Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, an Oakland-based govtech company valued at $520 million that helps municipalities and utilities offer zero-interest payment plans to struggling residents. A former union organizer turned labor federation executive turned music manager for Prince, she now runs a platform that has reached 5 million+ households across 20+ states, proving that treating people with dignity is not just ethical — it is a business model. Named #247 on the Forbes Self-Made 250, she built Promise from a YC Winter 2018 bet to a $23 million-funded company generating $33M+ in annual revenue.
Leila Chreiteh is a digital communications strategist and activist who has spent her career bridging social justice causes with the people who care about them. A Georgia-raised, Agnes Scott College honors graduate with a self-designed Human Rights major, she founded a refugee resettlement nonprofit on her college campus, ran for Alabama state legislature, championed immigrant rights at the Justice Action Center, and brought her storytelling instincts to the startup world as Communications Strategist and Director of Community at Outlander VC in New York - weaving a thread of progressive purpose through every platform she touches.
nikhil trivedi is the Director of Web Engineering at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has spent nearly two decades building open-source museum technology while simultaneously championing anti-oppression frameworks in cultural institutions. His tagline - 'Museums. Technology. Social Justice.' - is not a brand, it is a practice: he co-created Visitors of Color, contributed to the MASS Action Toolkit, received a UN Women Gender Equality Award, and built a public data API that connects AIC's collection to historical records of the transatlantic slave trade. A Desi Chicagoan, sitar player, and former high school band member, he codes in PHP by day and runs his own Mastodon instance by night.