Karen L.B. Evans is President and Founder of the Black Women Playwrights' Group. She has received individual fellowships in playwriting from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities. She was a Helen Hayes Award nominee for "Outstanding New Play" as well as a Sundance Institute finalist. Karen participated in the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights' Conference and is a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Center "Front & Center Award." She has also received the "Citation for Excellence in Design and Writing" from the Washington Education Press Association.

Her work has been published and presented by Hyperion Books for Children, Meriwether Publishing, Applause Theater Books, The Discovery Channel Magazine, American Showcase Theatre, and PBS. Karen holds a BA with honors in Drama from Dartmouth College and a MFA in Playwriting from The Catholic University of America.

Imani Drayton Hill is an economist at the Bureau for Labor Statistics and has interest in cultural policy and planning.  She was managing director of Woolly Mammoth Theater and was interim vice president for programs at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.  She holds a Masters of Science in Applied Economics from John Hopkins University Krieger School of Advanced Academic Studies. 

Ashish Shah is the CEO of Zingworks, LLP, which is the developer of 12@12NOON and 12 LINE WONDER.  Zingworks develops Enterprise mobile apps, consumer mobile apps, and casual and multi-player mobile games. Ashish is passionate about developing leadership qualities within his team. He has over a decade of industry experience working with both start-up and global corporations, and versatile experience in working in various domains - healthcare, utility, water management, location based, iPhone, mobile and gaming services. He holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering as well as diplomas in Advanced Computing in Information Technology, and Project Management

David Fleming is a startup and non profit solution inventor. Mr. Fleming started with Southwestern Company in college and by age 23 had his first $1MM crew from 14 countries. His telemedicine project 10 years ago was sold to Columbia Medical Systems. Lately, David's work with biometric informatics gave Villanova the edge for two NCAA championships. He works in large data, algorithms, software design, and patent pending solutions. He brokers in psychographic and transactional data for fundraising with several non profits. 

Amrita Ramanan is the Senior Cultural Strategist and Dramaturgy for Play On Shakespeare. She was previously the Director of Development and Dramaturgy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). In her five seasons at OSF, she served as the Production Dramaturg for a variety of productions. Previous to her tenure at OSF, Amrita was the Literary Manager/Artistic Associate at Arena Stage, where she dramaturged several of Arena’s productions; produced the playwright residencies for Lisa Kron and Charles Randolph-Wright, and produced Arena Stage’s New Play Reading Series. For three years, Amrita was the Associate Producer and Resident Dramaturg at Double Edge Theatre and supported the development of Double Edge’s site-specific summer performances Sharazad, A Tale of Love and Magic, and Once a Blue Moon. She is a board member for the Network of Ensemble Theaters and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. She also serves as National Advisor for Art of the Rural and the Rural Policy Research Institute’s Next Generation Initiative. Amrita earned a BFA in Theatre History and Dramaturgy from the University of Arizona.

Sage Xaxua Morgan-Hubbard (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, activist, and educator. She served as the Academic Partnership Coordinator for the Dance Department at Columbia College Chicago, the Outreach Director of Young Chicago Authors and as a teaching artist throughout and Chicagoland and DC area instructing youth from kindergarten through college and inside Cook County Jail. She is a founder of WORD! Spoken Word Artists and Activists in Providence, RI, and was one of the original members of Spoken Resistance, DC Writers Corps and Sol y Soul. Sage also has developed two original one-woman shows, Chocolativity and Mixed Mamas as well a two-woman show, Mixed Mamas Remix: Vol 1 with Stacy Erenberg. She's earned a B.A. in Performance Studies: Socially Conscious Art of the Everyday and Ethnic Studies at Brown University, an M.A. in Performance Studies at Northwestern University, completed PhD coursework and earned a Gender Studies Certificate.