Claire Messud is the author of six novels including The Emperor’s Children (2006), The Woman Upstairs (2013), and The Burning Girl (2017). Her seventh, This Strange Eventful History, will be published in 2024. She is also the Joseph Y. Bae and Janice Lee Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard University, Department of English. She is the author of several novels including _The Emperor's Children_ (2006), _The Woman Upstairs_ (2013), and _The Burning Girl_ (2017). Her new novel, _This Strange Eventful History_, will be published in 2024.

Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft focusing on mobile developer tools. He co-founded Xamarin in 2011 and Ximian in 1999, both with Nat Friedman. Miguel co-founded the GNOME project in 1997, and has directed the Mono project since its creation in 2001, including multiple Mono releases at Novell. Miguel has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Free Software Award, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award in 1999, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000. In 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a position but lacked the university degree to obtain a work H1-B Visa. Today he is one of the most respected voices in Open Source. Born in Mexico, de Icaza became a US Citizen in 2015.

chair of the American Immigration Lawyers of New England and a partner at the law firm of Demissie & Church. She is a trial and appellate attorney focusing on the intersection of criminal defense and immigration. With the assistance of the ACLU and Mintz Levin law firm, she recently successfully sued President Donald Trump over his travel ban directed against Muslims. Church was one of the early lawyers at Logan Airport the day of the EO by POTUS Trump.

Peter Kadzis joined the *Boston Phoenix* as Associate Editor in 1988, became editor in 1989, and was named Executive Editor of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group in 2004. He assumed responsibility for all content and operation at its three newspapers, various magazines, and websites. Mr. Kadzis is also a political commentator on *Fox 25 News*. Mr. Kadzis’ newspaper career includes work at the *Boston Globe*, the *Providence Journal*, *New York Daily News*, *Money Magazine*, and *Forbes*. He has covered a variety of topics including breaking news, politics, Wall Street, and the economy. Mr. Kadzis also worked as an editorial advisor to the *Boston Business Journal* before founding its companion publication, the *Providence Business News*. Under Kadzis’s leadership, the Phoenix has been awarded the Pulitzer for Criticism and the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. Kadzis in 2002 and 2009 won NEPA’s award for Distinguished Editorial Writing.

Heidi is an American/Canadian writer and journalist. Today she interviews visionaries around her in Boston and Cambridge where she weaves together these big thinkers in their fields, using a singular long-format interview, much like The Paris Review. From here, she gathers these visionaries together for live events to discuss ideas around disruption, new eras, realities and utopias. A cofounder of Borderfree.com, a producer and host of documentaries and television programs on the arts, and an early Internet strategist in both San Francisco and Toronto, Heidi spent 20 years in media. She is enamored with what makes character. Her debut book, My Evangeline, is on sale at the harvardbookstore.com. Her work has been published in TheAtlantic.com, The Boston Globe, GlobalPost, TheHuffingtonPost, and WGBH News.