Peter Shukoff

Peter Alexis Shukoff (born August 15, 1979), also known as Nice Peter, is an American comedian, musician and personality. A self-described "Comic/Guitar Hero," he is best known for the comedy on his YouTube channel, NicePeter, especially the comedic series Epic Rap Battles of History. As of September 6, 2013, NicePeter has over 2.4 million YouTube subscribers. The day after hitting one million subscribers, the video game channel G4 crowned Nice Peter the King of Dot Comedy on Attack of the Show. His two channels, Nice Peter and Epic Rap Battles have a total of 12 million subscribers and over a billion views as of September 2013. He also has a third channel that he uses for vlogs and "Monday Shows", a show that he uploads on either Mondays or Tuesdays that he shows a couple different segments including "Viewer Mail", "Twitter Question Time", and "Ask a Giraffe". They have been featured on the Huffington Post,Billboard.com, and the January 2012 issue of Wired. An interview with Forbes details Peter and his partner Lloyd Ahlquist's rise to fame.

Epic Rap Battles of History

Epic Rap Battles of History is a YouTube video series created by Peter Shukoff (a.k.a. Nice Peter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (a.k.a. EpicLLOYD). The series pits famous historical and pop culture figures, real and fictional, against one another in a rap battle format. As of December 2015, it is the 18th most subscribed channel on YouTube with over 12.9 million subscribers and over 2.7 billion total video views.

Although early episodes of the series featured only Nice Peter and EpicLLOYD, later episodes have regularly featured guest appearances from other internet celebrities such as Lisa Donovan, Timothy DeLaGhetto, George Watsky, DeStorm Power, Jesse Wellens, Jenna Marbles, Ray William Johnson, Rhett and Link, and Smosh. Media celebrities like rappers Snoop Dogg and Chali 2na, parody artist "Weird Al" Yankovic, and the comedian duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have also appeared in the series.

On July 3, 2013, Epic Rap Battle of History's Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney became the first of its singles to be certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States. Nine other singles, including Darth Vader vs. Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking, Dr. Seuss vs Shakespeare, Master Chief vs Leonidas, Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates, Justin Bieber vs Beethoven, Mario Bros. vs Wright Bros., Mr T vs Mr Rogers, and Abe Lincoln vs Chuck Norris were subsequently also certified Gold.

Lloyd Ahlquist

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Lloyd Leonard Ahlquist (born January 18, 1977), better known as his online alias EpicLLOYD, is an American internet personality best known for the YouTube video series Epic Rap Battles of History, along with Peter Shukoff, known as "Nice Peter". Ahlquist has performed as an MC, actor, improviser and writer. In addition to the rap battles, Ahlquist, along with Shukoff, appeared in a cameo in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Comedy and Theater

Ahlquist was the former General Manager and Artistic Director of M.I.'s Westside Comedy Theater. Ahlquist also studied at UMass Amherst and later trained in Chicago at The Second City, Improv Olympic and Annoyance Theatre. Ahlquist was one of the founding members of Mission IMPROVable, and continues to perform with the group weekly in their show "The Grind" while serving on the Board of Directors of M.i. Productions. He founded the comedy troupe after dropping out of the University of Massachusetts with five classmates.

Andrew Sherman

Andrew J. Sherman (born September 5, 1961) is a corporate and transactional lawyer, business school and law school professor, featured speaker, and author. Sherman is an internationally recognized expert on legal and strategic aspects of business growth with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic alliances, capital formation, franchising, and other types of intellectual property leveraging and growth strategies. Sherman is currently a senior partner at the Washington, DC office of Jones Day (a global law firm). Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor for the MBA programs at McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University as well as at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. A prolific author, Sherman has written 18 books including Road Rules.

Early life

Sherman grew up in West Philadelphia. He attended Lower Merion High School. In 1986 Sherman earned his Juris Doctor degree from American University, Washington College of Law

Atul Singh

Atul Singh is an Indian-born former lawyer, university lecturer, and the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Fair Observer, a US-based nonprofit media organization that aims to inform and educate global citizens of today and tomorrow, by providing context, analysis and multiple perspectives on world news, politics, economics, business and culture.

Fair Observer's Managing Editor and Chief Operating Officer is Abul-Hasanat Siddique, a British author and journalist who wrote The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction and is currently working on his forthcoming book, The Youth of the Middle East (2016), examining the key challenges facing the MENA region through the lens of the youth. The Deputy Managing Editor and Culture Editor is London-based journalist Anna Pivovarchuk, having previously worked at the BBC and the United Nations.

Before launching Fair Observer, Singh worked in finance and law, notably as a corporate lawyer in London for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, advising Goldman Sachs. The idea of creating a global news analysis company solidified while attending the New York Global Media Summit in 2010.