Sam Polk is the co-founder and CEO of Everytable, a Los Angeles social enterprise that sells fresh, scratch-made meals priced to what a neighborhood can afford. A former hedge fund trader who walked away from a multimillion-dollar Wall Street career, he chronicled that exit in the 2016 memoir 'For the Love of Money' and has since built Everytable into a food-justice company that has raised more than $100 million and distributed millions of affordable meals through grab-and-go stores, SmartFridges, and direct-to-consumer delivery.
Michael Ovitz is the most powerful talent agent in Hollywood history and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which he built from a $21,000 bank loan into the dominant force reshaping how entertainment deals are made. After departing with a $140 million severance from Disney's presidency, Ovitz reinvented himself as a Silicon Valley investor and advisor, backing Palantir, helping architect Andreessen Horowitz, and investing in 200+ companies. At 79, he remains a live wire: he reportedly convinced Bill Ackman to pursue a $64 billion takeover of Universal Music Group and is slated to become its chairman.
Heather Havrilesky is an American advice columnist, culture writer, and author best known for her wildly popular 'Ask Polly' column, which began at The Awl in 2012, moved to New York magazine's The Cut in 2014, and migrated to Substack in 2021 where it has amassed over 100,000 subscribers. Writing with unflinching emotional honesty and a distinct all-caps intensity, she dismantles myths of American success, explores the paradoxes of modern love, and reassures readers that being a walking tangle of contradictions is not just acceptable but very human. She is also the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller 'How to Be a Person in the World' and 'Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage,' named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker.
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.