Will Jenkins

Will Jenkins has more than fifteen years of communications and policy experience at the Obama White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, Congress, and international nonprofit organizations. As a person with a disability, he has dedicated many years to expanding health care and opportunity for everyone. In the field of creative media, Will has trained or advised hundreds of media makers on politics and policymaking through the Sundance Institute, the South by Southwest Festival, the Tribeca Film Institute, POV, Warner Bros., FRONTLINE, MTV, and others. He was Policy Director for the Impact Film Festival at the 2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions and developed the American Film Institute’s first Political Bootcamp for Filmmakers in 2013.

While in the nonprofit sector, Will worked on restorative justice, conflict resolution, and community leadership initiatives. Will also founded the Democratic Communicators Network, which has organized training and mentoring for hundreds of political staffers for more than a decade. Drawing on his experiences, he co-authored peer-reviewed articles in The Public Sector Innovation Journal and Media, Culture & Society. He has conceptualized and/or co-authored studies on media entertainment, democracy, and social issues including When Movies Go to Washington, Movies & Grassroots Community Engagement, Nonfiction Storytelling on Gun Violence, Can Hollywood Help Imagine a Future without Plastic, and Watching Out for Democracy. He has served as a board member of Working Films and a co-chair of the NEXUS Working Group for Film, Media and Story.

Charmion Kinder

Charmion N. Kinder is a master communicator, social impact advocate and corporate responsibility strategist with 20 years of experience in executing influencer campaigns that promote transformational change for the next generation of American leadership. As the Founder of CNKinder, Inc., a social impact accelerator and Senior Vice President of Social Impact and Strategy at Values Partnerships – the country's largest Black-owned social impact agency – Charmion works tirelessly to solve big challenges, launch new projects and expand the common good.

Recently, as the Head of Global Public Relations for Global Citizen – a movement of engaged citizens who are using their collective voice to end extreme poverty – Charmion planned, advanced and directed media relations strategy for the organization’s social impact, advocacy and policy-focused initiatives.

A former White House press aide to First Lady Michelle Obama, Charmion also served the Obama Administration from 2009-2013 as a public affairs appointee within the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce. Her work has also included executing strategic communications campaigns for organizations including: The Walt Disney Company, Discovery Education, Edelman, the Ad Council, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, the Hip Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), America Coming Together (ACT), Special Olympics and SEIU.

Charmion’s work as a change agent began after graduating from the Howard University School of Communications, where her efforts to inspire 21st century ingenuity have sice promoted global responsibility, civic engagement, and diversity and inclusion, for the purposes of building a better world. Charmion also earned certification from Harvard Business School’s CSR Executive Education Program in 2016.

Caty Borum

Caty Borum is Executive Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI), a creative innovation lab and research center at American University that creates, showcases, and studies media designed for social change and social justice; and Assistant Professor at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. She is an award-winning documentary producer, scholar, professor and strategist working at the intersection of social change communication, documentary and entertainment storytelling. Her co-authored book about the role of mediated comedy in social change, A Comedian and An Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, with co-author Lauren Feldman, was published by University of California Press as the launch volume for the first Communication for Social Justice Activism series. Her documentary book, Story Movements: How Documentaries Empower People and Inspire Social Change, was published by Oxford University Press.

As a documentary producer, her films and TV programs have aired internationally and nationally on the Sundance Channel, Pivot, NDTV (India), Link TV, KCET, DirectTV and theatrically. In the U.S. and around the world, she is a featured speaker and workshop leader at the intersection of storytelling, communication, and social justice. A former philanthropy director and producer with legendary comedy film and TV producer Norman Lear, Borum serves on the Board of Directors of three leading organizations working at the intersection of entertainment storytelling and social justice: The Peabody Awards, Kartemquin Films, and Working Films. She also serves as a member of the Advisory Group for The Civic Imagination Project led by renowned media scholar Henry Jenkins, housed at the University of Southern California.

Kimberly Reason

Kimberly Reason brings 30 years of communications and leadership experience in the public, corporate and nonprofit sectors to her project management role. As Acting Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, and Senior Public Information Officer for the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, Kimberly advised executives on the agency’s strategic and capital initiatives, with particular focus on implementing media and communication strategies for engaging public officials and communities impacted by the agency’s mega-infrastructure construction projects. She has worked closely with the Washington State congressional delegation, the Governor’s office, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Federal Transit Administration, in addition to local officials from the Washington State Department of Transportation, the Port of Seattle, Seattle Mayor’s Office, Seattle Department of Transportation, Tacoma Mayor’s Office, regional county executives, and other elected officials.

Kimberly also draws on extensive community leadership experience as Vice President for Programs at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle; Executive Director for Legal Voice; Chair of the Minority Executive Directors Coalition and the Seattle Mayor’s Commission on Children and Youth; board member for the United Way of King County and the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment; Program Manager for the JTPA-funded Northwest Center Industries Office Skills Training Program; speaker-educator for the People of Color Against AIDS Network and the Lifelong AIDS Alliance; PR intern for the National Women’s Political Caucus; and paramedic aide for the youth international aid program, Amigos de las Americas. She is a member of the International Women’s Forum Washington State Chapter, Organizing Leader and Captain for the North Belltown Block Watch, a community policing initiative with the Seattle Police Department, jurist for the Seattle Black Film Festival, and graduate of Leadership Tomorrow.

Jesse Moore

Jesse Moore is a leading voice at the intersection of national politics, philanthropy, entertainment and justice. As a former White House Speechwriter and Associate Director for Public Engagement, he directed entertainment partnerships for President Obama while staffing federal task forces on 21st Century Policing, Criminal Justice Reform and My Brother’s Keeper. Jesse launched Common Thread Strategies in 2016 to begin consulting with clients including Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, the NBA, the NYPD, Carnegie Hall, Pivotal Ventures and the Pop Culture Collaborative. He is a frequent cable news commentator, a board member at Equal Justice USA and Rock the Vote, a Seattle area native, and a graduate of Western Washington University.