Rhea Combs is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture and head of the museum's Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts. Combs has written several articles on gender, sexuality, and African American visual culture as well as curated shows at museums both nationally and internationally, including: ICA-London, Spelman College and the Schomburg Center for Black Culture. Combs was a former photo curator for the international advertising firm, Wieden+Kennedy.

Deborah Willis has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American culture. She is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

Historian, author, curator and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.