Trish Tillman
Trish Tillman has over 30 years of experience as a theater arts teacher, actor, director and improviser.
In addition to five years as the director of the Artistic Learning Department at California Shakespeare Theater, she has led highly successful and engaging sessions in board retreats and inter-departmental planning meetings on how to effectively communicate the mission and passion of a company.
A graduate of Northwestern University in Performance Studies, Trish studied the psychological and cultural aspects of performance in society. She later studied in New York with the renowned film director Mike Nichols and the founder of Chicago’s famous Second City, Paul Sills in earning a Masters in Dramatic Performance and Teaching Theater from Antioch University/New Actors Workshop. Trish’s experience with a variety of personalities and abilities is based on years of coaching communication skills with classroom teachers, MFA students, elder care workers, senior citizens and disabled young adults. She ignites a performer’s abilities and confidence by finding the riches in complex texts and linking them to moments of spontaneous, personal discovery.
She has performed for many years during the Student Ideas Festival, along with 10 students, “Romeo and Juliet in 30 seconds” in front of over 1,200 public school students and received a standing ovation.
Jeremi Suri
Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.
His other books include: The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office; Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama; Henry Kissinger and the American Century; and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente.
His writings appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, Wired, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other media. Professor Suri is a popular public lecturer and comments frequently on radio and television news. His writing and teaching have received numerous prizes, including the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas and the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts.
Professor Suri hosts a weekly podcast: “This is Democracy.”
He publishes a daily newsletter on history, politics, and leadership: Democracy of Hope.
Deepak Srivastava, M.D.
Deepak Srivastava, M.D., is President of the Gladstone Institutes, an independent nonprofit life science research institute with a mission of driving a new era of discovery in disease-oriented science. Dr. Srivastava directs the Roddenberry Stem Cell Center at Gladstone, and is a Professor of Pediatrics and Biochemistry & Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center.
Dr. Srivastava received his B.S. from Rice University, M.D. from University of Texas, trained in pediatrics at UCSF, and in pediatric cardiology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Srivastava’s laboratory discovered the genetic basis for several human cardiac birth defects and revealed complex gene networks that regulate stem cells to adopt a cardiac cell fate and subsequently fashion a functioning heart. He has leveraged this knowledge to convert scar-forming cells in the heart directly into muscle-like cells to regenerate damaged hearts.
He has co-founded two biotech companies to take such discoveries to clinical trials, and is a former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Dr. Srivastava is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.
Irena Smith
Irena Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir, The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays and Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip.
Her obsession with how words work began early (as a child growing up in Soviet Russia, she was known to occasionally stand on furniture and recite Pushkin poems), and her writing focuses on migration, memory, motherhood, generational expectations, the petty indignities of middle age, and the importance of embracing a broader, more generous vision of success.
Irena’s writing has been featured in Huffington Post, Writer’s Digest, Electric Literature, and Mutha Magazine. She also writes two popular Substacks, Personal Statements and The Curmudgeon’s Guide to College Admissions, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, a rotating cast of children, and two ungovernable cats.
MORE INFO: www.irenasmith.com
Tina Seelig
Tina Seelig is Executive Director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars a Stanford University, Director Emerita of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and has taught at Stanford dschool since its inception twenty years ago.
Dr. Seelig earned her PhD in Neuroscience at Stanford Medical School, and has been a management consultant, entrepreneur, and author of several books on leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including What I Wish I Knew About Luck, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, Creativity Rules, and inGenius.
She has been recognized for her contributions with the Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the Olympus Innovation Award, and the Silicon Valley Visionary Award.
MORE INFO: Tina Seelig
Michael Alec Rose
Michael Alec Rose is a composer in many genres. His opera Lolly Willowes was premiered in 2019, supported by Houston Arts Alliance. In the past two weeks, Rose’s ballet Flower Shop was given six premiere performances in Austin, Texas by Ventana Ballet and Austin Camerata.
Recent works composed for violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved to play on historic instruments (2021-2025) have been filmed on site at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, the Library of Congress, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, and The Paganini Collection at Palazzo Tursi in Genoa, Italy.
Last month at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Peter performed the composer’s new work inspired by the huge 16th-century Dante Tapestry designed by Francesco Salviati. Rose is Professor of Composition at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, where he has received several university awards for excellence in teaching.
