Alanna Bennett is a writer for The CW's Roswell, New Mexico and a rom-com fanatic. Her work as a cultural critic and reporter has appeared on BuzzFeed News, Teen Vogue, Vulture, TV Guide, and more. Alanna studied Cinema Studies at Oberlin College and seeks to tell stories that move conversations forward while providing a balm to the daily stresses of human existence. She believes that the personal, the political, and the pop cultural are all deeply connected, and that we should all try to be a little bit more like Nora Ephron and Ava DuVernay.

Alicia Swiz is passionate educator and dynamic storyteller committed to creating spaces for women’s voices to be amplified. Drawing from personal experience and academic training, Alicia facilitates dialogues that inspire critical thinking about gender through comedy, storytelling, and media literacy. A Jersey girl by way of North Carolina, Alicia is most recently from Chicago where she created Feminist Happy Hour, a comedy showcase for women identified performers. She is the founder and curator of SlutTalk, an educational storytelling project rewriting the narrative on women and sex. A pop culture enthusiast, Alicia’s writing has been published by Esquire, Chicago Reader, Role Reboot and others. She currently serves as the Program Director for the Virginia Tech Women’s Center. You can find her on the internet @aliciaswiz // @wearesluttalk // @feministhappyhr

Millie De Chirico is a fifteen-year veteran of the Programming Department at Turner Classic Movies. Her late-night film franchise TCM Underground, which showcases the best in cult cinema, is about to celebrate its lucky 13th anniversary in October. She also handles programming for Silent Sunday Nights, TCM Imports, and many other key spotlights on the network. She was one of the programmers and architects of FilmStruck, the former streaming service created by TCM and The Criterion Collection and has provided film programming and writing for A24, Alamo Drafthouse, and the TCM Classic Film Festival. 

Heather Maidat wrote the romantic comedies Bad Boys Crazy Girls starring Kevin Dunn, Adam Pally, Sarah Burns, Reid Scott, and Bobby Moynihan (Tribeca Film Festival Premiere, IFC Films/Netflix, as Slow Learners), Mr. Miracle starring Rob Morrow, and Sundays at Tiffany’s starring Alyssa Milano and Stockard Channing. She has written for the television shows Mad Magazine, Girls Behaving Badly with Chelsea Handler and comedy team Frangela, Shipmates with Chris Hardwick, The Love Lounge with Loni Love, Filter with Beth Stern, The Yesterday Show, History IQ, Living Live with Florence Henderson and Meshach Taylor, and MTV specials. Some of her humor and relationship articles include Deja Vow (The Huffington Post), Modern Wrecknology (MSN), Do Not Disturb  (Blacktable), Shalloween (Fresh Yarn), The Sudden Impact of Love (Fox Films Intl.), and The TV Dating Dilemma (Sirensmag). Heather began her career working in nearly every department in production or on the crew of projects like The Chris Rock Show, John Leguizamo’s Emmy Nominated Freak for HBO, two Oscar nominated documentaries, Brazil’s documentary series Free Jazz, the indie film Wicked City, for the critically acclaimed, Grammy nominated Red Hot Organization, the sitcom Madigan Men, commercials, music videos, and Saturday Night Live. Heather recently completed writing the romantic comedy novel Thank You for Not Wasting My Time and writes weekly at www.HeatherMaidat.com