Dr. Carlos Ponce is the Senior Fellow and Director of Latin American Programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Previously, he was director for Latin American programs at Freedom House and the General Coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy. Dr. Ponce also serves as Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Nonprofit Management for the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University and as Lecturer for the M.A. in NGO Management Program at Johns Hopkins University. He oversees research efforts in several fields including political science, international affairs, anticorruption, human rights, civil society empowerment, and democratic governance and is author and editor of numerous academic studies, policy papers, and special reports. His career has been dedicated to the strengthening of civil society, developing mechanisms to protect human rights leaders, and strengthening democracies throughout Latin America. He earned his Ph.D. in law and policy at Northeastern University, M.A. in urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, M.S. in environmental law at Vermont Law School, and JD/Lawyer at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello (UCAB). He has been published in numerous places including USA Today, Fox News, Miami Herald, and CNN.

Ken Pope is the Director of Academic Programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Previously he had a 34 year career in the U.S. Army, consulting industry and academia. While in uniform, he served in a variety of Armored Reconnaissance, Special Operations and Russian Foreign Area Officer (FAO) assignments in Europe, the Middle East, and Central America. He commanded an Armored Cavalry Troop during the Persian Gulf War and a Special Operations unit focused on Central America. Ken had over 12 years of operational fieldwork as an Army FAO with a focus on Russia and the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and security issues with a variety of assignments in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kosovo. In the consulting industry, he led teams that provided strategy, planning, analysis and wargaming support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff, and Combatant Commands. Ken also served as an Assistant Professor at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Mississippi where he taught courses on intelligence, advanced analytics, senior capstone program and led the center’s national security simulations. He has a B.A. in Sociology, a M.A. in International Relations and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and Staff College and the George C. Marshall Center’s Executive Program for Advanced Security Studies. He speaks Russian.

Dr. Elizabeth Edwards Spalding is Vice Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), Founding Director of the Victims of Communism Museum, and Senior Fellow at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy. A frequent lecturer on U.S. foreign policy, the presidency, communism, and the Cold War, she is also a core faculty member in VOC’s National Seminar for Middle and High School Educators. Spalding is the author of The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, the co-author of A Brief History of the Cold War, and currently at work on a history of world communism. She has taught on subjects ranging from U.S. foreign policy, national security, and international relations to presidential leadership, religion, and politics at Pepperdine University, Hillsdale College, Claremont McKenna College, George Mason University, and Catholic University of America. Spalding holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in international politics and political theory from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in political science from Hillsdale College. A third-generation anticommunist, she lives with her family in Arlington, VA.

Daniel Di Martino was born in 1999 in Venezuela, where he experienced the terrible consequences of socialism firsthand. In 2016, Di Martino left Venezuela to go to college at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, where he is a senior majoring in Quantitative Economics. He writes about economics, foreign policy and strives to be an advocate for freedom around the world. His experience in a socialist country taught him that any country can go through what Venezuela experienced, and his goal is to stop it from ever happening again. Di Martino has been on national TV dozens of times, being interviewed in Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, i24 News English, and many other TV channels and radio stations. He regularly writes op-eds and articles for outlets such as the USA Today, Real Clear Policy, the Washington Times, The Federalist, and many more. You can read them here. Di Martino is also a sought-after public speaker who lays out the problems of socialism using his story and first-hand knowledge to connect with diverse audiences. He has spoken at events and conferences of organizations like Moms for America, the State Financial Officers Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and universities such as Ball State University and the University of Kentucky.

Channy Chhi Laux is a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. When the communist Khmer Rouge began their killing in 1975, she was thirteen years old. In June of 1979, Chhi Laux arrived in Lincoln Nebraska as a refugee. After four years of starving, torture, labor camps, no school and not knowing a word of English, she attended Lincoln High School then earned a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from Santa Clara University and undergraduate degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Chhi Laux worked in Silicon Valley as an engineer in the Aerospace and Biotech industries for 30 years before starting her own business, Angkor Cambodian Food, where she received multiple awards internationally recognizing her products for excellence in food innovation. Chhi Laux has also received multiple book awards for her autobiography, Short Hair Detention: Memoir of a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Surviving the Cambodian Genocide. Today Chhi Laux continues to strive toward her American dream and give back to the country that gave her a second chance of freedom. She actively manages her food manufacturing business with the goal of bringing Cambodian cuisine into American kitchens. She also travels the country, sharing her personal story of the darkest years struggling and surviving the Cambodian genocide, and how the communist ideology destroyed two generations of her family. She believes that only through education can we make informed decisions. She is a strong supporter of the first amendment, and promoter of personal responsibility.

