Garry Kasparov is the chairman and founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI). First as a pro-democracy activist in Russia, and now globally, he is recognized as one of the most prominent enemies of Putin, and is a leading voice in the fight for freedom and human rights around the world. Kasparov is the author of the 2015 book: Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped.

Widely considered the greatest chess-player of all time, he became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at the age of 12 and the world under-20 champion at 17. He came to international fame at the age of 22 as the youngest world chess champion in history in 1985. His famous matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996-97 were key to bringing artificial intelligence and chess into the mainstream.

Uriel Epshtein joined Renew Democracy Initiative as Chief Executive Officer in 2017. Under his and Garry’s leadership, RDI has raised approximately $14M for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, launched its annual Frontlines of Freedom conference, bringing together dissidents from around globe with key thought leaders in the US; and created RDI’s Substack The Next Move, which offers insight from across the political spectrum and focuses on developing a positive vision for free societies as well as tactics to achieve it.

Uriel will be hosting the forthcoming Common Sense Club, which will bring together sitting legislators from around the globe in order to compete against the political extremes currently dominating our media landscape. Prior to joining RDI, Uriel worked in the private sector – first as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and then in strategy at companies like Uber and DoorDash. Now a project of RDI, Uriel also founded the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative (PDLI), a Yale-West Point partnership dedicated to bridging the civil-military divide and creating a space on campuses for a nuanced discussion of the US role in the Middle East. Born to parents from the former Soviet Union, Uriel is fluent in Russian and French.

Bianna Golodryga co-anchors CNN One World with Zain Asher. Prior to joining CNN, she served as co-anchor for CBS This Morning, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Morning Program. She began her career at CNBC, and later held posts at ABC and NBC. Born to a working-class Jewish family in Soviet Moldova, Golodryga immigrated to the U.S. in 1980, eventually settling in Houston, TX. She has a degree in Russian/East European Studies and Economics from UT, Austin. She is fluent in Russian.