WORLD Channel

Andrew "Lemon" Andersen is a poet raised in Brooklyn. He watched his stepfather, father and mother die from heroin abuse and AIDS complications, leaving him and his brother to grow up alone. With talent, encouragement from friends and mentors in the Hip Hop community, Andersen rose to critical acclaim. He has appeared in Def Poetry Jam, the PBS documentary Lemon and one-man show County of Kings.

Born into a working-class family outside of Detroit, Michael Eric Dyson became an ordained Baptist minister, and then obtained his masters and PHD degrees in religion from Princeton University. He is now a professor of sociology at Georgetown University. Called inspiring and influential by Essence and Ebony, Dyson is an author of 16 books focused on issues within the African American community.

For Beverly Bond, music is everything. It defined her childhood and helped her through the shadows of underground clubs to become one of the most sought after DJ’s. After leaving the music industry, which was fraught with superficiality for the male-dominated world of music production, Bond founded the non-profit Black Girls Rock! to promote and develop leadership roles in African American teens.

Harvard University graduate Soledad O'Brien was born to an Irish-Australian father and an Afro-Cuban mother. O'Brien began as a TV writer and producer, and later became an anchor and co-host of news programs for MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. In 2003, she was tapped to co-anchor CNN’s American Mornings and then Starting Point. O'Brien left CNN in 2013 to find Starfish Media Group, a production company.