Barbie Kong

Driven by the values of courage and compassion, Derrique DeGagné (MEd) is passionate about school culture and the power of the arts to foster meaningful connections. Derrique is an Assistant Principal at Highlands School and serves on the Citadel Theatre’s Board of Directors and the Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention committee. Recently, Derrique edited and co-wrote Weaving Hope Through Our Education System (Peter Lang) and published Trust and Go: Enhancing Collaborative School Cultures Through Improv (The International Journal for Leadership and Learning).

Caitlin Brodnick is an award-winning actress, writer, and comedian known for roles in A League of Their Own (Amazon), Vida (Starz), and Steven Soderbergh's Command Z. She has performed for years as Maude house team member at the Upright Citizens Brigade, NY, and now hosts her own stand-up variety show, Deliciously Honest, in downtown Los Angeles. She created the Emmy-honored docuseries Screw You Cancer and wrote the popular comedic memoir Dangerous Boobies Breaking Up with My Time-Bomb Breast, with forward by Rachel Bloom. 

Today, we dive into Taylor’s twelfth studio album — a project that feels less like a collection of songs and more like a reclamation of lineage. In many ways, Taylor carries the patrimony of modern female artistry: the inheritance of storytelling, reinvention, and resilience passed down from generations of women who’ve shaped the landscape of music.
As we unpack this new body of work, we’ll explore how her themes of love, ownership, and transformation echo the legacy of Lilith Fair — that revolutionary space of the late 1990s where women musicians claimed their own stage, their own sound, and their own stories. We’ll look at how Taylor’s creative evolution both honors that lineage and redefines what it means to be a woman artist in control of her narrative today.”

Eunice Byun is the co-founder and CEO of Material, a brand that creates kitchenware designed for everyday use and built to last a lifetime. Eunice's entrepreneurial journey began after a decade in finance, marketing, and business development. She left her position as vice president of global digital marketing at Revlon to launch Material, inspired by her love for cooking and her family's Korean American heritage. Her company has garnered recognition for its innovative kitchenware and has been featured in major publications like The New York Times and Forbes.  
 
Northwestern University+5

Detra Payne, (MFA, The New School for Drama/Actors Studio Drama School), is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University, her area of focus is Acting. Professor Payne has acted professionally in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Memphis and in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. She is a founding member and board member of the Los Angeles based theatre company, Sacred Fools. Detra has produced and directed for stage, and has worked on films and television as an actor, production coordinator and talent coordinator. Her written work has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics and Studies in Theatre and Performance. Her research interests include the contributions made by African American Women to the American theatre scene, the intersectionality of acting, movement and other forms of art creation in devising theatre, and developing intentional theatre for online and the uses of AI in actor development and performance. Detra is a member of the Screen Actors Guild American Federation for Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), some of her acting credits include (television):  Chicago Fire, The Big Leap, 24, Moesha, and The Parkers; (film): Tempestad, Forced Move, Kudzo Killers, Imbroglio, Long Black Limousine S for Sally ; (theatre): The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest, A Christmas Carol, She-Wolf, Slideby Babette's Feast, Fabulation or The Re-education of Undine, Miss Edna Lewis, The Mountaintop, The Bluest Eye, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Steel Magnolias, Who Will Bell the Cat Prophet, It's Gulliani Time, and Baby Talk. She is a member of Actors Equity Association (AEA); National Alliance of Acting Teachers (NAAT); Black Theatre Network (BTN); Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) - as a member of the Nominations Committee, Black Theatre Association, the Acting Focus and the Directing Focus Group; and Steering Committee member for the Organization of Women Faculty at Northwestern and a committee member of Northwestern University School of Communications Access and Accountability Committee (AAC). Currently she is developing performances around the topic of grief and grieving, and a one woman show using Shakespeare’s sonnets and monologues.

Riva Goldband is a 40 something stay at home parent of 2 and native New Yorker currently living in the Atlanta area. She is a part time stylist with a closet edit business-find her @editbyriva on instagram. Honesty, sarcasm and realness are her brand, with a side of reality TV obsession. Her husband has a successful crime podcast called “Deviant” available wherever you get your podcasts! 

Teaghan is a multi-discplinary artist and activist leaving in Toronto. 
 

Eileen Álvarez is a Latina Writer/Actor/Director who was raised in the Bay Area by deeply
committed political activist parents who fled Argentina in exile during the "Dirty War." 
Eileenreceived a degree in Philosophy from UCLA, an M.F.A from the Actors Studio, and made her
directorial debut with Finding Mabel, an award winning documentary about Argentina's 30,000
Disappeared. Her sophomore film Grit, a dark comedy about infertility, won several festival
awards and was picked up by Elizabeth Banks' Whohaha. In 2020, Eileen's comedy Pilot Güera
took home first place during the Page International Screenwriting Awards, and in the same year
she joined the writers' room for the adult animated series Close Enough, for HBOMax. In 2021
Eileen joined the inaugural class of the Nalip and Netflix short narrative incubator for Latinx and
Women of Color, where she wrote and directed a psychological thriller comedy entitled Mama
Retreat, starring Annie Gonzalez. Mama Retreat went on to premiere at the Los Angeles Latino
International Film Festival (LALIFF). Eileen has had the pleasure of being hired to write scripts
for shows for Nickelodeon and Sony, and has gone on to develop TV series' with The
Tannenbaum Company, Wilmer Valderrama Entertainment, and Westbrook. Eileen is repped by
Stagecoach Entertainment and Paradigm.

For the hope of it all......
 
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is a brain disease likely caused by repeated head injuries. It causes the nerve cells to die in the brain and gets worse over time. The only way to definitively diagnosis CTE is after death during an autopsy of the brain