Amanda E. Lewis is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy & College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how race shapes educational opportunities and on how our ideas about race get negotiated in everyday life. She has received numerous grants and awards including from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Spencer Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Field Foundation, and the American Sociological Association. Dr. Lewis lectures and consults regularly on issues of racial and educational equity and contemporary forms of racism.

John B. Diamond is Ford Foundation Professor of Sociology and Education Policy at Brown's Department of Sociology and Annenberg Institute for School Reform, where he directs the Center of Work on Race and Education. A sociologist of race and education, he studies the relationship between social inequality and educational opportunity, examining how educational leadership, policies, and practices operate through school organizations to shape students' educational opportunities and outcomes. An engaged scholar, Diamond has helped create space for community-engaged scholarship in sociology and education. He was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2023 and is an American Educational Research Association Fellow.