Elisabeth Soep is Senior Producer and Research Director at Youth Radio, the Oakland-based, youth-driven production company that serves as NPR’s official youth desk. The Youth Radio stories Lissa has produced with teen reporters for public media outlets have been recognized with honors including two Peabody Awards, three Murrow Awards, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. With a PhD from Stanford University’s School of Education, Lissa has written about digital media and learning for academic journals (Harvard Educational Review, National Civic Review, Comunicar); popular outlets (Boing Boing, NPR, Edutopia); and books including Drop that Knowledge (Soep & Chávez, UC Press) and Youthscapes (Maira & Soep, UPenn Press). With Asha Richardson, she co-founded Youth Radio’s Mobile Action Lab, which was among the first projects worldwide in which youth partner with professional designers and developers to create mobile apps that engage their communities.

Adam J. Banks is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education and new Faculty Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Prior to arriving at Stanford he served on the faculty of the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky and the Syracuse University Writing Program. He is the author of Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age and Race, Rhetoric and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground, which was awarded the Computers and Composition 2007 Best Book Award.

Cherise McBride is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches courses in the Multicultural Urban Secondary English Master’s and credential program on Digital Pedagogy and Practicum field supervision. She is also a Teacher Consultant with Bay Area Writing Project where she provides instructional coaching and professional development to in-service teachers. With a decade of experience teaching English in at the high school, adult school and community college levels, Cherise is committed to training urban educators to consider the multiple literacies and strengths that youth bring with them to the classroom, and to consider the ways that literacy is shifting in the 21st century.

Petra Dierkes-Thrun teaches Comparative Literature and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University, and is Director of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning for the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. She is an advocate of digital pedagogy to support and develop the Humanities by bridging the past and the present, not only in academia, but society at large. The Phi Beta Kappa Society (Northern California chapter) recently recognized her teaching with a Teaching Excellence Award. Petra’s academic research focuses on Oscar Wilde and his circle, forgotten women writers, and feminist and LGBTQ literature and history since the 19th century, as well as digital pedagogy involving social media and blended learning in the Humanities. At Stanford, she is engaged in Stanford’s new “CS+X” program, a joint undergraduate major between Computer Science and the Humanities that offers new interdisciplinary and integrated perspectives on teaching and learning. Petra also works as an advisory editor for boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, and was the founding editor of the open-access, literary-feminist internet journal The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies.