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Champions of Change: Honorees & Leaders
Michael Urie, Host
Emmy Award-nominated actor, producer, director, and host Michael Urie is well-known for bringing stories to life onscreen, onstage, and behind the scenes. Celebrated for his breakout role on ABC’s Ugly Betty, Michael has recently been delighting audiences in AppleTV’s award-winning dramedy series, Shrinking, currently in its third season.
For his role as Brian on Shrinking, Michael was nominated for a 2025 Emmy Award for ‘Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series’ and earned the 2025 Critics Choice Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.' Michael led Netflix’s first gay holiday rom com, Single All The Way, which landed on the streamer’s “Top Ten” list across multiple territories. He also appeared in Netflix’s Oscar-nominated film Maestro, starring and directed by Bradley Cooper, and in Goodrich, alongside Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis. Michael is the co-founder of Pride Plays, an annual festival that celebrates and elevates LGBTQIA+ voices in the theater.
Michael played the titular role in an off-Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Richard II, reimagined by Craig Baldwin for The Red Bull Theater, which was instantly named a NYT’s Critics Pick. Michael was in the two-time Tony Award-winning show, Oh, Mary!, alongside Kumail Nanjiani and Jinkx Monsoon. Additional theater credits include: Once Upon a Mattress(Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Performance in a Musical); Spamalot; Jane Anger; Chicken & Biscuits; Buyer & Cellar (Drama Desk Award, Clarence Derwent Award, Lucille Lortel Award, LA Drama Critics Award); Torch Song; Grand Horizons; and How to Suceed in Business Without Really Trying.
He hosted Discover +’s CLIPPED and four seasons of Logo’s Cocktails and Classics. For the stage, he directed Bright Colors and Bold Patterns, and produced Happy Birthday Doug. Michael also directed Silver Foxes, written by Stan Zimmerman and James Berg, for Uptown Players in Dallas, TX. For the screen, Michael directed He's Way More Famous Than You, The Hyperglot, and co-directed the documentary Thank You For Judging – all available for streaming. Hailing from Plano, Texas, Michael trained at the esteemed Juilliard School.
Speaker and Special Guest
New York Attorney General Letitia James
Letitia “Tish” James is the 67th Attorney General for the State of New York. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she is a lifelong public servant with decades of experience advocating for New Yorkers. Elected in 2018, Attorney General James is the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York and the first woman to be elected Attorney General.
Since taking office in 2019, Attorney General James has focused on lowering costs for working families, ensuring bad actors that break state laws are held accountable, and protecting New Yorkers’ rights and safety. Under her leadership, the Office of the Attorney General has taken over 9,500 guns off New York’s streets and has worked to stop the proliferation of ghost guns that harm our communities. Attorney General James has consistently led multistate coalitions to challenge unlawful federal actions when they threatened New Yorkers’ civil rights, health care access, and the rule of law.
Prior to being elected Attorney General, Attorney General James was the Public Advocate for the City of New York. When she was elected in 2013, she became the first woman of color to hold citywide office. During her tenure as Public Advocate, Attorney General James passed more legislation than all previous public advocates combined, including a groundbreaking law that banned questions about salary history from the employment process to address the pervasive gender wage gap.
Attorney General James began her career as a public defender at the Legal Aid Society. She is a graduate of Lehman College and Howard University School of Law.
Show Gun Safety Awardee
Joshua Seftel, Director, All The Empty Rooms
Joshua Seftel is an Academy Award®-winning filmmaker driven by the conviction that storytelling can promote empathy, connection, and change. His latest documentary, All The Empty Rooms (Netflix, December 2025), won a 2026 Oscar® and was executive produced by Adam McKay and NBA coach Steve Kerr.
All The Empty Rooms follows veteran CBS correspondent Steve Hartman on a secret project photographing the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings. The result is a deeply emotional film that brings to life who these kids were and reframes gun violence from a political issue to a human issue.
Seftel received an Academy Award®-nomination for Stranger at the Gate (The New Yorker, 2022), executive produced by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, which tells the story of an US Marine who planned to blow up an Indiana mosque, and how the kindness of the Muslim worshipers transformed the direction of his life.