Lily Tang Williams was a Chinese lawyer and law assistant professor, who became an American businesswoman and liberty activist. Born to illiterate working-class parents in China’s western Sichuan province just before the Cultural Revolution, Williams directly witnessed Chairman Mao’s takeover and the horrors his regime inflicted, including extremely poor living conditions, food rationing, political and social chaos and, Communist indoctrination. She graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai with an undergraduate law degree. After graduation, she was selected to continue as part of the law school faculty, as well as practice corporate law in Shanghai as China began to rebuild its economy. In 1988, Williams decided to study in the U.S., leaving her position with only $100 in her pocket and $1,200 in debt to her American sponsor, a Fulbright professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Though she could not speak English fluently she was determined to achieve success in the U.S., earning a master’s degree in Administration and Planning from the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Subsequently, Williams started work for Wyoming Home Health as a medical social worker, and later she worked as an executive for corporations in both Hong Kong and the U.S. Eventually, she went into business for herself, providing consulting services in international business and buying and managing residential real estate properties. Williams became a U.S citizen and voted for the first time in her life in 2000. In 2014, she ran for Colorado State House District 44 and in 2016, Williams was the candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado. Today, Williams continues to manage her own business and travels frequently throughout the states to share the story of her American Dream, defending free speech and free enterprise, and promoting civil and economic liberties.

Rushan Abbas is Founder of Campaign for Uyghurs. Abbas is a former student activist of the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1985 and 1988. She served as the Vice-President of the Students’ Science and Culture Union at the university in 1987. Abbas frequently briefed the U.S lawmakers and officials on the human rights situation in Xinjiang. She regularly appears on media outlets to advocate for the Uyghur cause and gives public speeches in universities and think tanks.

Dolkun Isa was a student-leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations at Xinjiang University in 1988. He founded the Students’ Science and Culture Union at the university in 1987 and worked on programs to eliminate illiteracy and to promote science and to lead other students in East Turkestan. He was expelled from the university in September 1988 after four months of house arrest and a six hour-long dialogue with government officials about the students’ demands but completed his physics degree via independent study, and went on to receive a Master’s degree in Politics and Sociology from Gazi University in Turkey and a degree in Computer Science in Munich, Germany. After enduring persecution from the Chinese government, Isa fled China in 1994, sought asylum in Europe, and became a citizen of Germany in 2006. In November 1996, he played an important role in establishing the World Uyghur Youth Congress in Germany and served as Executive Chairman and President. In April 2004, he also played an important role in the establishment of the World Uyghur Congress through the merger of the East Turkestan National Congress and the World Uyghur Youth Congress and was elected General Secretary. He has since been presenting Uyghur human rights issues to the UN Human Rights Council, European Parliament, European governments and international human rights organizations. Isa is the current President of the World Uyghur Congress. In 2017, he was elected as the Vice-President of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), of which the World Uyghur Congress is a member. In this capacity, he works with other marginalized or unrepresented peoples to collectively strive for democracy, freedom and respect for basic human rights. Isa is a recipient of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s Human Rights Award. 

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo is a Cuban writer and photographer. He was born in Havana, Cuba and graduated from the University of Havana with a degree in biochemistry. In 2010, Lazo founded Cuba’s first digital magazine, Voces. He is editor of Voces and two other Cuban independent digital magazines, Cacharro(s) and The Revolution Evening Post. Lazo is an outspoken critic of the Castro regime and he was arrested three times in Cuba by Castro’s political police. In 2013, he had to leave Cuba and since then he has been giving lectures at U.S. universities about social activism, civil society, and new tendencies in Cuban literature and its censorship by the State. He has participated in several academic events, including ASCE Congress 2014 and LASA Congress 2015. In Cuba, he published the books of narrative Collage Karaoke, Empezar de cero, Ipatrías, and Mi nombre es William Saroyan. His fiction book, Boring Home, was censored by LETRAS CUBANAS publishing house and published abroad. In 2014, O/R Books published his Cuban new narrative anthology Cuba in Splinters and Restless Books published his digital photobook Abandoned Havana with a preface by Jon Lee Anderson. Since 2016, Lazo has studied in a Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on the topic of political pilgrims to the Cuban Revolution. He blogs at “Lunes de post-Revolución,” translated into English as “Post-Revolution Mondays.”