infrastructure for poor residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, earning the nickname “the Erin Brockovich of Sewage.” Today, she advocates for sanitation and environmental issues through the organization she founded, the Alabama Center for Rural Community Development Corporation. She’ll talk about the crucial task of bringing civil rights to the realm of environmental justice.

For food industry workers, fair wages aren’t always easy to come by. Saru Jayaraman is working to change that. Her creation of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley is the first of its kind to merge both food and labor issues in an academic setting. Her work has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American, and she has become a leading voice fighting for equity in the food industry. She will unpack the topic of wage equity in the kitchen.

In the United States, mass incarceration is synonymous with criminal justice, and imprisonment rates come with shocking racial disparities. Baz Dreisinger, a Fulbright Scholar, professor and author of Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World, travels the globe examining the issue and searching for ways to help fix the system, such as increasing access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. Dreisinger, who serves as executive director of the global think tank Incarceration Nations Network (INN), will talk about innovative incarceration reform.