Over the years, Seftel has been drawn to stories about ways we can better connect, understand, and ultimately help one another. In 1990, he made his first film, Lost and Found (PBS), which told the story of Romania's abandoned children. The film led to thousands of American adoptions of Romanian children and was nominated for a National Emmy Award. Since then, his documentary work has ranged from the political (Taking on the Kennedys, POV), to the intimate (his IDA Award-winning The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano, NYT Op-Docs), to the empowering (his Peabody Award-nominated series Secret Life of Muslims), to the joyful (his Emmy-winning original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy), and more. Seftel is also a contributor to the Peabody Award-winning podcast This American Life and to The New York Times.
All The Empty Rooms
We are thrilled to honor director Joshua Seftel and the 2026 Academy Award®-winning documentary short film All the Empty Rooms. The film portrays the empty bedrooms of children lost to school shootings and reveals truths more powerful than statistics ever could. The film was executive produced by Warriors Coach Steve Kerr. Watch the documentary on Netflix now.
Special Guest
Jonathan Capehart
Jonathan Capehart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is co-host of the morning edition of “The Weekend” on MS NOW (7 a.m. - 10 a.m. ET ) and the New York Times bestselling author of “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from A Black Man’s Search for Home.”
At PBS, Capehart serves as a political analyst on “PBS News Hour” and is featured on the popular Friday segment “Brooks and Capehart.” Capehart is a former Associate Editor of The Washington Post, where he served as an opinion writer for 18 years. He was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News (2002-2004) and served on its editorial board (1993-2000). His editorial campaign in 1999 to save the Apollo Theater earned the board the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.
Ambassador Awardee Brian Monahan
Brian Monahan
Brian Monahan is a media and marketing executive who leads the retail media business for the Albertsons Companies. Brian previously held executive roles at Walmart, Pinterest, dentsu, and Interpublic. He has been recognized in the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement, the Bay Area Innovation Group’s Hall of Fame, as an Ad Age Media Maven, and much more.
Brian grew up in Sandy Hook, CT. His mother, Lynn Monahan, taught first grade at Sandy Hook Elementary School for 12 years. As the school's union representative in 2014, Lynn delayed retirement to help the Sandy Hook Elementary School community's recovery.
Thrust into the gun safety movement, Brian volunteered with the SmartTech Foundation and today leads The Gun Safety Alliance (GSA). The GSA is a community of media and marketing professionals offering pro bono services to gun violence prevention groups across America. They've supported Brady, Newtown Action Alliance, Stop Handgun Violence, Maine Gun Safety Alliance, Granite State Progress, Texas Gun Sense, Global Action Against Gun Violence, and many others. Whether you need a website, social marketing, email marketing, PR support, public service Ads, or strategic guidance, Brian and the GSA have become a trusted resource for any organization seeking to reduce gun violence in America.
Presenter of the Ambassador Award
Carolyn Everson
Carolyn is a senior advisor at Permira, one of the world's largest investment firms, and Boston Consulting Group. Carolyn has over 28 years of experience in senior operating roles in consumer facing technology and media companies. She most recently was the president of Instacart, and before that, she was the vice president of the Global Business Group at Facebook (Meta).
Prior to Facebook, Carolyn was the corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Global Advertising Sales and Trade Marketing Teams. She also spent seven years at Viacom and her last role was chief operating officer of MTVN Ad Sales. She serves on the boards of The Coca Cola Company, The Walt Disney Company, Under Armour, Villanova University, and Columbia Medical School.
Carolyn has been named to AdWeek’s “AdWeek 50” since 2013. In 2015, she was named to the top of Business Insider’s list of the Most Powerful Women in Advertising. Carolyn was twice included on Fortune’s “40 Under 40.” She holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and communications from Villanova University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. Carolyn also received an honorary doctorate from Mount Saint Mary’s University.
Speaker and Special Guest
Ross Misher
Ross Misher has been an advocate for Brady and gun violence prevention since his father, Kenny, was shot and killed in 1984. As a student at George Washington University, he founded the first Brady student group, with Sarah Brady as their first speaker! After his mother Cookie’s passing last year, he created the Cookie and Kenny Misher Award for Youth Advocacy to honor exceptional Team Enough students and continue his parents’ inspiring legacy. He will be presenting the inaugural Award to two deserving students this year.
