Laura Sydell (born 1961) reports on Digital Culture for NPR. She was born in New Jersey, and is a former senior technology reporter for Public Radio International's Marketplace, and a regular reporter on for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. She was a Freedom Forum Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley, teaching about reporting on culture.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Sydell is a 1979 graduate of Gill St. Bernard's School, a 1983 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of William Smith, and later earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. In 1999, she spent a year in the fellowship program at Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program.

While she lived in New York, Sydell worked on Undercurrents on the Pacifica Radio Network, and had articles published in many other publications. She has also reported for other radio shows, including Crossroads.

Marissa Ann Mayer (born on May 30, 1975) is Vice President of Location and Local Services at Google. She has become one of the public faces of Google, providing a number of press interviews and appearing at events frequently to speak on behalf of the company.

After graduating from Wausau West High School in 1993, Mayer was one of two delegates from Wisconsin selected by the Governor of that state to attend the National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia.

Mayer received her B.S. in symbolic systems, graduating with honors, and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. In 2009, the Illinois Institute of Technology granted Mayer an honoris causa doctorate degree honoring her pathfinding work in the field of search.

Mayer was the first female engineer hired at Google and one of their first 20 employees, joining the company in June 1999. Prior to joining Google, Mayer worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California.

Padmasree Warrior is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Cisco Systems, and the former CTO of Motorola, Inc.

Padmasree Warrior, was born a Telugu and raised in the city of Vijayawada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India. She went to school at the Children’s Montessori School and Maris Stella College in Vijayawada. Warrior received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1982. She holds masters in chemical engineering from Cornell University and serves as an advisory board member at both schools.

Padmasree Warrior joined Motorola in 1984, as one of only a few women in its Arizona facility. Over the course of her 23 years at the company, serving in a broad range of roles, including as Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motorola’s Energy Systems Group, and as Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer in its Semiconductor Products Sector, which later became Freescale Semiconductor. Immediately prior to becoming Motorola’s CTO, she served as general manager of Thoughtbeam, a wholly owned Motorola subsidiary chartered to commercialize Motorola’s GaAs on silicon technology that was developed at the Physical Sciences Research Laboratory in Tempe, Arizona. This position was short-lived, however, because the Thoughtbeam technology was found to be based on erroneous measurements. Her promotion to CTO after this failed venture has been called a "Dilbert moment" by observers in the technology industry. When named Motorola's CTO in January 2003, Warrior became a senior vice president and in 2005 she was promoted to executive vice president.

Wael Ghonim (Arabic: وائل غنيم‎, IPA: [ˈwæːʔel ɣoˈneːm]; other transliterations include: Ghoneim, Ghonaim) (born 23 December 1980 in Cairo, Egypt) is an Internet activist and computer engineer with an interest in social entrepreneurship.

In 2011, he became an international figure and energized pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt after his emotional interview following 11 days of secret incarceration by Egyptian police—during which he was interrogated regarding his work as the administrator of the Facebook page, "We are all Khaled Saeed", which helped spark the revolution. The TIME magazine added him in its "Time 100" list of 100 most influential people of 2011.

Wael Ghonim was born to a middle-class family on 23 December 1980 in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Abha, Saudi Arabia until he was 13 years old, then he moved back to live in Cairo. In January 2010, Wael was promoted to Head of Marketing at Google in the Middle East & North Africa and moved to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

He earned a BS in computer engineering from Cairo University in 2004 and an MBA, with honors, in marketing and finance from the American University in Cairo in 2007.^{[citation needed]}

Patty Griffin, born Patricia Jean Griffin, March 16, 1964, is an American Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and musician. She is especially known for her down-home crafting of songs and her connection to musicians including Emmylou Harris, Ellis Paul, Rory Block and the Dixie Chicks, who have played with her onstage as well as performing cover songs of Griffin's work, exposing many of her compositions to mainstream pop and country music audiences outside Griffin's folk music circle of fans. She was also recipient of the Americana Music Association's highest honor as "Artist of the Year" in 2007, as well as taking home the award for best album for Children Running Through. In 2011, Griffin won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album for Downtown Church.

Patty Griffin is from Old Town, Maine, United States, next to the Penobscot Native American reservation. She is primarily a guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, with a distinctive voice. The youngest child in her family with six older siblings, she bought a guitar for $50 at age 16, and sang and played, but had no inclination at the time to become a professional musician. After a short marriage which ended in 1992, Griffin began playing in Boston coffee houses, and was scouted by A&M Records, who signed Griffin on the strength of her demo tape; however A&M thought it to be overproduced, so Nile Rodgers and A&M instead released a stripped-down reworking of her demo tape, as an album called Living with Ghosts.