Brian Anthony Davis is an activist, motivational speaker, and scholar. Davis’s most recent work is his Scholarly Paper for The Ronald McNair Scholars program — an explorative investigation of Slavery and Freedom from the 17th Century to emancipation. During Brian's tenure at The Penn State University, Brian has completed 4 study abroad programs in Haiti, Cuba, Amsterdam, and Australia. He has received over 22 awards for his selfless ethical leadership domestically and internationally. During August 2016, Brian created a yearly publication for Penn State titled, "Penn State Treasure" which is a resource guide for first-year and change-of-campus students.

Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya has been in academia for twelve years, currently as an associate professor, housed in Educational Leadership, at Kansas State University. She serves as a qualitative methodologist for the College of Education and beyond, while substantively focusing on transnational issues in higher education across various axes of differences. Her co-authored text with a former student, Kent Gillen, entitled, “Power, Race, and Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural Parallel Narrative,” won AERA’s 2017 Outstanding Publication Award from Graduate and Postsecondary Education Across the Disciplines SIG and International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry’s 2017 Outstanding Book Award. In this book they explore the complicated power relations when working with students who benefit from dominant social structures. They explore the difficult navigation of being raced, internalizing racialized discourses, and holding space for difficult conversations. As a Brown woman in predominantly white spaces in higher education, Dr. Bhattacharya has integrated personal and professional experiences in her published work. Within such documentation are histories of daily microaggressions, struggles in liminality, issues of belongingness, and a need to reimagine a de/colonial existence while shuttling between multiple subject positions.