About Manjusha P. Kulkarni

Manjusha (Manju) P. Kulkarni, Esq. is the Executive Director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of over 40 community-based organizations which serves and represents the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles County. Manju is also a Co-Founder of Stop AAPI Hate, the nation’s largest reporting center tracking anti-AAPI hate acts .

Alongside fellow Stop AAPI Hate co-founders Cynthia Choi and Russell Jeung, Manju has been recognized on the  prestigious TIME100 Most Influential People in the World and Bloomberg 50 lists.  In 2021, Manju, Cynthia and Russell were  recipients of the 2021 Webby Social Movement of the Year award. More recently, Manju was honored with the 2024 James Irvine Leadership Award.  

Manju’s work has been featured in the New York Times, NPR and CNN, as well as in numerous local and ethnic media outlets. As part of her advocacy work on behalf of AAPI communities, Manju has shared her expertise with countless individuals and entities including the Aspen Institute, the World Bank and the United Nations. In January 2024, Manju gave a Tedx talk at University of California, Berkeley.

Manju serves on the Board of Directors of LA Voice and is a member of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission and the California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board. Prior to joining AAPI Equity Alliance, Manju served as Executive Director of South Asian Network and Senior Attorney at National Health Law Program.  Early in her career, she was a member of the pro bono legal team representing Japanese Latin Americans kidnapped by the US government and incarcerated in camps alongside Japanese Americans during World War II; as a result of the class action lawsuit, hundreds of Japanese Latin Americans received $5000 in reparations and an apology from President Clinton. 

Manju holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University and a Juris Doctor degree from Boston University School of Law.

About Michelle MiJung Kim

Michelle MiJung Kim (she/her) is a queer Korean American immigrant woman writer, speaker, activist, and entrepreneur. She is the award-winning author of The Wake Up: Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change, winner of the 2022 Nautilus Gold Medal and 2021 Porchlight Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year Award. She is CEO and co-founder of Awaken, where she has consulted hundreds of organizations and executive leaders from Fortune 500 companies, tech giants, nonprofits, universities and beyond on their equity education journey.

Michelle has been a lifelong social justice activist and has served on a variety of organizations such as the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Advisory Committee, LYRIC nonprofit’s Board of Directors, and Build Tech We Trust Coalition. She currently serves on the board of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE). Her work has appeared on world-renowned platforms such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The New York Times, and NPR, and she has been named LinkedIn’s Top Voice in Racial Equity, Fast Company’s Queer 50, and Medium’s Top Writer in Diversity three years in a row. She lives in Oakland, California.

About Sonia Nazario

Sonia Nazario is an award-winning journalist whose stories have tackled some of this country’s most intractable problems -- hunger, drug addiction, immigration -- and have won some of the most prestigious journalism and book awards.

She is best known for "Enrique's Journey," her story of a Honduran boy’s struggle to find his mother in the U.S. Published as a series in the Los Angeles Times, "Enrique's Journey" won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2003. It was turned into a book by Random House and became a national bestseller.

Her recent humanitarian efforts to get lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children led to her selection as the 2015 Don and Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award recipient by the Advocates for Human Rights. She also was named a 2015 Champion of Children by First Focus and a 2015 Golden Door award winner by HIAS Pennsylvania. In 2016, the American Immigration Council gave her the American Heritage Award. Also in 2016, the Houston Peace & Justice Center honored her with their National Peacemaker Award.

Nazario, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States. She has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and a “trendsetter” by Hispanic Magazine. In 2012 Columbia Journalism Review named Nazario among “40 women who changed the media business in the past 40.” In 2020, Parade Magazine named Nazario one of “50+ Most Influential Latin-American Women in History.” 

She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She has honorary doctorates from Mount St. Mary’s College and Whittier College. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, and later joined the Los Angeles Times. She is now at work on her second book.

About Dr. Pedro Antonio Noguera

Pedro Noguera is one of the nation’s leading scholars on issues related to race, inequality, and education. Prior to coming to USC to serve as the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the Rossier School of Education, he served as a Professor of Education and holder of endowed chairs at UCLA, NYU, Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of 15 books. His most recent book A Search forCommon Ground: Conversations About the Tough Questions and Complex Issues Confronting K-12 Education in the United States Today with Rick Hess was the winner of the American Association of Publishers Prose Awardin 2021. Noguera has served as an advisor to several states, school districts, foundations, and nonprofits. In 2022 he was appointed to President Biden’s National Commission on Hispanics. In 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Education and Phi Delta Kappa honor society, and in 2020 Noguera was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Noguera has received seven honorary doctorates from American universities and received awards from the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and from the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at NYU for his research and advocacy efforts aimed at fighting poverty. In 2023 he was ranked 1st in the nation for influence and impact in the field of education, by Education Week.

About Dr. Julie Nicholson

Julie Nicholson, Ph.D., MBA is a champion for children with over 20 years of leadership in direct service, higher education, the non-profit sector and consulting for states and communities across the U.S. and globally. She is currently Vice President for Implementation and Impact at Children’s Funding Project, a nonprofit social impact organization.

Her most recent books include Creating Equitable Early Learning Environments for Young Boys of Color: Disrupting Disproportionate Outcomes (2023; California Department of Education), Principals as Early Learning Leaders: Effectively Supporting Our Youngest Learners (2022; Teachers College Press) and Supporting Young Children to Cope, Build Resilience and Heal from Trauma through Play: A Practical Guide (2023; Routledge).

Outside of academia, she has held significant roles including Deputy Director at WestEd’s Center for Child and Family Studies, Senior Fellow at Childhood Education International, Associate Editor for the global journal, Early Child Care and Development, and was co-founder and co-director for the Center for Equity in Early Childhood Education. She has served on policy committees, non-profit boards and in leadership roles for a wide array of community-centered social impact initiatives.

Dr. Nicholson started her career teaching in preschool and public-school settings. A mother of three and a Bay Area resident, she is an avid runner, podcast enthusiast and compassionate parent for senior rescue dogs.