Misha Friedman

Misha Friedman was born in Moldova in 1977, and graduated with degrees from Binghamton University and London School of Economics, where he studied economics and international relations. He worked in corporate finance and later in humanitarian medical aid while teaching himself photography. Friedman’s analytical approach to storytelling involves trying to look beyond the facts, searching for causes, and asking complex and difficult questions. Sometimes he succeeds.

Friedman regularly collaborates with leading international media and non-profit organizations, including the New Yorker, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Amnesty International, and Doctors Without Borders. His widely-exhibited work has received numerous industry awards, including multiple grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Friedman lives in New York City.

Jeff Sheng

Jeff Sheng is an American artist whose photographic work over the last decade has focused on the 21st century LGBT rights movement. His photographs have been featured in international publications, including The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and The New Yorker. Since 2006, his photo series, the Fearless Project, has been exhibited at over 70 different venues, including the headquarters of Nike and ESPN, as well as select locations at the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics. His other well known series, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2009-2011), about closeted United States military service members, was profiled in 2010 by the New York Times, ABC World News Tonight, and CNN.

Daniella Zalcman

Daniella Zalcman (Women Photograph, b. 1986) is a Vietnamese-American documentary photographer based in New Orleans. She is a multiple grantee of the National Geographic Society and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, and the founder of Women Photograph—a nonprofit working to elevate the voices of women and nonbinary visual journalists.

Her work focuses on the legacies of Western colonization, from the rise of homophobia in East Africa to the forced assimilation education of Indigenous children in North America. She is also a co-founder of Indigenous Photograph, a co-founder and creative director of We, Women, and one of the co-authors of the Photo Bill of Rights.

Zalcman is a proud member of the Authority Collective and Diversify Photo, as well as a member of the board of trustees of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and the board of directors of the ACOS Alliance. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in architecture in 2009.

Michael Heflin

Michael Heflin is the director of equality for the Open Society Human Rights Initiative. Previously, Heflin was managing director of the Campaigns Unit for Amnesty International USA, as well as deputy director of its Midwest regional office in Chicago. He is the founding director of Amnesty’s first LGBT rights program, and worked at Amnesty’s international secretariat in London, where he directed the International Mobilization Program, an effort to grow the organization’s membership and activism internationally.

Heflin holds a law degree with a focus on international human rights law from the University of Cincinnati, where he was a fellow at the Urban Morgan Institute of Human Rights and served as editor of Human Rights Quarterly. Heflin received his BA in political science from Adrian College.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

The Pulitzer Center’s mission is to champion the power of stories to make complex issues relevant and inspire action. Founded in 2006, the Center is an essential source of support for enterprise reporting in the United States and globally. The thousands of journalists and educators in our networks span more than 80 countries, and our work reaches tens of millions of people each year through our news-media partners. The journalism we support covers the world’s biggest challenges today, from the environment and global health to human rights and artificial intelligence.