Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico based multidisciplinary artist creating monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity. Incorporating ceramics, steel, fiber, video and repurposed materials, Luger activates speculative fiction, engages in land-based actions of repair and practices empathetic response through social collaboration. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. Luger combines critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. His bold visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our collective humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview.

Luger is the recipient of a 2024 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and is a 2024 Monument Lab Fellow. He is a 2023 SOROS Arts Fellow, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a 2021 GRIST Change Maker. Luger is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize, among others.

Maurine Knighton is the Chief Program Officer at the Doris Duke Foundation. In this role, she oversees the foundation’s five national grantmaking programs: Arts, Environment, Medical Research, Child Well-Being and Building Bridges.

Knighton joined the foundation in 2016 and served as program director for the arts, leading the development and oversight of grantmaking programs to support artists and organizations in the contemporary dance, theater, jazz and presenting fields. During her tenure, she oversaw many of the foundation’s signature programs, including the Doris Duke Artist Awards alongside a wide array of novel and innovative efforts to make the performing arts more inclusive, innovative and equitable.

Prior to her work at the Doris Duke Foundation, Knighton was the senior vice president for grantmaking at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She also served as senior vice president for program and nonprofit investment at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. In the field of arts and culture, she was executive producer and president of 651 ARTS; program manager at the Nonprofit Finance Fund; and managing director of Penumbra Theatre Company.

She is a former board member of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA), where she chaired GIA’s Racial Equity Committee. Knighton has also served as panelist and advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, Arts Presenters Ensemble Theater Program, South Carolina Arts Commission and many others. She currently serves on the boards of Firelight Media and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, chairing its Cultural Investment Fund Committee.

As chief storytelling officer at the National Geographic Society, Kaitlin Yarnall is responsible for expanding the organization’s impact through all forms of storytelling, including photography, journalism, film, and public experiences. Yarnall oversees a creative team that produces impact-driven media and identifies key partnership, grantmaking, and fellowship opportunities with creative talent to further amplify the Society’s mission.

Over the course of her career at National Geographic, Yarnall has assumed a variety of management roles including deputy director of National Geographic Labs, executive director and deputy creative director at National Geographic magazine, and director of cartography. She began her career at the National Geographic Society in 2005 as a cartographer.

Yarnall has been a keynote speaker at conferences around the globe and has addressed the UN General Assembly, Scandinavian royals, and rock concert stadiums. She specializes in storytelling, data visualization, information graphics, cartography, and visual narratives, and has written extensively on these subjects.

She sits on the board of directors for Media Impact Funders.

Yarnall earned an M.A. in geography from the George Washington University and a B.A. in geography and Spanish literature from Humboldt State University.