Bishop William J. Barber II is President of Repairers of the Breach and Director and Professor in the Practice at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.

He serves as Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, Executive Board Member of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, a Kettering Foundation Senior Fellow, and a Steering Committee Member for the Save America Movement. A moment of a dedicated group of Americans fighting for right vs. wrong, not left vs. right.  

Bishop Barber earned a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina Central University, a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and a Doctorate from Drew University, with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care. He has received twelve honorary doctorates.

Bishop Barber is the author of five books - the most recent, White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy. He publishes the Substack newsletter “Our Moral Moment” with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

As a moral leader, Bishop Barber has been arrested more than 15 times in various states for engaging in civil disobedience with those who have been marginalized by systematic racism, poverty, and injustice. A highly sought-after speaker, he has given keynote addresses at hundreds of gatherings, from the 2016 Democratic National Convention to the Vatican.

Bishop Barber preaches regularly in pulpits across the US, including the National Cathedral, where he delivered the homily for President Biden’s Inaugural Prayer Service. He is regularly featured as a commentator on national TV and radio and is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Award,” the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award, and the Puffin Award

Activist, Author, Producer, Creator of #1000BlackGirlBooks

Marley Dias is an insightful, dynamic, purpose-driven changemaker who launched the viral #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign and authored Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You! At just 13, she became the youngest person ever named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list (2018), and her campaign has since collected over 15,000 books, transforming the conversation around representation in children’s literature.

Marley launched #1000BlackGirlBooks in November of 2015, at age 11,  with support from the GrassROOTS Community Foundation.  Frustrated by the lack of Black girl protagonists in her school’s reading lists, she turned a personal frustration into a global movement. Her story quickly went viral, gaining more than 10 billion media impressions and coverage from outlets like The Ellen Show, BBC, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, The View, and NPR. Books have been donated across the U.S. and internationally, including in Jamaica, her mother’s birthplace.

Her bold advocacy earned her invitations to speak on major stages, including the White House’s United State of Women Summit (alongside Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey), the Forbes Women’s Summit, the United Nations’ Girl Up initiative, and the Social Innovation Summit. In 2017, Marley received the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award in the Youth Category for her groundbreaking work on literary representation. TIME recognized her as one of the 25 Most Influential Teens of 2018.

As Editor-in-Residence at ELLE, Marley interviewed notable figures such as  Ava DuVernay, Misty Copeland, and Hillary Clinton.  She has also been featured in a Microsoft Commercial, a Disney World Resorts digital campaign, and a Walmart Black History Month campaign, to name a few of her partnerships.  Her voice has appeared across outlets like Teen Vogue, Refinery29 Unbothered, Glamour, and more. Marley also sits on the first youth board of directors for Hello Sunshine, founded by Reese Witherspoon, and has sat on the Glamour Women of the Year awards advisory board for many years. 

In 2020, Marley became Executive Producer and host of the Netflix series Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices, featuring celebrities reading books by Black authors. The series earned a 2021 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Children’s Program, expanding her influence in children’s media and storytelling.

In April 2022, Marley was invited to the White House for a policy briefing hosted by Gender Policy Council Director Jen Klein and Ambassador Susan Rice, where she joined a select group of young women to advise on addressing the national mental health crisis. 

Her work would not be possible without the GrassROOTS Community Foundation (GCF), co-founded by her mother, Dr. Janice Johnson Dias. GCF is a public health and social action organization that funds, supports, and scales wellness programs for women and girls. Marley and fellow “Super Girls” from GCF launched Green Ribbon Week, a youth-led initiative to raise awareness about teen mental health.

Currently, Marley is a student at Harvard University, where she writes for The Harvard Crimson. She continues to serve as the National Education Association’s (NEA) National Ambassador for their Read Across America campaign. Additionally, Marley recently joined the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s National Racial Equity Initiative (NREI)  Advisory Board. 

In 2024, Marley was honored as a Youth Laureate by the United Nations Young Activist Summit, where she was the only American recognized that year, solidifying her place as a global leader in youth advocacy and social justice. Additionally, Marley was named a 2024-2026 Voyager Scholar and was awarded the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service.

That same year, students at View Park Prep K-8 Elementary School in Los Angeles established a new library and chose to name the space after Marley in recognition of her impact on literacy, education, and representation. Marley considers the naming of the Marley Dias Library one of her greatest honors.

In 2025, Marley launched Third Space, a weekly newsletter that serves as an ode to storytelling and the spaces it creates. Third Space is not a creative studio nor a forum, but the beginning of a long-term vision, one that invites readers to explore culture, identity, and imagination through Marley’s evolving lens as a young leader and writer.

On June 2, 2026, Scholastic will release Marley’s latest book, I Am The Dream Come True.From viral campaigns to global platforms, Marley Dias is not just amplifying voices; she’s shaping the future of storytelling, leadership, and equity in the 21st century.

Her #1000blackgirlbooks resource guide can be found here. 

Notable Coverage

• Versace Icons
• Essence Gu 
• Rolling Stone 
• MSR
• Pretty Smart Podcast Interview
• Natalie Manuel Lee Interview
• Do Something
• Forbes Power Women's Summit
• Gayle King Interview 
• CBS
• Teen Vogue 
• OUT100 List 

Award-winning writer, sociologist, and cultural critic Tressie McMillan Cottom is celebrated for her profound yet personal ideas and the dynamic accessibility of her analysis. Dr. Cottom’s first book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, led to appearances on The Daily Show, NPR’s Marketplace and Fresh Air, and has been name-checked by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and activists like The Debt Strike Collective. Since the release of her second book, Thick: And Other Essays, Dr. Cottom’s career has skyrocketed. Thick became a Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award, and the following year Dr. Cottom received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship – known as the ‘genius grant’. Her work is prolific – beyond her books and celebrated New York Times opinion column, she has written a Substack newsletter “Essaying,” is a contributor for Vanity Fair, co-hosted the Black feminist podcast Hear to Slay with Roxane Gay, and has sat in as a guest host for The Ezra Klein Show. Her books have become modern classics, and her commentary is in demand on a wide range of topics like inclusive marketing, creating policy narratives, technology, the future of democracy, and the cultural zeitgeist.

Dr. Cottom is a public academic whose work is as impactful on Twitter as it is in groundbreaking research, and continually reimagines how our society might function better on behalf of the most marginalized. She has a devoted fanbase for her essays (Tressays, as her fans call them), which defy the form – she explores the intersections of race, class, and gender, in the same breath as incisive pop culture critique and personal history. Dr. Cottom is currently a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and is sought after as a consultant for both global brands and on Capitol Hill.  In her writing, as well as in luminous keynotes and moderated conversations, Dr. Cottom tells creative stories of her research and herself – taking theory into real-world understanding for audiences of all kinds.