This year’s summit included:

• live Q&A with our Changemaker Award recipient John Green

• keynote address from Shereen Marisol Meraji

• panel featuring young leaders

• interactive workshops led by our very own Youth Advisors

• youth spoken-word performance

• resources to continue learning

• original media and more

  Learn more about our speakers below!

The Speakers

Keynote Address

Shereen Marisol Meraji is an audio producer and reporter who has told stories with sound for twenty years, most recently as the co-host of NPR’s critically acclaimed Code Switch podcast. As a founding member of the Code Switch team, Meraji has reported on issues of race, racism and racial identity formation since 2013. In 2020, Apple Podcasts named Code Switch its first-ever podcast of the year. Currently, Meraji’s a Nieman Fellow working alongside a cohort of 21 brilliant journalists spending an academic year at Harvard focusing on, “some of the most urgent issues facing the industry, ranging from racial justice to disinformation.” In July 2022 she’s headed to the University of California, Berkeley where she’ll be an assistant professor of race in journalism, training the next generation of audio journalists while continuing to publish her own work. When Meraji's not telling stories that help us better understand the people we share the planet with, she's dancing to salsa music, baking or kicking around a soccer ball.

Youth Leader Panel

Alex Clark is a producer for GBH's NOVA Science Studio and NOVA on PBS. He has led digital teams, creating long-form and digital content for Vox, NBC, and NowThis. He hosts NOVA's Misinformation Nation and is currently producing an upcoming film on cryptocurrency.

Clarke Humphrey most recently worked as Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team at the Biden White House where she drove the online effort that resulted in more than 186 million Americans getting fully vaccinated against the virus. Prior to that, she served as Deputy Digital Director on the Biden-Harris Campaign overseeing the grassroots fundraising operation and raising more money online than any campaign in history. Before joining that team, Clarke oversaw the email, SMS, and digital ads programs at the DNC as the Online Fundraising Director, modernizing much of the committee's grassroots fundraising infrastructure. She's also spent some time focused on list acquisition and growth at a digital ads firm and worked as the North Carolina Digital Director on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Originally from Boston, Clarke graduated from Northwestern University, where she studied journalism and developed a love for deep dish pizza. She lives in DC where she spends her free time eating Ethiopian food, taking long walks on the mall, and catching the occasional show at the Anthem or Capital One Arena.

Olivia Seltzer is the 17 year old founder and sole writer of The Cramm. She started The Cramm after the 2016 presidential election, when she became inspired to make a difference. Since then, she has written over five hundred newsletters for The Cramm, spoken at NATO Engages and the IFTF Summit, been featured in NPR, Teen Vogue, TODAY, The Economist, and Forbes (among others), been selected as a Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader, and traveled to different college campuses starting a grassroots movement to educate the world’s future. Her goal? Changing the world - one Cramm at a time - and creating activists out of the next generation by informing them about the world’s happenings.

Lora Strum is an award-winning features writer specializing in community-driven storytelling. Lora has written for The Atlantic, Washington City Paper, the PBS NewsHour, Marquette Magazine, BroadwayWorld.com, PhillyVoice, PoliticsPA.com, Philadelphia Neighborhoods, Army News Service, and more.  Straddling the digital revolution and more traditional newsgathering, Lora’s editing skills center on using new media to inform storytelling and interact with audiences in real-time. Her passion for journalism began in high school when she was selected to work with the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to help tell stories from, and for, the next generation. After graduating cum laude from Temple University in Philadelphia, she rejoined the NewsHour and spearheaded its digital-first reporting efforts, including expanding the organization's user-driven "Twitter chat" series and multimedia web reporting initiatives. In 2019, Lora brought her talent for magazine storytelling and community-driven engagement to The Atlantic, where she's currently an associate editor on the digital team.