Macarena Hernández is a multimedia journalist and educational consultant. Formerly, she was an editorial columnist at The Dallas Morning News; the Rio Grande Valley Bureau Chief for The San Antonio Express-News; the Fred Hartman Distinguished Professor of Journalism at Baylor University; and the Victoria Advocate Endowed Professor in the Humanities at the University of Houston-Victoria. She served as founding content editor and production manager for HTI Open Plaza. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and PBS.

Nelly Rosario is the author of Song of the Water Saints: A Novel, winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. She holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction and creative nonfiction work appears in various journals and anthologies, including Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women (Amistad Press/Harper Collins, 2023), Critical Dialogues in Latina and Latino Studies (New York University Press, 2021), and Teaching Black: Pedagogy, Practice, and Perspectives on Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). She has been on faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos, Medgar Evers-CUNY, The City College of New York-CUNY, Columbia University, and was a Visiting Scholar in the MIT Comparative Media/Writing Program. Rosario has served as Assistant Director of Writing for the MIT Black History Project and as founding content editor/webmaster for HTI Open Plaza. Currently, Rosario serves as Chair and Associate Professor in the Latina/o Studies Program at Williams College.