Allissa V. Richardson
Journalist, author, and educator
USC Annenberg
Pronouns: she/her
Allissa V. Richardson, PhD is an assistant professor of journalism at USC Annenberg. She researches how African Americans use mobile and social media to produce innovative forms of journalism — especially in times of crisis. Richardson is the author of Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism (Oxford University Press, 2020). The book explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who have documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter.
Richardson’s research is informed by her award-winning work as a journalism innovator. She is considered a pioneer in mobile journalism (MOJO), having launched the world’s first smartphone-only college newsrooms in 2010, in the U.S., Morocco and South Africa.
Richardson won the National Association of Black Journalists’ prestigious Journalism Educator of the Year (‘12) award for her international work.
You can read more about Allissa's work on her website, or view her natural language AI project that corrects the historical record for people who have been misrepresented or maligned in mainstream media.
Ashley Shew
Philosopher of technology and biotech ethicist
Virginia Tech
Pronouns: she/her
Ashley Shew is an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Her current research sits at the intersection of technology studies, biotech ethics, and disability studies. She is recipient of an NSF CAREER Award for work on disability narrative about technology, and a principal investigator of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Higher Learning project that supports the creation of a regional Disability Community Technology (DisCoTec) Center providing guidance for developing disabled-led technology and disability-forward technological futures through humanities-based scholarship and disability justice education, arts, and outreach. Shew is the author of Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) and a forthcoming open textbook, co-edited with Hanna Herdegen, Technology and Disability. Both books focus on the stories disabled people tell about technologies that people do not always expect.
Ashley’s past work has been in ethics of technology with particular interest in technological knowledge, animal studies, and emerging technologies. She is a past co-editor-in-chief of Techné, the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. She is sole author of Technological Knowledge and Animal Constructions (2017) and co-editor of three philosophy of technology volumes: Spaces for the Future (with Joe Pitt, 2017), Feedback Loops (with Andrew Garnar, 2020), and Reimagining Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde (with Glen Miller, 2020).
Shew believes in cross-disciplinary, cross-disability, and public-facing scholarship: she has written for IEEE Technology & Society, Nursing Clio, Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. She is a grateful participant with her local disability advocacy and activist communities.
Michael Running Wolf
AI ethicist, author, and founder
IndigiGenius
Pronouns: he/him
Michael Running Wolf (Northern Cheyenne/Lakota/Blackfeet) was raised in a rural prairie village with intermittent water and electricity on his mother’s reservation in Montana; naturally he now has a Master of Science in Computer Science. He is a published poet but a computer nerd at heart with professional experience as an engineer for IBM, AT&T Wireless, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and Amazon’s Alexa. Michael was faculty at Northeastern University and is the Vice-President of Software Systems at an AI startup.
Michael is an AI ethicist who envisions an Indigenous future where Indigenous communities, alongside reclaiming their languages, attain technological sovereignty while addressing data ownership and systemic barriers to Indigenous AI. He is co-author of the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper, co-founder and Board President of IndigiGenius, as well as co-founder and Lead Architect of First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR). He is a 2024-25 The Tech for Global Good Laureate and, among other awards, his work researching an automatic speech recognition system for highly polysynthetic languages has been recognized with the Patrick J. McGovern AI for Humanity Prize.
In his applied research, consultant work, and speaking engagements, Michael is an advocate for Indigenous ways of knowing, data justice, and AI ethics, contributing to the ecology of thought represented by the Indigenous.
