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Since 2005, Scoop has been a member of the ESPN family writing for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com’s Page 2. During his time at ESPN, Scoop has primarily covered basketball on a weekly basis. Additionally, Scoop has often campaigned in his articles against injustices against African Americans in sports.  In addition to his written appearances in the pages of ESPN’s magazine and website, Scoop has also made numerous television and digital appearances for the network.

Prior to joining ESPN, Scoop wrote for a variety of publications, including editor at large of Slam Magazine, executive editor of XXL, and associate editor for Hoops and Inside Stuff magazines. Scoop also was a copy writer and author for Nike, where he helped create Lebron James: Chambers of Fears. He has also written for the USA Today, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Source and Vibe magazines. Scoop has authored two books. In 1997, Scoop wrote a book entitled True to the Game and in 2002 he wrote Sole Provider: Thirty Years of NIKE Basketball.

During his career, Scoop has been awarded a number of awards recognizing his work. Scoop was the recipient of the Peter Lisagor Award for Sports Journalism (1999) and the National Rainbow Coalition Sports Journalist of the Year award (2001). In 2007, he received honorable mention for Best American Sports Writer.

Scoop was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Scoop continues to reside in Chicago with his wife and two children.

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Tef built his reputation as a battle rapper in St. Louis and has continued to grow and expand his vision to a broader spectrum. Always having penchant for politics and social justice – the subject matter easily found itself laced throughout his music. However, Tef Poe does not consider himself a “conscious rapper”. Humans are complex and multidimensional. His music is a reflection of that same human experience. This holistic approach has resulted in a healthy catalog of well received projects.

 

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She is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. She has co-founded multiple organizations and projects over the years including the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander and the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT) among others. She has also served on numerous nonprofit boards.

She has extensive experience working on issues of racial justice, gender justice, transformative/restorative justice and multiple forms of violence. She has been active in the anti-violence against women and girls movement since 1989. Her experience includes coordinating emergency shelter services at Sanctuary for Families in New York City, serving as the co-chair of the Women of Color Committee at the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network, working as the prevention and education manager at Friends of Battered Women and their Children (now called Between Friends), serving on the founding advisory board of the Women and Girls Collective Action Network (WGCAN), and being a member of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence.  She currently organizes with the Survived and Punished collective.

She was a member and co-founder of We Charge Genocide, an inter-generational effort which documented police brutality and violence in Chicago and sent youth organizers to Geneva, Switzerland to present their report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture. She is an advisory board member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, a group (along with Project NIA and WCG) that worked to get the Chicago City Council to pass a reparations law providing restitution to the victims of Jon Burge, a police commander who tortured more than 200 criminal suspects, most of them black men, from the 1970s through the early 1990s.

She is currently a founding advisory board member of the Chicago Community Bond Fund. The CCBF pays bond for people charged with crimes in Cook County, Illinois. Through a revolving fund, CCBF supports individuals whose communities cannot afford to pay the bonds themselves and who have been impacted by structural violence.

 

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In addition to his own musical endeavors, Mic also leads hip-hop writing workshops for young people and is a sought-after speaker, having delivered the keynote address at the Sitting Bull College Youth Summit, University of South Dakota Building Bridges Conference, and many others. Mic serves as a Turnaround artist for the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Mic was named 2016 North Dakota Hip Hop Artist of the year. He speaks directly to youth about the issues of alcoholism, and suicide. He shares his life story and how he overcame adversity with the power of music.

As a musician, Mic Jordan indigenizes hip-hop, bending the genre to tell his story in an honest way that reflects the positive values of his traditional culture.

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She is the author of many works that focus on youth, gender, racism, language, culture, identity, sociolinguistics, discourse and interaction, including the Daedulus (2011) publication “Hiphop and the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form” (with Dionne Bennett), Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and her book The Real Hiphop – Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground (Duke University Press, 2008).  Her most recent book publication is Speech Communities with Cambridge University Press (2014).

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Mujeres Trabajando was established in 2009 to promote culture in its various forms. The central work is to disseminate and promote the culture by presenting the individual work of the members through shared and communal spaces. Mujeres Trabajando drives artistic creation by women, and incentivizes their self-development, guaranteeing the holistic development of the woman and her active and equal participation in working and artistic spaces in Mexican society.

For her part, Audry Funk has performed in national and international forums, including countries such as Chile, Bolivia, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and the United States.

She has shared the stage with artists of international renown such as Alika, Zona Ganjha, Dread Mar I, Cultura Alika, Zona Ganjha, Dread Mar I, Cultura Profética, Los de Abajo, Ariana Puello, Violadores del Verso, and Mala Rodríguez among others.

Her music knows no borders, and the message it carries as its standard is that of unity and respect. In her songs one finds support for women, and gender equality. They speak of the things that she has experienced, feels, and thinks, and are accompanied by the basic rhythm of hip hop with Latin and funk flavors, combined with her particular voice that surrounds and hypnotizes those who hear it.

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Darnell’s advocacy centers on marginal identity, youth development and other social justice issues in the U.S. and abroad. He has led and participated in several critical dialogues including the 58th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington National Panel on Race, Discrimination and Poverty, the 2012 Seminar on Debates on Religion and Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School, and as a member of the first U.S. delegation of LGBTQ leaders to Palestine in 2012.

A prolific writer, Darnell has been published in various media outlets including MSNBC, The Guardian, Huffington Post, EBONY, The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Gawker, Truth Out, VICE, Guernica, Mondoweiss, Thought Catalog, Good Men Project and others, as well as numerous academic journals including QED: A Journal in GLBTQ World Making, Women Studies Quarterly, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology, Transforming Anthropology, Black Theology: An International Journal, and Harvard Journal of African American Policy, among others.

Darnell has held positions of Visiting Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Yale Divinity School, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. He is presently Writer-in-Residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexuality, and Social Justice at Columbia University. He has taught in the Women and Gender’s Studies and Public Administration departments at Rutgers University, Fordham University, City College of New York City and Vassar College. Darnell has also provided keynote addresses at Harvard University, Williams College, Stony Brook University, New Jersey City University, Stanford University, and the New School.

Darnell received the 2012 Humanitarian Award from the American Conference on Diversity for his advocacy in the City of Newark, where he served as Chair of the LGBTQ Concerns Advisory Commission. He is the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Academic Leadership Award from Rutgers University LGBTQ and Diversity Resource Center for his contributions to developing the Queer Newark Oral History Project. He received the 2013 Angel Award from Gay Men of African Descent and the 2014 Gentleman of the Year Award from the Gentlemen’s Foundation. He was listed as a one of Planned Parenthood’s Top 99 Dream Keepers in 2015 and was featured in USA Today’s #InTheirOwnWords multimedia feature on contemporary civil rights activists. He assisted in organizing the Black Lives Matters Ride to Ferguson in the wake of Mike Brown’s tragic murder. He is presently represented by Chartwell Worldwide Speaker Agency.

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Currently, Daisy produces the podcast, Sooo Many White Guys, and formerly is the Senior Producer for Latino USA. In addition, Daisy hosts a digital series called Future Present for the millennial news site Mic.com. The show explores overlooked health issues by featuring new technologies meant to address those issues.

In her spare time, Daisy is co-host and co-creator of the popular podcast Serially Obsessed, where she and some friends break down each episode of the podcast Serial.

Prior to Latino USA, Daisy had an internship at Radiolab and in the newsroom at WNYC. Her story “Child of Trouble” was featured in the Peabody-Award winning season of The Moth Radio Hour.

Daisy was recently named a 2015 USC Annenberg Health Reporting Fellow. She holds a master’s degree from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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