Heather Cox Richardson is a Boston College historian who turned American history into a daily newsletter phenomenon. Her Substack 'Letters from an American' has nearly 3 million subscribers, making it one of the most-read independent newsletters in the world. She connects current political events to historical patterns with a clarity that has made her one of America's most influential public intellectuals - all from coastal Maine, where she lives with her lobsterman husband.
Katie Harbath is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change and Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco Experts, widely known as the 'election whisperer to the tech industry' (Foreign Policy). After a decade at Facebook building the global elections policy team from scratch - eventually managing 60 people across 40+ countries - she left in 2021 to launch her own consulting firm and newsletter. Her weekly Substack 'Anchor Change' and podcast help readers and clients navigate the chaos at the intersection of technology, politics, and democracy, guided by her signature philosophy: panic responsibly.
Zeynep Tufekci is a Turkish-born sociologist, professor at Princeton University, and New York Times opinion columnist who has become one of the world's foremost voices on the intersection of technology and society. Known for being consistently ahead of the curve — predicting Facebook's role in ethnic violence, YouTube's radicalization pipeline, and COVID-19's severity before mainstream institutions caught on — she bridges computer science and humanistic inquiry with a rare clarity. Her 2017 book 'Twitter and Tear Gas' is a landmark study of networked protest, and her Substack newsletter 'Insight' offers rigorous, genuinely open-minded analysis of the hardest puzzles at the edge of science, technology, and democracy.
Abdul Ahad is a data consultant and TEDx speaker based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, with over seven years of experience building data infrastructures for small and medium organisations across e-commerce, insurance, energy, and finance. He is the founder behind KYD Analytics and holds the philosophy of 'Bringing Data and Humans Together' - believing the human element matters more than the tool. In November 2024, he delivered a TEDxEindhoven talk titled 'Why aren't people voting anymore?' exploring how community bonds and incentivisation could revitalise democratic participation. A lifelong learner who codes, consults, and speaks on the stage.