Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a social justice nonprofit based in Montgomery, AL. A widely acclaimed public interest lawyer, he has dedicated his career to helping people dealing with poverty or imprisonment, winning challenges against unfair sentencing practices, institutional abuse of inmates, youth incarceration and other major legal issues. He has successfully argued several cases in the US Supreme Court, including a recent ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger.

A 1995 MacArthur Fellow, Stevenson has also earned the ACLU’s Medal of Liberty, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award and the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Award. In 2018 he received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize as well as the American Bar Association Medal, the highest honor given by the ABA. The New York University School of Law professor has also written the award-winning memoir Just Mercy.

Based in Chicago, Theaster Gates creates sculptural and performance-based work focusing on space theory, land development and the productive possibilities discoverable in the “life within things.” Drawing on his background in urban planning and preservation, he redeems spaces that have been left behind and cleverly turns art values, land values and human values on their head. In all aspects of his work, the artist engages with the relationship between space and people of color as a formal exercise shaped by collective desire, artistic agency and pragmatic tactics.

Gates has exhibited and performed extensively, including at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Fondazione Prada in Milan and Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2017 he received a Légion d'Honneur commendation from the government of France and in 2018 won the Artes Mundi 6 prize and the Nasher Prize for Sculpture.

Chimamanda Adichie is a writer, thinker and activist whose voice has helped shape some of the most pressing discussions of our time. Originally from Nigeria, she moved to the US at age 19, earning degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins and Yale. Her widely translated books include the award-winning novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, along with the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

In 2012 Adichie sparked a worldwide conversation about feminism with the TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists, which was published as a book in 2014. A 2008 MacArthur Fellow, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World as well as Fortune’s list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Published in 2017, her most recent book is Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

A cofounder of the Russian art punk feminist movement Pussy Riot, conceptual artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova is known as a powerful voice in the fight against tyranny worldwide. After a 2012 public performance protesting the Putin-led Russian government, her two-year imprisonment for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” brought wider awareness to state-sponsored injustices in her homeland.

Since her release, Tolokonnikova has remained outspoken and vigilant in denouncing global authoritarianism. In 2014 she cofounded Mediazona, an independent media agency focused on law enforcement and judicial issues in Russia. She has also collected her political thinking into two books, most recently the 2018 essay collection Read and Riot: the Pussy Riot Guide to Activism. A recipient of a LennonOno Grant for Peace and co-recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, she has addressed the US Congress, the British Parliament and the European Parliament on issues of global human rights.

The first-ever recipient of this new award, Joseph A. Chazan is being recognized for making an enduring impact on RISD and our regional community through his lifelong generosity. A professor emeritus at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, the longtime art lover, collector and advocate has donated more than 600 objects to the RISD Museum and currently serves on its Board of Governors and Fine Arts Committee.

From 2008–16 Dr. Chazan helped promote contemporary artists in Rhode Island through NetWorks, a multimedia approach to profiling the practices of more than 100 accomplished local artists. His significant support for organizations ranging from the Newport Art Museum and the Rhode Island Philharmonic to WaterFire Providence, AS220 and the Steel Yard helped earn him the Pell Award for Outstanding Leadership in the Arts in 2013 and an Outstanding Philanthropic Citizen designation from the RI chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals in 2018.

Ramon Solis MLA 19 says that the most apt description of who he is came from Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy in 2011, who singled him out at a concert as “the person at a rock show with most pens in his front pocket.” He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental planning from the University of California, Davis, where he also reached a personal peak as a DJ for the college radio station. In his thesis research at RISD, Solis explored the use of film and observational drawing as a design tool in landscape architecture, and also worked to build community as a leader of the Graduate Student Alliance.

On June 3rd, 2017 Qualeasha Ivonne Wood BFA 19 PR proclaimed on Facebook: “Just telling you now I’m speaking at 2019 graduation.” Two years later, she is. Wood creates work that, in her words, “realizes black potential by portraying black femme bodies as they existed, currently exist and may one day exist.” At RISD she served in several leadership roles and co-curated two exhibitions on campus that highlighted the talents of artists of color within and beyond the RISD community. In the fall, Qualeasha will move on to Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art, where she has earned a full scholarship to pursue an MFA in Photography.