Amelia Bailey is a New York City-based violinist and a member of the Albany Symphony. She earned her master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music under Sheryl Staples and graduated from the University of Virginia in 2021 with degrees in Music Performance and Environmental Science. A Virginia native, she trained with members of the National Symphony Orchestra and was a fellow in the NSO Youth Fellowship Program.

Berndt Abeck is a designer based in San Francisco originally from Germany. 

He founded Abeck Inc. in 2014 a design studio that partners with both startups and established companies on branding websites and UX/UI systems. Clients include Facebook, SAP, Bayer and the Williams Sonoma family of brands.

When he’s not working or spending time with family you’ll likely find Berndt in the ocean—swimming or surfing.

Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer, whose latest book is Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, published by Harper/Harper Collins in 2024. His work has been featured in numerous magazines including: The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Travel and Leisure, Partisan Review, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Art Forum, Harper's Bazaar, The Nation, and The Daily Beast. A Guggenheim fellow in Biography, he has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, and a Furthermore grant in publishing from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. He lives in New York City.

Brett Mickelson is the owner of Boston Skydive Center where he teaches people to fly every day!  He and Michael met while they both worked in product management at NBC News Group.

Clover Hope is a Brooklyn-based writer, creative consultant, and author of the award-winning book The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop. Over the course of two decades, she’s held editorial positions at Billboard, Vibe, XXL, and Jezebel. She’s written for publications like GQ, Elle, Esquire, Men’s Health, Essence, and WSJ magazine, among others. Her notable creative productions include Beyoncé’s Emmy-winning visual film Black Is King and the Hulu docuseries Rap Caviar Presents.

Connie currently lives in Massachusetts and works as piano teacher and pianist for ballet classes. Previously, she worked as a piano tech and freelance musician. She has a delightful husband she met in a pit. (Pit orchestra, that is.)

Jonathan has worked for 37 years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  He and his wife Wendy Bernays have three sons, one grandson and one on the way.  He's an avid cyclist and mountaineer.

Photographer Joyce Seymore has explored the world through her camera lens for over 50 years. Her passion for photography began at the University of Florida, where she majored in art history and studied with master photographer Jerry Uelsmann, who inspired her love of darkroom printing. Seymore has created a decades-long series on ferns, whose subtle variations continue to intrigue her. She has continued her botanical photography while also exploring urban landscapes. In 2011, she was invited as a Visiting Artist to the American Academy in Rome, where she spent seven weeks documenting the graffiti and tattered posters on the city’s ancient walls. Forty of these photos were included in her open studio at the Academy and later at the National Arts Club in New York. More recently, she has traveled many times to India to explore the vibrant surfaces of its cities. 

Kathryn worked as CMO for a tech firm, then consulted. She’s retired from commercial work. Now she’s volunteering with her town on affordable housing and serving on a foundation that funds housing for the poor. Her photo is from a packrafting trip to Alaska with her husband. 

Mekhola Bose was born and raised in Kolkata, West Bengal and currently resides in Mumbai, Maharashtra. As a street-style dancer, she is known for specializing in the '70s dance known as punking/waacking, which was born in the queer clubs of Los Angeles. With a diploma in contemporary arts, Mekhola has dabbled in styles such as Bharatnatyam, Kathak, jazz, tap dancing, and ballet; she learned various street dance styles such as locking, breaking and popping. As a choreographer and dance teacher, Mekhola has coached 500+ students and teams across India, and she competed in dance battles for the past decade. Mekhola stars in the 2024 Amazon Prime original drama series Waack Girls, directed by Sooni Taraporevala; Mekhola also had a featured role in the 2020 Netflix movie Yeh Ballet.  Aside from dancing and acting, Mekhola works as a model, and has a passion for drumming. As a student and teacher, she continues to pursue her passion for the performing arts.

Nancy retired from a wide variety of jobs, and is continuing a long commitment to volunteerism: currently co-chair of Follen Church Buildings and Grounds committee in Lexington Massachusetts and starting her third term on Lexington’s Tree Committee. Her husband Steve recently retired, and their kids are both scientists living in Maine.  Nancy's hobbies include gardening, knitting, baking and jam-making

Rytasha, who stars in the TV series Waack Girls on Amazon Prime, is an actor and human in progress. Whimsically romancing life in all its colours, her personal mission is to continue to be part of stories that make the audience laugh, cry and feel less alone.

Sooni Taraporevala directed and co-wrote the 2024 Amazon Prime series Waack GIrls. She also wrote and directed the 2020 Netflix movie Yeh Ballet. Her directorial debut, Little Zizou (2008), won 11 international awards. Her first screenplay, Salaam Bombay! (1988) began her long association with director-producer Mira Nair; the film was nominated for an Academy Award, won more than twenty-five awards worldwide, and earned Taraporevala the Lillian Gish Award from Women in Film, Los Angeles.  Sooni wrote the screenplay for several other movies, including Mississippi Masala and The Namesake (based on Jhumpa Lahiri's book). Sooni's photographs have been in group shows at London's Tate Modern and New York's Met Museum, and they're in the collections of museums worldwide, including the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi and New York's Met Museum.  In 2014, the President of India awarded Sooni the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian honors.

Stella inherited from her mother a lifelong love of cooking & baking and this combined with over 30 years of experience as a graphic designer, plus a fairly decent sense of humor, all converged to form one simple question: How can I make something tempting and beautiful that will also make people laugh while simultaneously feeding my nearly pathological desire to prepare delicious food and then share it with others?

The answer is TART BREAK, which has allowed her to combine a lifetime of skills on 2 fronts into a delicious and fun new venture while allowing her to hold on to her digital roots.  She chuckles regularly at kids today who don't remember dial-up's screeching modems and Zip drive back-ups, and she often hankers for the wild-wild-west days of the internet when Amazon was just a bookstore and content was just plain weird.  

Now get off my lawn!

A film critic and columnist for The Boston Globe from 2002 to 2021, Ty currently reviews movies for The Washington Post and writes “Ty Burr’s Watch List." He is the author of "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame" (2013), "The Best Old Movies for Families" (2007). In 2017, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.