April Nishimura earned a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Washington (UW) in 2009. While there, Nishimura developed and co-taught the UW's first course on mixed-race studies. In 2017, Nishimura earned an M.B.A. in Business Administration and an M.A. in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University. She plays the cello and regularly performs in the band Dreamcake.

Li Bo, born in Inner Mongolia in 1955, is a distinguished performer on the morin khuur, the horse-head fiddle known in Chinese as matouqin. He has been a professional musician since the age of 15, when he joined a local performing arts troupe and began to travel across the steppes. Later he was a featured soloist with a national troupe, and eventually became the lead morin khuur player with the Inner Mongolian Radio/Television network. In the mid-1980s, he taught in the School of Music at the Inner Mongolia Normal University. When Li Bo came to the United States to perform at the Northwest Folklife Festival in 2004 and 2005, he volunteered to work with students.