For nearly 20 years, country music star Dierks Bentley has played to thousands of fans around the world. In our show Collective Culture, he will speak to the important relationship between live music and the audience, and how navigating that in a global pandemic has pushed artists to find creative solutions.

Regan Byrd is an award-winning anti-oppression activist, speaker, and trainer who has trained dozens of organizations on anti-oppression and allyship. Regan has served as the morning keynote speaker for the DU Women’s Conference in 2017, the afternoon keynote for the 2018 League of Women Voters annual conference, and was a trainer at the 2018 White Privilege Symposium in Denver. She participated in various expert panels on topics ranging from critical race theory to the history of police, to housing justice.

On the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona, Nephi Craig, acclaimed chef and founder of the Native American Culinary Association, is attempting to establish a first-of-its-kind indigenous cafe where Apache chefs prepare Apache grown produce for Apache diners.

As a legacy of his foray into the high-paced world of fine dining and French cuisine, Nephi has personally had to battle addictive and violent behavior that destroyed his last marriage and threatened to estrange his son. Through this period of recovery, Nephi realizes the importance of reconnecting with his Apache identity through food. His story is shared in the film Gather - he will join us for a Q&A in our show “The Drum Is Calling.”

Shannon Sedgwick Davis is the CEO of Bridgeway Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to ending and preventing mass atrocities around the world. As an attorney, activist, and passionate advocate for social justice, she has guided Bridgeway Foundation in pioneering solutions to these seemingly intractable issues. More recently, Ms. Sedgwick Davis and the Bridgeway Foundation have been credited for their pivotal role in mobilizing awareness, civilian protection, and recovery efforts against the Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony, the first-ever indictee of the International Criminal Court. She will be speaking in our program “What Wouldn’t You Do?”.

A gifted 17-year old scientist, Elsie is taking a research project to the Regional Science Fair, analyzing the comparative health effects of eating a beef-based diet versus a traditional Lakota diet based on Buffalo.

Her father Fred has dedicated his life to bring the buffalo back to traditional lands. Fighting the powerful cattle industry has been an uphill battle though, and Elsie is performing research that directly threatens that industry. Despite this, Elsie holds steadfast in her unshakeable belief that Native wisdom and food practices can begin to heal the scourge of health disparities that plague Native communities. We follow her story in the film Gather, and she joins us for a Q&A in our show, “The Drum Is Calling.”

Jimmy Ferguson is a multicultural, award-winning film artist with deep experience in all stages of production spanning fiction/narrative, documentary, commercials, and contemporary art. His narrative and documentary shorts have premiered at Mill Valley, DOC NYC, Maryland, Salento International, and Newport Beach Film Festivals. He has executed large scale public projections and mixed-media live performances, and co-created the music video for Pearl Jam’s “Gone.” A student of philosophy, Jimmy travels extensively to further his artistic exploration. His work investigates how images create collective identities and narratives, and how these in turn influence our physical realities. He is a multilingual communicator specializing in international production and promotes cross-cultural awareness in his everyday practice.

International news correspondent Jane Ferguson is known for front-line dispatches from some of the world’s most intense conflict zones, such as Iraq’s war against ISIS, Houthi-controlled Yemen and battle-torn South Sudan. She will be returning to OT this year to moderate our show, “What Wouldn’t You Do?”.

Laurie Garrett wrote her first bestselling book, THE COMING PLAGUE: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, while splitting her time between the Harvard School of Public Health and the New York newspaper, Newsday. An expert on global public health and a regular on MSNBC, Garrett was profiled by the New York Times in an article titled, “She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next?”. She will be speaking to COVID19 from the lens of global public health in our show, “What Do Viruses Really Want From Us?”, available Sunday, October 4 - Sunday, October 11.

Brooklyn based filmmaker Catherine Gubernick studied film and philosophy at NYU Gallatin, where she came to recognize film as her ideal medium to explore subjective truth and visceral dialogues. Her first experimental film, Blue (2015), won Best Upstate New York Film at the Blackbird Film Festival. Her first narrative short, Rose Thorn (2017) uses visual storytelling to portray a woman’s existential breakdown hours before making the biggest decision of her life. Since then, Catherine has created four independent short films and six music videos in addition to a body of photographic works.

Lee Kim is a designer thinker, an engineer, and also a certified Lego Serious Play facilitator. She founded a community innovation lab- Design Dream Lab where anyone with a giving heart can create an impact and dream of a better future. Lee has taught and facilitated numerous workshops around human-centered design and community building at various universities and organizations throughout the U.S.A. Lee loves building and fostering creativity through everyday experiences and finds joy in connecting dots with other fun-loving and joyful human beings. She also loves to make stuff (up)!

Adam Horowitz is a PhD student in MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group whose work aims to augment human awareness, translating advances in neuroscience into design of interventions and experiences. He focuses on how brain science can expand to interact with art, technology and policy. As he says,“The organized understanding of the self is fertile territory for those of us guiding experience (i.e. artists), those guiding behavior (i.e. policymakers, technologists), and those guiding introspection (i.e. therapists, citizen scientists, and you). Now I’m most excited about spending time bringing my tools to other labs for guiding dreams and nightmare treatment, working on neuroscience-based prison policy change, and bridging art and neuroscience in a form that goes beyond ornamental.”

Juan has been the subject of several Radio Diaries. By most measures, he is an American success story with a thriving business and a loving family. However, he remains undocumented, making his time in this country constantly uneasy.

