civil-rights
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Justin Zhu and the business of being heard
He helped build Iterable into a $2 billion company, then helped Asian American leaders speak together. Justin Zhu’s next chapter returns to a familiar question: how do you get a message through?
Amanda Nguyen
Amanda Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American civil rights activist, author, and commercial astronaut who founded the nonprofit Rise after surviving sexual assault as a Harvard senior. She drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, which passed Congress unanimously in 2016, and has helped pass dozens of laws protecting survivors. Nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize and named a 2022 Time Woman of the Year, she became the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space aboard Blue Origin's NS-31 flight on April 14, 2025, fulfilling an astronaut dream she set aside for a decade to fight for survivors.
Rohan Pavuluri
Rohan Pavuluri is the Chief Business Officer at Speechify, the consumer voice-AI app, and the co-founder of Upsolve, the nonprofit whose free online tool has helped low-income Americans erase hundreds of millions of dollars in debt through bankruptcy. A Harvard statistics graduate and Phillips Exeter alum, he built Upsolve out of a Harvard Law access-to-justice lab as an undergraduate, led it as CEO until 2022, and now serves as its volunteer board chair. He is a TED Fellow, a TIME100 Next honoree, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognized for arguing that civil rights should be free.
Will Stancil
Will Stancil is a civil rights attorney and research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School's Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, known for his prolific and combative presence on social media - dubbed by Slate as 'the most harassed man in the history of Twitter.' A specialist in housing policy, school segregation, and metropolitan governance, Stancil gained national attention in 2023 defending Biden-era economic narratives against 'vibecession' framing, ran for Minnesota state legislature in 2024, and emerged in 2026 as a visible organizer documenting ICE operations in Minneapolis. His mix of rigorous policy research and relentless online engagement has made him one of the most recognizable progressive voices in American digital politics.
Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins (Charles M. Collins) is a Harvard-trained lawyer, MIT city planner, and former real estate developer who spent nearly two decades as President and CEO of YMCA of Greater San Francisco, transforming it into an organization serving more than 42,000 children annually across three Bay Area counties. Born in San Francisco's Fillmore district in 1947 and raised as one of the first Black families in Mill Valley, he brings a lifetime of crossing boundaries to his work at the intersection of community, equity, and opportunity. Now a Presidential Fellow at USF's Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service, he continues to shape the region's civic life.
Wesley Lowery
Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and media critic whose decade of reporting on criminal justice, race, and policing in America has made him one of the most consequential voices in modern journalism. Best known for leading the Washington Post's 'Fatal Force' database - the first real-time national tracker of fatal police shootings - Lowery has written two landmark books, built a distinctive independent newsletter, and become an outspoken advocate for objective, truth-centered journalism that refuses false balance. His career spans the Washington Post, CBS News, The Marshall Project, and academia, and his 2016 book 'They Can't Kill Us All' remains essential reading on race, protest, and the limits of American democracy.