Jim Steyer 

CEO, Common Sense Media

Jim Steyer is an American children's advocate, civil rights attorney, professor and author. He is most known for founding Common Sense Media, an organization dedicated to improving media and entertainment for children and families.

Jim has spent more than 20 years as one of the most respected experts and entrepreneurs on issues related to children's policy and media in the United States. As CEO, he is responsible for the overall leadership of Common Sense Media, the nation's leading nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the media lives of kids and families.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, Ph.D., LCSW-R

Dr. Kardaras is an Ivy League educated psychologist, best-selling author, internationally renowned speaker and an expert on mental health, addiction, and the impacts of our digital age. 

​He was a professor at Stony Brook Medicine and has developed clinical treatment programs all over the country. He is the founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Maui Recovery in Hawaii, Omega Recovery in Austin and the Launch House in New York. He is also a frequent contributor to Psychology Today and FOX News, and has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC's 20/20, CNN, the CBS Evening News, PBS, NPR and FOX & Friends. 

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH

Director, Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development

Dr. Dimitri Christakis is director of Seattle Children's Research Institute's Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital.

Christakis is a leading expert on how media affects child health and development. He has published dozens of media-related studies and co-authored a groundbreaking book, The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids. His work has been featured on Anderson Cooper 360, The Today Show and ABC, NBC and CBS news, as well as in all major national newspapers.

Adam Alter

Associate Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business

Adam Alter is an Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department.

Adam is the New York Times bestselling author of two books: Irresistible (March, 2017), which considers why so many people today are addicted to so many behaviors, from incessant smart phone and internet use to video game playing and online shopping, and Drunk Tank Pink (2013), which investigates how hidden forces in the world around us shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.   

Adam has also written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Atlantic, WIRED, Slate, Huffington Post, and Popular Science, among other publications. He has shared his ideas on NPR's Fresh Air, at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, and with dozens of companies, including Google, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch, Prudential, and Fidelity, and with several design and ad agencies around the world.

Nir Eyal

Author, Speaker and Thought Leader

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. The M.I.T. Technology Review dubbed Nir, "The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology."

Nir founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.

He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Indistractable received critical acclaim, winning the 2019 Outstanding Works of Literature (OWL) Award as well as being named one of the Best Business and Leadership Books of the Year by Amazon and one of the Best Personal Development Books of the Year by Audible. The Globe and Mail called Indistractable, "timely reading, a smart, thorough look at getting traction in a world of distractions – the best business book of 2019." In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir's writing has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today. 

Dr. Hilarie Cash, PhD

Founder and Chief Clinical Officer of the reSTART Center for Digital Technology Sustainability

Dr. Hilarie Cash has been working in the field of mental health as a private practitioner for over 30 years. For the last 20 she has specialized in the emerging field of Internet and video game addiction, working with families and individuals struggling to cope with problems related to pornography and romantic chat, video gaming, surfing, social networking, etc. In 2008 she co-authored Video Games and Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control with family therapist and parenting coach, Kim McDaniel, MA.

In 2009 she teamed up with Cosette Rae, MSW and Gary Simmons to found the first treatment center of its kind. The reSTART Center for Digital Technology Sustainability provides a 45-90 day retreat for mainly young adult men. The center offers these men a place to free themselves of the compulsive drive to stay connected to digital technology, develop a plan for moderated use, strengthen their life skills and physical fitness, and then implement their plans in a semi-independent transitional living experience that includes work, academics, and therapy.

Melanie Hempe, BSN

Founder of Families Managing Media (ScreenStrong)

Melanie Hempe is the Founder and Executive Director of Families Managing Media, a national nonprofit organization that offers a countercultural approach to eliminating childhood screen dependency.  Through its flagship ScreenStrong initiative and the 7-day ScreenStrong Challenge, FMM empowers parents to pause or delay the most addictive types of screen use by their kids, while emphasizing the importance of developing life skills.

Through her many speaking engagements at local workshops and conferences around the country, Melanie brings together her compelling personal story and her command of the emerging research on childhood screen addiction to provide practical solutions to struggling families. Her work has been featured in local and national media publications including Psychology Today, Thrive-Global, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CBS.

Melanie holds a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Emory University and is the author of three books: Will Your Gamer Survive College?;  Can Your Teen Survive—and Thrive—Without a Smartphone?; and The ScreenStrong Solution: How to Free Your Child from Addictive Screen Habits.  She lives in North Carolina with her husband and their four children.

Lisa Pont MSW, RSW

Therapist/Educator

Lisa Pont is an educator and therapist on the Gambling, Gaming & Technology Use team (formerly the Problem Gambling Institute of Ontario) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Camh).

Dr. Jean Twenge, Ph.D

Jean M. Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, is the author of more than 140 scientific publications and books.  Dr. Twenge frequently gives talks and seminars on teaching and working with today’s young generation based on a dataset of 11 million young people. Her audiences have included college faculty and staff, high school teachers, military personnel, camp directors, and corporate executives. Her research has been covered in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and The Washington Post, and she has been featured on Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Fox and Friends, NBC Nightly News, Dateline NBC, and National Public Radio.

She holds a BA and MA from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters. 

Dr. Alex Pang, Ph.D

Author of “The Distraction Addiction”

Alex Pang, Ph.D., is the author of three books, including Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less and The Distraction Addiction. He has a Ph.D. in the history of science from the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Scientific American, The Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, and many scholarly journals.

Dr. Michael Rich, MD, MPH

Michael Rich, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and practices Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Pediatrician, researcher, father, and filmmaker, Dr. Rich is the Founder and Director of the Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH) and the first evidence-based medical program addressing physical, mental and social health issues associated with digital technology, the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID). As The Mediatrician®, Dr. Rich offers research-based, balanced and practical answers to parents’, teachers’, and clinicians’ questions about children’s media use and the positive and negative implications for their health and development.