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Sara Ortiz is the program and festival director of The Believer magazine and Black Mountain Institute. She was born and raised in Austin, Texas where her Salvadoran parents settled, though led a “nomadic” life within Austin. Her mother was a housekeeper and her father worked several jobs to care for their family. Within that loving family, Sara cultivated a love of storytelling from an early age.

Sandra Candel is a native of Guadalajara, Mexico, where she was raised by her maternal grandparents and extended family. She describes what she refers to as “a legacy of migrants” within her family including her often absent mother.

As a child she was instilled with a love of education and the value of hard work. As a young adult, she migrated to the United States, southern California specifically. There she joined her mother and began her higher education.

Entrepreneur, financial adviser, philanthropist, and UNLV graduate (1994) Jimmy Lee is the second of two children. Born in Seoul, Korea, Jimmy came to Las Vegas with his family in 1976, when he was six years old. Lee's parents were in the entertainment industry in Korea--his mother was a professional singer with the Arirang Sisters, and his father was producer. His maternal aunt, who had married an American professor, sponsored the family. Because the aunt lived in Durham, N.C., the family first went there.

Zhen "Reika" Sun was born and raised in Shanghai, China, during the one-child policy. Because her parents both worked, she was raised by nannies. Wanting a better life for their daughter, Reika's parents immigrated to the U.S. in 2009, choosing to settle in Las Vegas because her mother's sister lived here. However, before Reika could join her parents in Las Vegas, they sent her to an English as a Second Language program at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.

Cork Proctor was born on July 22, 1932 in Wisconsin. His family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1940s, where he attended Las Vegas High School. During the 1950s he worked as a valet at the El Rancho Vegas, and then as a lifeguard at the Sahara Hotel and Casino. He later worked as a musician, traveling with several bands until the 1970s, when he first performed his stand-up comedy act. His career as a comedian, which spanned over 40 years, took him to various venues across the United States. Cork Proctor currently resides in Ecuador.

When Kenneth Fong was born November 11 1955, the family lived in a modest home on 20th and Stewart in Las Vegas, Nevada. When he entered third-grade, his parents moved his family to a newer subdivision near Rancho and West Charleston Avenue: the Scotch 80s. Their new custom home on Silver Avenue reflected Asian architecture and the family’s Chinese cultural heritage.