Andrea Fields has been making and teaching in fab labs and other innovation spaces since she was 15 years old. She has a master’s degree in civil engineering and currently manages an early childhood fab lab, LYF Foundation Corp, and her own consultancy. She is a sought-after speaker and spokesperson for minority women in STEM. Her speaking engagements have included the Ohio State Senate, TEDxCLE, and U.S. News and World Report.

Dorothy Jones-Davis is the Executive Director of Nation of Makers. In this role, she is deeply interested in creating connections between a diversity of makers, enabling them to use their collective skills to harness solutions for the world’s challenges – grand and small. She leads NoM as a collaborative community, where shared engagement amongst organizations of different types fosters the development of long-lasting partnerships that have deeper outcomes than any one entity could accomplish alone. With a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, Dorothy has previously held roles at the National Science Foundation, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, San Francisco, and is a co-producer of the National and Capitol Hill Maker Faires.

Demetrius Norman serves as President and Board Chair for NWLA Makerspace of Shreveport, LA. Demetrius is a native of Shreveport and a graduate of Grambling State University with a B.S. in Electronic Engineering Technology. He has worked in IT for over a decade with experience in Building Automation System Design, Energy Management, Solar Engineering, Internet of Things, Cloud Management and currently, serves as a technical consultant in the IT industry.

Jean-Luc Pierite is the President of the Board of Directors for the North American Indian Center of Boston, Massachusetts oldest urban Indian center. Jean-Luc also serves on the Advisory Circle for the Institute for Collaborative Language Research or CoLang. Jean-Luc is currently pursuing a Master in Design for Emergent Futures at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.

Sonya Pryor-Jones is an educator and non-profit leader. She is the founder of Mantles and Makers Inc. and most recently served as the Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for the Fab Foundation. Previously she worked as the Executive Director of the STEM Hub at Case Western Reserve University where she created a public-private partnership for regional STEM high schools and K-12 STEM programming. She was honored as a Champion of Change for Making by the Obama Administration in 2016. Sonya is a member of the 2021 cohort of the Aspen Tech Hub Tech Executive Leadership program. She is a board of trustee for Kenyon College, and strategic advisory board member for 100Kin10.

Eric Saliim is an educator and Director of the NCCU FAB Lab. Saliim has worked in STEM education for 15 years and currently holds a faculty position in the Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences teaching science and non-science majors. He was listed as an Innovative Instructor by the Chronicles of Higher Education in 2017 for his use of making in teaching STEM concepts.

Blaze Starkey is the coordinator of The TradLab Project which is focused on creating and supporting Indigenous community-led spaces grounded in language and culture, decolonization, and providing the tools communities need to create solutions and live in beautiful ways.