Theme: RISE

Ideas alone cannot change the world. They require a courageous community ready to listen and translate ideas into action and change. They require us to look beyond the status quo to see what else is possible. They require us to challenge spaces of injustice, and develop new ways of being. Ideas alone cannot change the world, but they give rise to everything. A new timing is unfolding, and it's asking each of us to rise.

Seawell Ballroom
1350 Arapahoe Street
Denver, Colorado, 80204
United States

Amber McReynolds

Voting Rights Expert

Amber McReynolds is one of the country’s leading experts on election administration and policy, and co-author of the book When Women Vote. Amber is the CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition and is the former Director of Elections for Denver, Colorado. During her time there, she transformed the elections division into a national and international award-winning office. She has a Masters in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and a Bachelors in Political Science and Communications from the University of Illinois.

Dominique Christina

Performance Poet

Dominique Christina is an award-winning poet, author, educator, and activist. She holds five national poetry slam titles in four years, including the 2014 & 2012 Women of the World Slam Champion and 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion. Her work is greatly influenced by her family's legacy in the Civil Rights Movement and by the idea that words make worlds. She is the author of four books and a writer/actor for the HBO series High Maintenance Season 2. Her fourth book “Anarcha Speaks” won the National Poetry Series award in 2017.

George Wittemyer

Wildlife Conservationist

George Wittemyer is one of the world's foremost authorities on the African elephant and the Chairman of the Scientific Board of Save the Elephants. He is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. He was appointed to the IUCN's African Elephants Specialist Group in 2008 and is a technical advisor to the Kenya Wildlife Service. His research group focuses on biodiversity conservation issues, with an emphasis on determining how landscape, human, and climate impact at-risk wildlife.

R. Alan Brooks

Comic Book Writer

R. Alan Brooks teaches writing for Regis University’s MFA program and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. He created & wrote the graphic novels, “The Burning Metronome” and “Anguish Garden,” and hosts the popular “MotherF**ker In A Cape” Podcast, which focuses on marginalized members of the geek world. He writes a weekly comic, “What’d I Miss?,” for The Colorado Sun, and has written comic books for Pop Culture Classroom & Zenescope Entertainment. Alan is a musician and stage host, regularly emceeing events like the DINK Awards Show & Arise Music Festival.

Sarah Kurnick

Archaeologist

Dr. Sarah Kurnick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She specializing in the ancient Maya and her research focuses on the creation, perpetuation, and negation of institutionalized social inequality. Her primary interests include the role of the past in shaping the present and how archaeology can foster positive social change. Since 2014, she has co-directed a community archaeology project at the site of Punta Laguna in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. She lives in Boulder with her dog, Hazel.

Sarah Tuneberg

Disaster Relief Expert

For over a decade, Sarah Tuneberg worked in public health & emergency management in places like South Sudan and post-Katrina New Orleans. She is the Co-Founder & CEO of Geospiza. In 2020, she was tapped by Governor Polis to lead Colorado's Coronavirus Innovation Response Team. The team is ramping up mass testing, creating services to help all Coloradans stay safe and healthy at home, developing local alternatives for constrained medical supplies, and developing technologies to help track the spread of the virus and support infected citizens.

Theo E.J. Wilson

Performance Poet

Theo E.J. Wilson (aka Lucifury) is a founding member of the Denver Slam Nuba team, which won the National Poetry Slam in 2011. He began his speaking career in the N.A.A.C.P. at the age of 15, and has always had a passion for social justice. Wilson is Executive Director of Shop Talk Live, Inc., an organization that uses the barbershop as a staging ground for community dialogue and healing. In 2017, he published his first book, The Law of Action. His TEDxMileHigh talk, “A black man goes undercover in the alt-right,” has over 10 million views online.

Vio the Violinist

Musician

Vio is a musician & creative based in Denver, Colorado.