What's Your Why?

Nanci Turner Steveson writes for middle grade readers and is an active member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. One of Nanci’s greatest ambitions is to work with kids and inspire them to become two-fisted readers, like herself, and allow their own creativity to soar through the beauty of creative writing. Nanci is dedicated to getting books into the hands of homeless peop...

Sally N. MacNichol Ph. D, is Co-Executive Director of CONNECT, a New York City nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing interpersonal violence and promoting gender justice. She has been an antiviolence activist, advocate and educator for over three decades, counseling victims of domestic violence, designing and facilitating empowerment groups for survivors, working with men who batter and ab...

Todd Parr is the author and illustrator of more than 40 books for children, including the New York Times bestselling The I Love You Book, The Earth Book, and The Thankful Book. His books are available in over fifteen languages throughout the world. He is the co-creator of the popular children's television show ToddWorld as well as short films for Sesame Street. Todd has partnered with Target, SF-M...

Tara Clancy is a fifth-generation native New Yorker, third-generation bartender and first-generation author. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation and The Paris Review Daily. She is a frequent host of The Moth Mainstage live shows, a Moth GrandSLAM winner, and has told stories on the Moth Radio Hour, NPR's Snap Judgment, The Story Collider and Risk...

Tim Sandlin, American novelist and screenwriter. has penned nine novels, 11 screenplays (two of which have been made into movies: Floating Away (1998), which was based on his novel Sorrow Floats and Skipped Parts (2001), based upon the novel of the same name, and a book of humorous essays. He is known to capitalize on comedy and probe serious topics like alcoholism, suicide, and aging. He’s been c...

Alia Ali (Austria, 1985) is a Yemeni-Bosnian-American multi-media artist. Having traveled to sixty-three countries, lived in seven and grown up among five languages, her most comfortable mode of communication is through image and multi-sensory mediums. Her extensive travels have led her to process the world through interactive experiences. As a child of two linguists, Alia believes that the interp...

Michael Sonnenfeldt is an accomplished entrepreneur and philanthropist. Michael has been actively involved over the last twenty-five years at senior levels in numerous non-profit organizations focused on the environment, national security, Middle East peace, international peacekeeping, the US/UN relationship, the removal of land mines and communal development. He recently released a book called "T...

Paul-Gordon Chandler is an author, interfaith advocate, art curator, social entrepreneur and US Episcopal priest. Having grown up in Senegal, West Africa, he has lived and worked extensively in the Middle East and North Africa in leadership roles within faith-based publishing, ecumenical relief and development agencies and the Episcopal Church Based now out of the Chicago area, he is the Founder a...

"Leaving the Cult of Happiness is about walking through the darkness of shame and suffering to the light of compassion, purpose and ultimately fulfillment." Keely is a strategist and writer, with nearly 20 years of experience in advertising and business. She's traveled the world in search of a meaningful life, eventually landing in Jackson Hole. She has a BA in Journalism from the University of Mi...

Peter Aguero was born and raised in the wilds of South Jersey. He is a Moth Grandslam Champion, host of Moth Storylams and an instructor for the Mothshop Community Program. He is also the lead singer of The BTK Band, NYC's Hardest-Drinking Improvised Storytelling Rock Band. Peter loves his Mom.

David Dorfman, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR of David Dorfman Dance since 1987, is a Professor of Dance since 2004. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005 to continue his research and choreography in the topics of power and powerlessness, including activism, dissidence, and underground movements. Since its founding in 1987, David Dorfman Dance has performed extensively throughout North and South America,...

"Diplomacy is the art of having the other guy have it your way." Ambassador Cameron Munter He is the C.E.O. and president of East West Institute a nongovernmental organization that focuses on conflict resolution. Ambassador Munter has been a career diplomat serving in some of the most conflict ridden areas of the globe he served as ambassador to Pakistan from 2010 - 2012, where he guided us Pakist...

New York Times reporters and Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn share their journey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there and how we can learn from others to make a difference. They have written best-selling books: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, Half the Sky: Turni...

Juan Felipe Herrera is the first Mexican American appointed as the 21st United States Poet Laureate. Herrera grew up in California as the son to migrant farm-workers. His childhood as the son of Mexican immigrants strongly shaped much of his work and he began loving poetry by singing about the Mexican Revolution with his mother. He has spent his life crossing borders, erasing boundaries and expand...

Alexandra Fuller wrote a searing memoir about her childhood in Rhodesia as the country struggled to win black majority rule in what is now Zimbabwe, "Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood." While she has not written anything overtly political, she says that everything we do is political from the decision we make to wake up in the morning to the clothes we put on our bodies, to t...

Damien was a naval special operations sniper in the Australian Defense Force. When he completed his 12th tour of duty in Iraq he traveled around the world to discover his life meaning and passion. He ended up in the African bush face-to-face with the horrors the world’s wildlife is facing from poaching and gave up everything from his previous life and started the International Anti-Poaching Founda...

Anna talks about perceptions, boundaries and expectations that confine Native American Art. Using video, sculpture, installations, and photographs, Anna explores themes of Native identity through contemporary mediums, forcing people to readjust how they think of Native-American aesthetics.

Dr. Jeffrey Alan Lockwood is an award-winning author and University of Wyoming professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities Author of "Behind the Carbon Curtain", an exploration of how corporate wealth and power are being used to censor the free expression of ideas in America. At a time in which there is much concern expressed for constitutional freedoms regarding guns, health care, and taxes perh...

Kitty Pilgrim worked as a CNN correspondent and news anchor for 24 years. Kitty talks about her career as a woman and single mother working in the CNN newsroom as well as the variety of assignments that took her around the world to Russia, China, Cuba, the Middle East, Korea and South Africa. Her love for a good story began her journey as a novelist. Her novels, The Explorer’s Code, The Stolen Cha...

Author John Hausdoerffer discusses the Future of Wildness and his new book "Wildness: Relations of People and Place". Co-edited with Gavin Van Horn from the Center for Humans and Nature, Wildness features creative nonfiction essays that explore the spectrum of wildness found in wilderness areas, on working landscapes, and in urban communities. The book merges culturally diverse voices to delve int...

Justice Kite shares her insights as the first female to serve on the Wyoming Supreme Court. She talks about growing up in Wyoming, her decision to serve on the State's highest court and her hopes that her life story would inspire other women.

President and Co-Founder of Nomi Network, is an abolitionist who works to ensure the complete end of human trafficking in her lifetime. Diana’s faith fuels her drive for justice. Her conviction stems from a research trip to Cambodia where she personally witnessed young children trafficked and sold.

Author Nina McConigley discusses her family and growing up in Wyoming in a racially diverse family. Explore the humanities in Wyoming at thinkwy.org.

W. Kamau Bell is a sociopolitical comedian and host of the hit Emmy Award nominated CNN docu-series, United Shades of America. W. Kamau Bell talks about his life work as a political comedian and what that means for him personally and professionally.

Former Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan and U.S Ambassador to Ireland talks civility in politics and how a Democratic governor can serve two terms as governor in a Republican state. Sullivan was a key participant in the 1998 peace accord in Northern Ireland and named the 2016 Citizen of the West.