Our Keynotes

Andrea Armstrong

Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans  ·  MacArthur Fellow

Andrea Armstrong has spent her career making visible what the legal system works hard to hide — WHO is locked up, under what conditions, and why. A law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans and MacArthur "Genius" grantee, she publishes in the country's leading law journals on civil rights, incarceration, and public health. She clerked in the Eastern District of Louisiana. She knows this city and she knows exactly what's at stake when Black Data falls into the wrong hands.

Jo Banner

Co-Founder, The Descendants Project  ·  St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana

Jo Banner grew up in the shadow of the plantations that enslaved her ancestors and she never looked away. As co-founder of The Descendants Project in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, she fights to have the burial grounds of enslaved people recognized as sacred sites and protected from the industries that keep encroaching on them. She has spoken before the United Nations. She is actively rewriting what it means to own the land your people built.

Gia Hamilton

Applied Anthropologist  ·  Co-Founder, Little Maroons  ·  Director, New Orleans African American Museum

Gia Hamilton builds institutions where none existed and finds community where others see empty space. From co-founding little maroons, an African-centered school, to establishing Gris Gris Lab as a creative incubator, to directing the New Orleans African American Museum, she has spent two decades designing environments where imagination is treated as infrastructure. As a researcher, educator, and applied anthropologist, she brings a pinch of Social Magic™ to every room she enters — and the rooms are never the same after.