Shigeru Ban (born in 1957) attended the SCI-Arc in California and the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. A member of the Voluntary Architects Network and winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2014, Ban’s innovative use of recycled materials has supported humanitarian efforts around the world. He is based in his native Tokyo, Paris, and New York.

American photographer and writer Thomas C. Laird has explored the art, culture, and history of the Himalayas since 1972. Based in Nepal for three decades, his reporting and photography have been published globally by TIME, Geo, Newsweek, Le Figaro, National Geographic, and many others. His nonfiction books include a history of Tibet written with the Dalai Lama, translated into 14 languages. From 2008, he has created the world’s first life-size images of enormous Tibetan wall murals. Fine art prints of these works have been the focus of several exhibitions and are held in both public and private collections.

Heather Stoddard is a semi-retired professor of Tibetan literature, history and language at INALCO in Paris. Born in England, she studied Chinese and Tibetan at SOAS and the Sorbonne, becoming one of the first scholars to study modern Tibetan intellectuals. She has authored several essays and books on the history of Tibet, including The Beggar from Amdo, the definitive biography of monk and polymath Gendun Chophel, and Tibet from Buddhism to Communism. She writes extensively on Tibetan literature and art and has traveled annually to the Tibetan plateau for over three decades. She lives today in Oxford, UK.

Jakob Winkler is a scholar, translator, editor, and teacher in the field of Tibetology and Buddhism. He has studied and practiced Buddhism since the mid-1980s under various masters. Winkler’s main teacher is the Dzogchen master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, from whom he received authorization to teach dharma in 2002 as a Santi Maha Sangha instructor. He is one of the few Western experts of Dzogchen and has contributed fundamental research to the understanding of Lhasa’s Lukhang temple, being the first Western scholar to identify Pema Lingpa’s treasure texts as the source for its murals.

Robert A. F. Thurman is an American writer and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who holds a PhD from Harvard University. He is the Jey Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding the first endowed chair in this field of study in the United States. Co-founder and president of Tibet House US, Thurman was ordained as a monk in 1965 by the 14th Dalai Lama, with whom he is close friends. He was once designated by TIME magazine as one of the most influential people, and remains a strong advocate for Tibet.