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Walter Ray Watson is a senior producer for NPR News.

American conductor Matthew Robertson (b. 1986) is the founder and driving voice of the professional choir and orchestra The Thirteen, which he has led in more than two hundred concerts, two dozen concert tours, nine commercial recordings, and numerous world premieres. Noted for boundary-defying performances that “transfigure the listener” (The Washington Post), for his “incisive tempos and dramatic pacing” (Washington Classical Review) and “flowing lines and dramatic climaxes”(Fanfare Magazine, UK), Robertson’s vision has led to acclaimed performances of a diverse repertoire, often featuring use of staging and multimedia, and to The Thirteen’s winning the Most Creative Programming Award from the Greater Washington Area Choral Music Awards.

Suraya Mohamed is a three-time Peabody Award-winning producer, sound designer and editor. She currently serves as the project manager for Jazz Night In America and is a contributing producer on the Alt.Latino podcast. She also produces NPR's holiday specials package, including Tinsel Tales, Hanukkah Lights, Toast Of The Nation, Pink Martini's Joy To The World: A Holiday Spectacular and most recently Hamilton: A Story Of US. You'll also find her work on the Tiny Desk series as either a producer or engineer.

Aarti Shahani is a correspondent for NPR. Based in Silicon Valley, she covers the biggest companies on earth. She is also an author. Her first book, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares (out Oct. 1, 2019), is about the extreme ups and downs her family encountered as immigrants in the U.S. Before journalism, Shahani was a community organizer in her native New York City, helping prisoners and families facing deportation. Even if it looks like she keeps changing careers, she's always doing the same thing: telling stories that matter.

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Petra Mayer died on November 13, 2021. She has been remembered by friends and colleagues, including all of us at NPR. The Petra Mayer Memorial Fund for Internships has been created in her honor.

Vinroy D. Brown, Jr. is a conductor, musicologist, and educator with academic and professional experience in choral conducting, sacred music, and music education. He currently serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sacred Music at Westminster Choir College, where he conducts the Westminster Jubilee Singers, teaches in the Baccalaureate Honors Program, directs the Westminster Vocal Institute, and is the Founder and Curator of the university-wide Celebration of Black Music. He previously served as Lecturer of Music in the College of Communication and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University, where he developed and taught the institution’s inaugural course in music and social justice. In addition to his academic work, Brown serves as Minister of Creative Worship, Music & Arts at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. He is also Artistic Director and Conductor of Capital Singers of Trenton.

Inspired by narrative, magical realism, speculative fiction and making better humans through art, the music of Timothy C. Takach is a mainstay in the concert world. Applauded for his melodic lines, text choices and rich, intriguing harmonies, his compositions are performed worldwide. He is a co-founder of Cantus, Graphite Publishing and Nation, and he is a co-creator of the theatrical production All is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914. Takach has frequent work as a composer-in-residence, presenter, conductor, clinician and lecturer.

Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, and opera. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt. A champion of the female spirit, many of her projects focus on the stories of women. She is a co-founder of Graphite Publishing and the band Nation, singing her heart out every chance she gets.

Hannah Allam is a Washington-based national security correspondent for NPR, focusing on homegrown extremism. Before joining NPR, she was a national correspondent at BuzzFeed News, covering U.S. Muslims and other issues of race, religion and culture. Allam previously reported for McClatchy, spending a decade overseas as bureau chief in Baghdad during the Iraq war and in Cairo during the Arab Spring rebellions. She moved to Washington in 2012 to cover foreign policy, then in 2015 began a yearlong series documenting rising hostility toward Islam in America. Her coverage of Islam in the United States won three national religion reporting awards in 2018 and 2019. Allam was part of McClatchy teams that won an Overseas Press Club award for exposing death squads in Iraq and a Polk Award for reporting on the Syrian conflict. She was a 2009 Nieman fellow at Harvard and currently serves on the board of the International Women's Media Foundation.