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Kardea Brown, Gullah Geechee cook and host of Food Network’s Delicious Miss Brown and OWN’s The Great Soul Food Cook-Off, is author of The Way Home: A Celebration of Sea Islands Food and Family.

Soni Brown is a writer and editor. She is currently working on a book about repatriating to Jamaica from the US. Soni lives in Montego Bay with her family and a polydactyl cat, Priscilla Purrsley.

Donna Torrence is a publicist and journalist based in New York City. She contributes feature stories on entertainment, health, and wellness to AARP, poisedmag.com, and Eurweb.com. She also covers film and television for blackfilm.com.

Michelle Petties is a Food Story coach, recovering food addict, and emotional eating expert who gives voice to what happens at the intersection of food, feelings, and everyday life. Her award-winning memoir, Leaving Large – The Stories of a Food Addict, is not a weight-loss book—it's a powerful reckoning with the past and a path toward healing and wholeness. A speaker and workshop facilitator, Michelle helps participants uncover their food truths and reclaim their power

Jeanine DeHoney's writing appears online, in magazines such as Essence, and as an essayist in anthologies such as Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul, and Zora's Den, among others. Her writing has won or been shortlisted in several literary contests including The Colorism Healing Anthology. Jeanine was an Honor Award winner for Sleeping Bear Press's Own Voices, Own Stories 2022 Honor Award season and her debut children's picture book, acquired by Sleeping Bear Press, is entitled, "This Sunday My Daddy Came To Church," about accepting the different ways we worship.

As AARP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Edna Kane Williams has the responsibility for driving AARP’s enterprise diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy encompassing our workforce, workplace, and marketplace. She leads strategies for multicultural audiences and age discrimination and oversees the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Advisory Council and AARP’s Strategic Enterprise Employee Resource Groups. Before this appointment, she served as Senior Vice President of Multicultural Marketing at AARP.Kane Williams holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A from George Washington University. She was a Coro Foundation Fellow and a Diversity Executive Leadership Program fellow for the American Society of Association Executives. Kane Williams was also named one of Diversity Woman Magazine’s Elite 100 for 2022. She is currently on the advisory board for the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, the Board of Trustees for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre Company, and the Legal Counsel for the Elderly. She previously served as a board member of the Black Women’s Health Imperative and The Center for Responsible Lending.

Shelley Emling is Senior Director, Specialized Media at AARP, and Executive Editor of The Girlfriend, The Ethel, The Girlfriend Book Club, Instagram, The Ethel Circle and The Ethel On-The-Go. Previously she was a longtime foreign correspondent for Cox Newspapers, based first in Miami — covering Latin America and the Caribbean — and then based in London — covering Europe. She's also the author of five books and has three children. She and her husband divide their time between Montclair, NJ and the Catskills. More information can be found at shelleyemling.com.

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