Preston Gannaway, is an independent documentary photographer, who for 15 years, has focused on intimate stories about American families and subcultures. Her story on the St. Pierre family, Remember Me, was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Gannaway’s foundation in community photojournalism developed during her 12 years as a staff photojournalist for various U.S. newspapers. A native of North Carolina, she is currently based in Oakland, California, where she accepts editorial and commercial work while pursuing long-term projects. Her first book, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, is being published in late 2014. Her work has been honored in national and international competitions, including POYi, NPPA’s BOP, Critical Mass, American Photography and Communication Arts. Most recently, she was a grant recipient for the 2014 Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award and the Documentary Project Fund.

John Sale is the visuals editor at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. In 28 years as a picture editor, he has learned a lot from remarkable photojournalists and has felt fortunate to support their work in publications that value documentary photography and community journalism. The Ohio University graduate also worked at the Pittsburgh Press – starting as a teenage intern in 1973 – and at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. Over the years he has been very proud of home teams winning top awards from University of Missouri’s POYi competition.

Jessie Wender is a senior photo editor at National Geographic Magazine where she commissions and researches photography for the magazine's short form features, including Visions, Photo Journal, and the Departments section. She was formerly a photo editor at The New Yorker, commissioning the magazine's portraiture, photography for the arts and culture features, and writing for the magazine’s Photo Booth blog. Prior to that, she worked in the photo departments of Esquire and Time Inc., and for the photo agency VII.

Uwe H. Martin is a visual storyteller and multimedia producer at the Bombay Flying Club. His long-term projects combine photography with documentary film, text and sound. Currently he partners with Frauke Huber on a set of multimedia documentaries about the global commons water, seed and land: White Gold investigates the social and environmental effects of global cotton production. Their new visual research project LandRush explores the impact of large-scale agro investments on rural economies and land-rights, the boom of renewable fuels, the reallocation of land and the future of agriculture around the world. Both projects are part of World of Matter, which investigates primary materials and the complex ecologies of which they are a part. In 2010 Uwe founded Aggreys Dream, a project supporting a school in a slum in Mombasa, Kenya, which became the blueprint for the establishing of the Freelens Foundation. His work has been recognized with the German Reporter Award 2011, the Greenpeace Award in 2014 and the Development Media Award 2013.

Meredith Birkett is Managing Editor for Verse, a website launching in 2015 focusing on interactive visual storytelling. Previously, she spent 14 years managing multimedia special projects for NBCNews.com. In that role, she produced award-winning still photo and video stories with both staff multimedia journalists and freelancers from around the world. In addition, Meredith shares her expertise at industry workshops such as NPPA's Multimedia Immersion and Eddie Adams.

Brad is a photographer, videographer, and public radio storyteller. He works at The Washington Post as a video journalist and is the creator of "First and 17," the Post's documentary video series on 2013's top high school football recruit. His visual work has appeared on the websites of NPR, MediaStorm, the AARP Bulletin Today, and elsewhere, and his audio pieces have aired on NPR's All Things Considered Weekend. He received a Master’s in Multimedia Storytelling from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and got a bachelor's degree at UNC-Chapel Hill. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two daughters and likes hitchhiking, backpacking, eating pickled foods, and talking to plants.