Anindya Kundu

Anindya is a public scholar with a mission to make social science and education research accessible in order to promote equitable systems of opportunity. Anindya researches how exceptional people overcome the odds stacked against them as they develop agency for positive change. Anindya is most known for his two global TED Talks, which have amassed more than 6 Million views. His 2020 TED Talk on the US Opportunity Gap was listed in the “Top 5 Most Popular TED Talks of 2020."

Anindya is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Florida International University (FIU). Given the hotly-contested contexts currently surrounding public education and the 2024 election, Anindya realizes his potential to inform public sentiment and frequently engages public readers. Between 2022 and 2023, he published four Opinion Editorials for The Miami Herald and appeared as a featured guest on NPR’ station, WLRN, multiple times to discuss the state of affairs in Florida. His work has also been featured by USA Today, MSNBC, The Miami Herald, and Huffington Post.

Anindya’s body of sociological research is highly approachable to those outside the field. His first book, The Power of Student Agency: Looking Beyond Grit to Close the Opportunity Gap, was published in 2020 and was a finalist for the 2021 Association of American Publishers (AAP) Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) Award. Angela Duckworth, one of his mentors, praised Anindya as "one of [her] favorite thinkers on the social and personal opportunities children need to thrive."Anindya is currently working on his second book, The Power of Educational Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2025), continuing his passion for promoting opportunities for self-improvement, especially for children.

Anamaria Artemisa Sayre

Anamaria Artemisa Sayre is co-host of Alt.Latino and a curator and producer for Tiny Desk. As a podcast, radio, and video host, reporter, and producer for NPR, she is focused on elevating the diversity of sounds and stories that define Latinx culture. This means curating the newest and best in Latin music weekly on the mic with her co-host Felix Contreras and doing deep-dive reported series that highlight music as an answer to some of society’s biggest cultural questions.

In 2023, she traveled around the US and across the southern border to report an award-winning series that revealed how Mexican-American immigrants coming of age led to the explosion of Regional Mexican music. She’s interviewed artists, from Santana to Rosalia, that span generations and the globe and is a trusted voice on one of the most genre-diverse subsets of music in the world.

Additionally, she curates Latin music at the Tiny Desk. This includes leading the annual Latin Music Month Tiny Desk takeover which she conceived of and realized within her first year at NPR. Sayre's producing credits include concerts from artists like Nicki Nicole, Ivy Queen, Karol G and Juanes. Her hosting and reporting credits are spread across NPR stations and beyond, and include frequent hosting on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered, reporting a weekly segment on NPR’s Morning Edition and a regular segment on Here and Now. She’s a frequently featured speaker, host, and panelist at conferences and events across the country and internationally.

She is NPR’s youngest host and has been named a 30 under 30 professional by Forbes and a Major Mujer by Remezcla.

It’s not often that you find an athlete, engineer, musician, and a former Miss America all in one. Grace Stanke breaks misconceptions surrounding nuclear energy through social media, public engagements, and educational workshops. During her year as Miss America 2023, Grace was named the “New Face of Nuclear Energy” by the Wall Street Journal and was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Energy. While completing approximately 270,000 miles of travel, she finished her undergraduate degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since passing on the title of Miss America, Grace continues to travel to advocate for peaceful purposes of the science of the atom. Encouraging worldwide change for clean, zero-carbon emission energy sources, Stanke emphasizes the benefits of nuclear power and seeks to dispel the myths around nuclear energy while inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. In March 2024 Grace will work as a Core Design Engineer at Constellation.