Kerry Kennedy has worked as a human rights activist since 1981 and has led over 40 human rights delegations to over 30 countries. At a time of diminished idealism and growing cynicism about public service, her life and lectures are testaments to the commitment to the basic value of human rights. In 1988, she established the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights to ensure protection of rights codified under the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, an organization that provides a base of support to human rights defenders. Until 1995, she also served as executive director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, a non-profit organization that addresses problems of social justice in the spirit of Robert Kennedy. She is the author of Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, which features interviews with human rights activists ranging from the famous Helen Prejean, Marian Wright Edelman, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and Oscar Arias, to name a few.

She is a recipient of many awards and honors, among them high honors from President Lech Walesa of Poland for aiding the solidarity movement and Woman of the Year 2001 award by Save the Children. Kennedy is chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council and serves on the board of many organizations such as the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University, Human Rights First. Kennedy is a graduate of Brown University and Boston College Law School. She holds an honorary doctorate of laws from Le Moyne College and University of San Francisco Law School and an honorary doctorate of Human Letters from Bay Path College.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an American writer, sociologist, and professor. She is currently an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. McMillan Cottom is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy and Thick: And Other Essays, a co-editor of For-Profit Universities and Digital Sociologies, an essayist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and co-host of the podcast Hear to Slay. She is frequently quoted in print and television media as an academic expert in inequality and American higher education.