Bari Weiss is the founder of The Free Press and, since October 2025, editor-in-chief of CBS News following Paramount's $150 million acquisition of her media company. A former Wall Street Journal and New York Times editor whose viral 2020 resignation letter made her a symbol of anti-groupthink journalism, Weiss built one of the fastest-growing independent news outlets in America - reaching 1.5 million subscribers in under five years - before landing the biggest job in legacy broadcast news.
Erik Torenberg is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he joined in April 2025 after a16z acquired his media network Turpentine. A serial founder and investor, he was a first employee at Product Hunt, co-founded Village Global (a $100M VC fund backed by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg), founded On Deck (a fellowship network for founders), and built Turpentine into a leading tech media network before its acquisition. Known for his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity spanning technology, culture, politics, and philosophy, he now leads a16z's media and ecosystem efforts including the New Media Fellowship and the live news venture MTS.
Leandra Medine Cohen is the New York-based fashion writer, cultural commentator, and founder of Man Repeller - the blog that coined a phrase and built a media empire around the radical idea that women dress for themselves. After shutting down Man Repeller in 2020, she re-emerged with The Cereal Aisle, a Substack newsletter now boasting 166,000+ subscribers and a top-5 ranking in Fashion & Beauty. Part sharp wit, part earnest diarist, she writes about getting dressed, motherhood, and everything in between with a voice that is unmistakably her own.
Roxane Gay is a New York Times bestselling author, professor, cultural critic, and publisher whose work sits at the intersection of feminism, race, and identity. Best known for 'Bad Feminist' and 'Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body', she holds the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair at Rutgers University, writes opinion for the New York Times, runs the Substack newsletter 'The Audacity', and publishes underrepresented voices through her imprint Roxane Gay Books at Grove Atlantic. In 2025 she received the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.