Margaret Low is the CEO of WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station. Low joined WBUR after five years at The Atlantic and before that a long and distinguished career at NPR. At WBUR, she leads one of public radio’s premier stations, with the biggest newsroom in the system. In addition to its rich local reporting, WBUR produces a slate of national programs, on air and online, that reach millions of people. Before joining WBUR, Low was a Senior Vice President at The Atlantic and President of its events division. AtlanticLIVE produces more than 100 editorial events a year across the country. Prior to The Atlantic, Low was NPR’s Senior Vice President for News, where she ran the award winning news division and the work of 400+ journalists. Low also spent nine years as NPR’s Vice President for Programming, where she developed the live events strategy for the hit show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! and oversaw all program acquisitions including Car Talk and Fresh Air.

Roxane Cohen Silver, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, the Department of Medicine, and the Program in Public Health at the University of California, Irvine, where she has been actively involved in research, teaching, mentoring and administration since 1989. An international expert in the field of stress and coping, she has spent the past three decades studying acute and long-term psychological and physical reactions to stressful life experiences, including personal traumas such as physical disability, loss, and childhood sexual victimization, as well as larger collective events such as war, firestorms, the Columbine High School shootings, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and other community disasters across the world (including the 2010 8.8 earthquake in Chile and the 2006 destructive earthquake in Yogyakarta, Indonesia).

Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the US Public Health Service. Since December 2003, Dr. Silver has served on numerous senior advisory committees and task forces for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, providing ongoing advice to DHS and its component agencies on the psychological impact of disasters and terrorism. She is also one of the founding Directors of Psychology Beyond Borders, an international nonprofit organization that facilitates research, intervention and policy development in the prevention, preparedness and response to terror attacks, conflict, or natural disasters across the world. Dr. Silver is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (in 4 Divisions) and the Association for Psychological Science.

In 2007 Dr. Silver received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science and in 2010 she received the Public Advocacy Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (for “outstanding and fundamental contributions to advancing social understanding of trauma”). In 2011 she received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (Senior Career) and the Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Trauma Psychology from the American Psychological Association’s Division 56 (Trauma Psychology).

Elana Newman, McFarlin Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa, has conducted research on a variety of topics regarding the psychological and physical response to traumatic life events, assessment of PTSD in children and adults, journalism and trauma, and understanding the impact of participating in trauma-related research from the trauma survivor’s perspective.

She is a past president of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, the world’s premier organization dedicated to trauma treatment, education, research, public policy concerns and theoretical formulation. Her work in journalism and trauma has focused on occupational health of journalists and she and her students have several studies underway examining the effects of journalistic practice upon consumers. She was the key investigator on the Dart Center’s research survey on photojournalists’ exposure to trauma. She co-directed the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s first satellite office in NYC after 9-11.

Mariette DiChristina is the dean of the College of Communication at Boston University and a nationally recognized science journalist.

Before arriving in 2019, DiChristina was the editor-in-chief and executive vice president of Scientific American, as well as executive vice president, magazines, of the magazine’s publisher, Springer Nature. The first woman to head Scientific American since its founding in 1845, she led the editorial team to honors including the coveted National Magazine Award for General Excellence. In her Springer Nature role, she oversaw an editorial and publishing staff of more than 160 people across 10 countries.

Previously, DiChristina served as president of the National Association of Science Writers and as executive editor of Popular Science, where she was named Editor of the Year by the magazine’s publisher, Times Mirror Magazines. She also served as a part-time associate professor and visiting scholar in the graduate Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism and a science writer in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Boston University recognized her work in 2016 with a Distinguished Alumni Award.

Beyond her role as dean, DiChristina chairs the Steering Group for the “Top 10 Emerging Technologies” for the World Economic Forum and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She served as a committee member of the Climate Communications Initiative for the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation advocating for federal funding of basic scientific research.