Sarah van Gelder is a founder of a new nonprofit start-up, PeoplesHub, which offers live, online training to local groups around the country who want to make change where they live. Sarah is also YES! Magazine Co-Founder and Columnist, a public speaker, and the author of the new book, The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000 Mile Journey Through a New America (Berrett Koehler, 2017). She also edited Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference, and This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement (both with Berrett Koehler).

Jacqueline Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women's rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Patterson served as a Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women's rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Patterson served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.

Kevin and Sol Y Sombra, return again this year to delight us with their music. They were formerly known as the Latin Jazz Project and have strived to express a wide range of musical styles representing the musical heritage of multiple ethnicities embodied in the complexity of American life. Sol Y Sombra have expertise in a wide range of styles, including salsa típica, and “jibaro”, traditional music genres of Cuba and Puerto Rico, respectively. Kevin Doyle is pianist & arranger while WNY’s top jazz artists fill out the group’s roster. They have made noteworthy appearances throughout WNY at such places as Shea’s, Jazz In The Park, M&T Plaza Music Series, Elmwood Village Concert Series, and Lewiston Jazz Festival.

Sol Y Sombra has become a Western New York standard-bearer for Latin jazz. They have expertise in a wide range of styles, including salsa típica, and “jibaro”, traditional music genres of Cuba and Puerto Rico, respectively. Sarah Haykel, a Young Audiences teaching artist in her own right, provides dance instruction at many of their performances.