Sylvester A. Johnson is the 2024 Kluge Chair in Technology and Society at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress and is the founding CEO of the Corporation for Public Interest Technology, a public benefit company whose mission centers on making technology accountable to public interest and social justice. He is also Professor of Black Studies at Northwestern University. Johnson formerly served as Associate Vice Provost for Public Interest Technology at Virginia Tech, where he was the founding director of the Center for Humanities. His research has examined religion, race, and empire in the Atlantic world; religion and sexuality; national security practices; and the impact of intelligent machines and human enhancement on human identity and race.

Johnson is the author of The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity (Palgrave 2004), a study of race and religious hatred that won the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book award; and African American Religions, 1500-2000 (Cambridge 2015), an award-winning interpretation of five centuries of democracy, colonialism, and freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson has also co-edited The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and After 9/11 (University of California 2017) and Religion and US Empire (NYU Press 2022). He is a founding co-editor of the Journal of Africana Religions. Johnson is currently writing a book on human identity in an age of intelligent machines and human-machine symbiosis. His work has been supported by grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.

Dr. Mary Huffman, has over two decades of experience as an educator in the PK-12 setting. As an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at East Carolina University, Huffman has taught a variety of undergraduate elementary education courses including Social Studies, Differentiation, and Curriculum & Instruction while integrating high impact practices into every class. Her professional leadership activities include: author of curriculum and assessments for the South Carolina Department of Education, Charleston County School District, and other non-profit organizations. Dr. Huffman is a Gilder Lehrman Institute Master Teacher Fellow, presenter, and seminar coordinator, Korean War Legacy Foundation Senior Fellow, Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes Fellow, and author of project-based lessons for SCETV. She has presented keynote addresses for the South Carolina House of Representatives and the South Carolina Department of Education, along with international presentations in Athens, Greece and Seoul, South Korea. Some of her top accomplishments include: Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year, Marquis Who’s Who in America Recognition, SCCSS Best Practices in Social Studies Award, Western Illinois University Alumni Achievement Award, Charleston County School District Teacher of the Month, Western Illinois University College of Education Distinguished Alumni Award, Pinckney Elementary Teacher of the Year, and Pinckney Elementary Distinguished Reading Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Amy Denise Johnson has more than 20 years of experience in continuing higher education, adult degree programming, teaching and faculty development. As Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, her work is devoted to improving the quality of work life for all faculty within the college. In addition to her 23 years of teaching experience, Amy has also served as the founding director for ETSU’s Center for Teaching Excellence. Historically, her scholarship has focused on the science of student learning, success factors for adult and non-traditional students, and, more recently, on interprofessional education and training. She has a long history of service to the Association for Continuing Higher Education, having served as in many roles including President of the Association. She is a first-generation college student who earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary in Virginia and a M.A. and Ed.D. from East Tennessee State University. As a person, Amy also values spending time with her son and husband. She enjoys a good campfire that is surrounded by good conversation, a few guitars, and lots of singing voices. She is a big fan of Americana and Folk music, low brow novels, and true crime podcasts.

Dr. Julie Stanley is an Assistant Professor in the Elementary and Middle Grades Department at East Carolina University. She received her Ed.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from Gardner Webb University, her M.A. in Elementary Education from Gardner Webb University, and her B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Stanley's research agenda focuses on trauma-sensitive classroom management, the impact of social-emotional development on student learning, and high-impact instructional practices with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. Her work uniquely bridges the gap between trauma-informed approaches and traditional educational practices, examining how trauma-sensitive strategies can enhance learning across subjects and grade levels. Dr. Stanley's research has been published in respected peer-reviewed journals such as Early Childhood Education Journal, Social Studies and the Young Learner, and Action in Teacher Education. She has also authored a noteworthy book chapter on "The language of historical thinking read-alouds" in The Role of Language in Content Pedagogy: A Framework for Teachers' Knowledge. Dr. Stanley has delivered invited talks on topics ranging from trauma-sensitive instructional strategies to the integration of social-emotional learning in teacher preparation programs.

As an Assistant Professor of Adaptive and Organizational Leadership in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech, Hannah Sunderman is passionate about developing human capacity. Her teaching focuses on facilitating a transformational learning experience that enhances students’ sense of self and capacity for positive influence, which has included developing a non-traditional grading method, growth-based grading.

Sunderman’s overarching research agenda seeks to answer the question: What processes and experiences (e.g., being a mentor or mentee, formal leadership positions) affect leader/leadership development and why? Her emerging research focuses on the intersection of leader/leadership identity development and meaning making.