Bénédicte de Montlaur is President and CEO of World Monuments Fund, the world’s foremost private organization dedicated to saving extraordinary places while empowering the communities around them. She is responsible for defining and implementing WMF’s strategic vision in more than 30 countries and leading an international team that spans the globe. Her background mixes culture and the arts, politics, international diplomacy, and human rights. Prior to joining WMF, Montlaur spent two decades working across three continents as a senior diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

André Aciman was born in Alexandria, Egypt and is an American memoirist, essayist, novelist, and scholar. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name and Find Me as well as of Out of Egypt. His new memoir, My Roman Year, was released in October 2024, his three novellas titled Room on the Sea was published in June 2025.

Cynthia Young is the Director of the Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive at the International Center for Photography. She has curated numerous exhibitions on photojournalism in the 1930–50s, including Capa in Color; We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933-1956 by Chim and The Mexican Suitcase: The Rediscovered Spanish Civil War Negatives of Robert Capa, Chim and Gerda Taro. She has traveled internationally with all these exhibitions and has lectured widely.