Your Craft + Commerce itinerary

Tim Urban is the writer/illustrator and co-founder of Wait But Why, a long-form, stick-figure-illustrated website with over 600,000 subscribers and a monthly average of one million visitors.

He has produced dozens of viral articles on a wide range of topics, from artificial intelligence to social anxiety to humans becoming a multi-planetary species. His articles have been republished on sites like Quartz, The Washington Post, Business Insider, and Gizmodo. Counted among Wait But Why’s readers is Elon Musk, who once asked Tim to write about his companies, resulting in a 4-part blog series totaling 95,000 words and read by over 4.5M people.

Tim’s 2016 TED main stage talk was the most watched of its year and the first TED video to ever reach 10 million views in its first year.

Cara Chace is the creator of Pinterest PowerUp – a Pinterest marketing membership, and the owner of Chace Digital – a Pinterest Marketing agency. She started in social media in 2011 by managing 13 million fans across 17 social media accounts for a worldwide band. Since then, she’s gone on discover what makes a fantastic digital marketing strategy for online entrepreneurs by teaching how Pinterest fits into that strategy and creating lots of lightbulb moments. She loves nothing more than helping fellow business owners, except maybe a good book and one more cup of coffee.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author Willpower Doesn’t Work. From 2015-2018, he was the #1 writer in the world on Medium.com. During that time, he grew his email list from 0 to 400,000 without paid advertising. Ben and his wife Lauren adopted three children from the foster system in February 2018 and one month later, Lauren got pregnant with twins who were born in December of 2018. They live in Orlando. Ben’s blogs are read by millions monthly.

Physical therapist turned entrepreneur, Dr. Shanté Cofield, aka The Movement Maestro, is the founder of The Movement Maestro LLC, a social-media based company that provides both online and in-person education for movement professionals around the world. Shanté’s passion for digital business has helped her amass a social media following of over 53,000 people, become an international speaker, and launch her own podcast, Maestro on the Mic, which has been downloaded over 300,000 times to date. With her continued success in the digital space, Shanté’s professional pursuits now center around providing business coaching to movement professionals, with a focus on brand strategy and development and the ever-growing digital marketplace.

Meera Lee Patel is self-taught artist and author who writes books that help explain who we are.

She is the author of My Friend Fear: Finding Magic in the Unknown (TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House) a beautiful meditation on fear and how it can help us become who we really are—if we let it. She is also the author of three journals: Made Out of Stars is a journal for self-realization that encourages the belief that we are already whole. Start Where You Are is a journal for self-exploration that is designed to help others understand that the answers they are seeking are contained within themselves. The forthcoming Create Your Own Calm helps readers quiet anxiety through exercises that move them towards self-acceptance. Her books have sold 750k copies nationwide, and translated into over a dozen languages worldwide.

In addition to writing books, she is a sought-after speaker and illustrator. Her clients include Amber Lotus Publishing, American Greetings, Anthropologie, Spirituality & Health, FLOW Magazine, Food52, Free People, Goop, and Vogue India. Her eponymous hand-painted stationery and gift collection is available in hundreds of stores nationwide.

She lives with her husband, dog, and a myriad of wild animals on a farm in the northern woods of Nashville, Tennessee.

In previous careers Nathan has been a designer, author, and blogger. After learning the power of email marketing he gave up a successful blogging career to build ConvertKit. Outside of work Nathan spends his time playing soccer, woodworking, and chasing after his two little boys.

Gloria Atanmo is an online educator and content creator in the travel space, starting her career as a blogger through witty, reflective, and informative storytelling. After venturing to over 80 countries across 6 continents and working with brands along the way, she’s landed features in Forbes, Oprah Magazine, Conde Nast, Essence, Buzzfeed, and more. She’s authored a book, spoken on many stages, led retreats around the world, and now focuses on helping female entrepreneurs make a bigger impact and income. She gives herself another 5 years before she’ll go live on a mountain and be fertile.

Nikkolas Smith, a native of Houston, Texas, is a Master of Architecture recipient from Hampton University. After designing theme parks at Walt Disney Imagineering for 11 years, he is now a Concept artist, Children’s Books Author and Film Illustrator. He is the author/illustrator of
the picture books “The Golden Girls of Rio” (nominated for an NAACP Image Award) and My Hair Is Poofy And That’s Okay. The latest children’s book he has illustrated, World Cup Women features the World Champion USWNT. He also creates activist art paintings and Hollywood movie posters (Black Panther, Beale Street, Southside With You, Dear White People, Stranger Fruit). He is a proud 2016 White House Innovators of Color fellow. As an illustrator of color, Nikkolas is focused on creating captivating art that can spark important conversations in today’s world and inspire meaningful change. Many of his viral and globally published sketches are included in his latest book Sunday Sketch: The Art of Nikkolas, a visual journey on life and a collection of more than 100 sketches he has done in the last five years. Nikkolas also talks for conferences (TEDxWatts) and schools all over the country, leads workshops in digital painting character and movie poster and design. He lives in Los Angeles, California.