Geri Cole is an award-winning screenwriter, interactive designer, performer, and producer based in New York. She is also the co-chair of both the Writers Guild East, Committee for Equity and Inclusion and the Black Writers Salon and a council member-elect. Her work, most notably on Sesame Street, focuses on kids and community and to date has earned her five Daytime Emmys, a Writers Guild Award, a Producers Guild Award, and an NAACP Image Award. When she isn't writing, you can find Geri buying yet another vintage leather jacket (it's a problem), talking you into an oyster happy hour, or stopping to pet a dog.

Erik Bork is best known for his multiple Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning work as a writer-producer on the HBO miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON and BAND OF BROTHERS, executive produced by Tom Hanks (the latter partnered with Steven Spielberg). He has created and written numerous films and television projects for major networks, streamers and studios, and wrote and directed the short film I GOT THIS which won numerous film festival awards in 2018. He has worked as a script consultant and professor of screenwriting at the MFA level, and is the author of the popular book on the craft entitled The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM marks his feature film directing debut.

Steven Olikara is a nationally recognized social entrepreneur and on-air commentator working at the intersection of media, politics, and culture to transform America’s divisions. He is the founding CEO of Bridge Entertainment Labs, the storytelling and entertainment office for the national movement to combat toxic polarization in America. In that role, he advises studios from A24 to Paramount on creating new American “Stories of Us.” A prominent voice in the pluralism and political reform movements, he is a Senior Fellow at the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, a Partner at the Builders Movement, and the Founder of Future Caucus, the largest cross-partisan organization of young elected officials in the U.S.

Steven's nuanced political and cultural analysis is regularly featured on national media, including CNN, CBS News, USA Today, and Variety, and he co-hosts the weekly culture and politics show, The Group Chat. Steven also co-authored the book, JFK: The Last Speech, on the role of artists in democracy. In 2022, he made history as the first South Asian candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. Named a Truman Scholar, Forbes 30 Under 30, and a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, Steven's story is featured in the documentary, The Reunited States, on Amazon Prime and PBS.