W. Kamau Bell

Kamau Bell is an Emmy & Peabody Award-winning TV host, filmmaker, comedian, husband, and dad. He is on the road for his new comedy tour, “Who’s With Me?” Tickets are available at www.wkamaubell.com. Kamau is the reigning champion of Celebrity Jeopardy where he played for DonorsChoose. He has also written a chapter in the newly-released Michael Lewis book, Who Is Government? - The Untold Story of Public Service which is a New York Times bestseller. Kamau is also the host of the ACLU’s official podcast At Liberty. 

For seven seasons, he was the host and executive producer of the five-time Emmy Award-winning CNN Original Series United Shades of America, available to stream on Max. In 2023, he won an Emmy for his HBO documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed. He also won a Peabody Award for his 2022 Showtime docu-series We Need to Talk About Cosby. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling book Do the Work: An Antiracist Activity Book and the author of The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian. His comedy special, Private School Negro, is available on Netflix. Kamau is on the board of directors for DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that helps teachers raise money for class projects, and Live Free, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gun violence, mass incarceration, and mass criminalization. Kamau is also the ACLU’s Celebrity Ambassador for Racial Justice. In 2023, Kamau and his wife Melissa Hudson Bell co-founded Who Knows Best Productions, a media production company in Oakland, CA. He cares too much and sleeps too little.

Jelani Cobb

Jelani Cobb is the Director of the Lipman Center for Journalism in Civil and Human Rights at Columbia University and a professor at Columbia Journalism School. He has been a Staff Writer at the New Yorker since 2015 and in 2018 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He is the author and editor of six books, including The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from the New Yorker. His 2020 film Whose Vote Counts? received the Peabody Award for News Documentary.