Laurent Bastien is a journalist whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Vice News, The Intercept and The Columbia Journalism Review. He has written stories on police surveillance on Facebook, the workplace culture of Canada’s spy agency and on foreign lobbying in Washington. He is a graduate of McGill University and of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he won the Brown Institute and Tow Center Award for Excellence in Computational Journalism.

Rashida Kamal is a dual M.S. candidate at Columbia University, studying computer science and journalism. Prior to her graduate program, she served as a special assistant for the White House Fellowship program for the Obama administration. She has an undergraduate degree from New York University in an interdisciplinary major comprised of topics in linguistics, cognitive science and philosophy of the mind. Presently, she is interested in understanding how technology shapes modern democracies.

Kevin Sun is a software developer and journalist from New York City and Shanghai (and a few other places in between). After receiving a dual bachelors degree in Computer Science and Linguistics from Columbia University, Kevin worked in financial technology for a few years before returning to Columbia to pursue a Masters of Science in Journalism with a concentration in Data. He is now part of Team Campaign in the Magic Grant’s Class of 2017-18.

Eileen Townsend is a comics artist and culture writer, originally from Memphis, Tennessee. She graduated with an M.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in the spring of 2017. She is the recipient of Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for Art Criticism (’16) and Green Eyeshade Awards (’15 & ’16) for Feature Writing and Art Criticism. She currently writes (and draws) about raves, relationships, outsider art, and bad movies.