This year, Rose presented to over 20,000 students as part of the Student Ideas Festival.
Lots of his music can be found on YouTube, SoundCloud, and at https://michaelalecrose.com
David Pogue
David Pogue is a seven-time Emmy-winning correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning.” Before that, he wrote the New York Times tech column for 13 years, and he hosted 20 specials on “NOVA,” the PBS science show.
With over 3 million books in print, David is one of the world’s bestselling how-to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the “for Dummies” series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music).
In 1999, he launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which grew to include 120 titles. He’s the author of “How to Prepare for Climate Change” (2021), a practical guide to protecting your home, family, and finances from the chaos, and the New York Times bestseller “Apple: The First 50 Years” (2026).
David graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1985, with distinction in Music, and he spent ten years conducting and arranging Broadway musicals in New York. He lives an hour from New York City with his wife Nicki; they have a blended family of five children.
Kliph Nesteroff
Kliph Nesteroff, a comedy historian, is the author of four books including The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy.
A regular on WTF with Marc Maron, Nesteroff was recently featured in Judd Apatow’s HBO documentary Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man. His expertise was featured in the Emmy-winning film George Carlin’s American Dream and Rob Reiner’s final production, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.
Nesteroff produced The History of Comedy on CNN, The Dark Side of Comedy on Hulu, and hosted the TV series Funny How for Vice and executive producer Spike Jonze.
His latest book, “Sorry, We’re Funny: How Canada Became a Comedy Powerhouse,” will be published by Penguin Random House in October 2026.
Peter C. Mancall
Peter C. Mancall is Distinguished Professor; the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities; the Linda and Harlan Martens Director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; and Professor of History, Anthropology, and Economics at the University of Southern California
His eight books include DEADLY MEDICINE: INDIANS AND ALCHOL IN EARLY AMERICA (Cornell, 1995); HAKLUYT’S PROMISE: AN ELIZABETHAN’S OBSESSION FOR AN ENGLISH AMERICA (Yale, 2007); FATAL JOURNEY: THE FINAL EXPEDITION OF HENRY HUDSON—A TALE OF MUTINY AND MURDER IN THE ARCTIC (Basic Books, 2009); NATURE AND CULTURE IN THE EARLY MODERN ATLANTIC (Penn, 2018); and THE TRIALS OF THOMAS MORTON: AN ANGLICAN LAWYER, HIS PURITAN FOES, AND THE BATTLE FOR A NEW ENGLAND (Yale, 2019).
In 2012 he was the Mellon Distinguished Lecturer in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania; in the 2019-2020 academic year he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University; and he was the Robert C. Ritchie Distinguished Fellow at the Huntington Library in 2024-2025.
His newest book, CONTESTED CONTINENT: THE STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA, C. 1000-1680, which is volume one of the Oxford History of the United States, was published on June 1, 2026.
MORE INFO: www.petercmancall.com
Juan Paredes Magana, MD MHA
Juan Paredes Magana, MD MHA was born and raised in Salinas, California, specifically the Boronda neighborhood. He attended local public schools. After completing his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, he went on to attend the University of Washington School of Medicine where he completed a dual MD/MHA degree. He completed his medical training in Internal Medicine at Duke University and returned home to join the medical team at Community Hospital of Monterey County as a Hospitalist. His role is to work within a multidisciplinary team of providers to care for hospitalized patients.
His parents always stressed the importance of “service, community, and acting rather than complaining when we see a need”. Following the footsteps of his two sisters, who returned home to work as medical providers for patients living in the Salinas Valley, he felt it was important to return home and give back to his community.
He would not be where he is today if it were not for the support of his family, friends, Garcias, mentors, professors and individuals who believed in his dream of becoming a physician. He gets to live his dream every day because of the support he received, and he feels it is only right to “pay it forward and do the same for others who wish to walk along a similar path”.
He is passionate about opening the doors to students who come from low-income, first-generation college backgrounds who wish to pursue a career in medicine. His hope is that students who move on to complete their medical training return home to work in Monterey County.
Magana presented to the local Monterey County students during the 2026 Student Ideas Festival; his message will reach 20,000+ local students.