Peter Lewis is executive director of the progressive strategic communications agency Essential Media, the founder of the collaborative engagement platform Civility and a fellow with the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology. For more than two decades he was worked with progressive organisations including unions, NGOs, not-for-profits and responsible businesses to affect progressive social change. He is a regular columnist with Guardian Australian and Fairfax newspapers as well as the author of five books including Webtopia and The Public Square Project.

Shabnam Safa grew up as a Hazara Afghan refugee in Pakistan before arriving in Australia at the age of 15. Inspired by her own experience of forced displacement, she is a strong advocate for meaningful participation of refugees in addressing the complex challenges of resettlement. She is the Community Development & Training Lead at Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA) and also leads the National Refugee-led Advisory and Advocacy Group (NRAAG) working to create spaces for strategic and influential inclusion of voices with lived experience in shaping policy and public discourse about refugee and people seeking asylum in Australia. Shabnam serves on various Australian civil society and government boards influencing policy design and delivery to address the challenges and opportunities facing refugee and migrant communities. She was recently appointed to the Australian government’s inaugural Refugee Advisory Panel advising Australia’s engagement with the international refugee protection system and humanitarian assistance.

Amanda Tattersall is an Associate Professor of Practice with the Sydney Policy Lab and School of Geosciences. She is the founder of some of Australia’s most interesting social change organisations, including the Sydney Alliance and GetUp.org.au. She hosts the ChangeMakers podcast that tells stories about people trying to change the world. Her book, Power in Coalition, was the first international analytical study of alliance building as a strategy for social change.  As an urban geographer, she focuses on questions of how the city can be a subject for democratic politics, exploring how it can be a space where citizens develop different forms of people power to craft solutions to wicked global problems like climate change, poverty, inequality and the politics of refuge. At the Sydney Policy Lab she is the academic leader of its co-design research method and instigated the Real Deal project, which coordinates place-based projects across the country where communities are supported to develop solutions to climate and economic crisis from the ground up. Her PhD was in industrial relations, and she has previously worked as a union organiser. She has experience in many large social movements including against the War in Iraq, in support of refugee rights and as the President of the National Union of Students (NSW) in 1999.

Lenore Taylor has been the editor of Guardian Australia for seven years and has been with Guardian Australia since its launch in May 2013, when she joined as political editor. Lenore has been honoured with two Walkley Awards and has twice won the Paul Lyneham Award for excellence in press gallery journalism. She is a formidable commentator on the Australian political landscape and has long been a regular guest on radio and television current affairs programs, including the ABC's Insiders.

Lauren Martin was appointed the Kaldor Centre’s first Communications Manager in 2016, joining from the Sydney Opera House, where she was Head of Communications. An award-winning journalist, she co-produced the Kaldor Centre’s storytelling project, ‘Temporary’. She was an editor in Australia at The Sydney Morning Herald and later of The Global Mail, appearing in that capacity at the Sydney and Melbourne Writers Festivals. In the United States, she was Managing Editor of the [Martha’s] Vineyard Gazette and Washington Editor for Institutional Investor publications. She earned a BA in Journalism and Political Science (Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.