Sonia Lowman is a filmmaker, fighting for social justice through film and storytelling. Her recent Directorial project, Black Boys, is at the center of our show “Windows and Mirrors.” Sonia will join moderator Keme Nzerem, as well as Sharif El-Mekki for a Q&A within the show.

Lizbeth Mateo is an attorney who swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. She’s also undocumented. Her personal experience guides her fight for justice.

Emily McAllister is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has produced work independently as well as for HBO, National Geographic, PBS, and Google. After beginning her career in Brooklyn, in 2018 she moved to the beautiful mountain town of Truckee, California. In her spare time, she’s learning to mountain bike and helping her husband Aaron on his mission to make a “passable” New York style bagel at 6500’ elevation.

Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Between 2012 and 2019 he served as the Dean of the School, and between 2009 and 2011 as Senior Advisor to U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

He is the author of The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat; Forces of Fortune: The Rise of a New Middle Class and How it Will Change Our World; The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future; Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty; Islamic Leviathan: Islam and State Power; and Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: Jamaat Islami of Pakistan. He has written for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and provided commentary to numerous media outlets.

For the past two decades, Keme Nzerem has reported around the globe (Washington - Moscow - Johannesburg - Rio - London) for British network TV on issues from corruption, politics, and human rights - to sport. His focus is always on people, and how global events impact the lives of ordinary folk.

When Keme’s not filming news stories, he is typically cycling or backcountry skiing, whether it’s in the Himalaya or Scotland. Keme returns to OT2020 to moderate our show “Windows and Mirrors.”

Jeff Orlowski is the director, producer, and cinematographer of the award-winning films Chasing Coral and Chasing Ice. Chasing Coral received the US Documentary Audience Award at Sundance in 2017. Chasing Ice received the Documentary Cinematography award at Sundance in 2012 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Both films were shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, screened at Congress and the United Nations, and have garnered awards and accolades from film festivals around the globe. Jeff founded Exposure Labs, a production company dedicated to impact through film. His latest film, The Social Dilemma, had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

David Quammen is an award-winning author who spoke memorably at OT 2018. He returns to our festival this year to explain the complicated and unnerving threat of zoonoses. As he prophetically wrote in his 2012 book, Spillover, “The next big and murderous human pandemic, the one that kills us in millions, will be caused by a new disease--new to humans, anyway. The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space. Odds are that the killer pathogen--most likely a virus--will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal.”

Sanjay Rawal spent 15 years working on human rights campaigns globally. He also ran initiatives for acclaimed artists and philanthropists, one of whom encouraged him to start making films. Sanjay’s work has been supported by Ford, Bertha, BritDoc, Fledgling, 11th Hour Project, NoVo, and the Omidyar Network. His work has won an assortment of honors, including a James Beard Media Award. His most recent film, Gather is at the center of our show, “The Drum Is Calling.”

Richardson is on a mission to make the world a less lonely place. She's the author of Un-Lonely Planet and the founder of The Joy List, a newsletter which fosters community in New York City. She's also a relationship coach and works with people one-on-one and in groups.

Joe Richman is a Peabody Award-winning producer and reporter and the founder of Radio Diaries, a non-profit organization. For two decades, Radio Diaries has helped to pioneer a model for working with people to document their own lives for public radio. Joe has collaborated with teenagers and octogenarians, prisoners and prison guards, gospel preachers and bra saleswomen, the famous and the unknown. Through his career, he has interviewed hundreds of people, from a seltzer delivery man to a Civil War widow to Nelson Mandela. The LA Times called Joe “a kind of Studs Terkel of the airwaves.”

Alexandra is a cognitive neuroscientist, engineer, cross-modal researcher, multi-instrumentalist musician, doctoral student, instrument inventor, multimedia creator, and instructor at the MIT Media Lab. She is passionate about promoting neurodiversity, ecologically holistic rehabilitation, and improving upon our global experience by creating pathways between the fields of neuroscience, technology, music, accessible design, symbiotic rehabilitation, and multisensory studies. She is the inventor of the world’s first series of medical-musical instruments: non-invasive devices to heal the brain, engage the senses, and support novel musical creativity (also experienced by musical artists ranging from Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead) to Rihanna).

Originally from Mumbai, India, Zenia Tata is passionate about her work with economically disadvantaged populations, believes in the innate entrepreneurial qualities of the poor, and is constantly searching for innovative solutions to global problems. She is bold, brimming with optimism, and determined to change the world. Zenia is also an avid scuba diver, lover of the outdoors, and a pilot. She will be speaking in our show “How To Be A Chaos Pilot” about just that - finding purpose and motivation in the midst of chaos.

Ellie Wen is an award-winning filmmaker from Hong Kong and Los Angeles. She is an alumna of Film Independent's Project Involve fellowship program and recently completed her MFA in Documentary Film at Stanford University. Her films have been featured on The Guardian, The New York Times, Short of the Week, SoulPancake, selected as Vimeo Staff Pick, and screened at premier festivals around the world. She lives in San Francisco and is developing her next documentary as an artist-in-residence in the SFFILM FilmHouse Residency Program.

Raye Zaragoza is a galvanizing presence, a self-assured artist making music to fight for, represent, and celebrate those left too long outside the spotlight. Known for tenacious feminist anthems and fearless protest folk, her stage presence teems with determined morale. She will open our show, “The Drum is Calling” with an original song she wrote for the film Gather.

Learn more rayezaragoza.com