U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp served as the first female senator elected from North Dakota from 2013 – 2019. he is the founder and Chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on addressing the needs and concerns of rural America. Heidi was recently named the Director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, a university she has long been committed to and a place where she enjoys engaging with students over civic discussions while encouraging them to seek opportunities in public service to our country. Heidi also serves as a contributor to both CNBC and ABC News.

He is an multi-award winning talk show host both regionally and nationally. Before radio, he served in the North Dakota Senate from 1995-2008.

Candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District

Anderson Clayton is an organizer by trade, a proud rural North Carolinian, and the current Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, becoming the youngest state party chair in the country.

Brigadier General Austin served in the Army from 1977-2014 and served during the Cuba Refugee Crisis, Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for Operation Enduring Freedom, and for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Austin has also received numerous medals and awards and is an inductee in the Michigan State University ROTC Spartan Battalion Hall of Fame.

Producer at Voxtopica

Bradley Aune served 22 years in the military as an active duty Marine Corps Infantryman, and member of the North Dakota Army National Guard. He was a past Commander and current executive board member of the Fargo Legion Post #2. He has received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for Operation Earnest Will – Persian Gulf 1987 and the Bronze Star Medal for his actions in Iraq leading 100 North Dakota Soldiers in combat as the Unit’s First Sergeant.

Brandon Tensley is Capital B's national politics reporter. Previously, he was a national political writer at CNN, where he covered the intersection of culture, identity, and politics. Prior to that, he was a co-host of Slate's Outward podcast and a contributing writer at Pacific Standard. Brandon was also a Luce Scholar in Thailand and a Fulbright Scholar in Germany.

Bryce Oates writes The Cocklebur on Substack and is a Contributing Editor (Rural Community Organizing) at Barn Raiser. He writes about rural policy, people, places and politics. His work includes narrative nonfiction, opinion pieces and Q&A interviews. Bryce studies how the federal budget affects rural counties, farm and food policy, public lands and conservation issues, racial and gender equity in rural areas, climate change, economic inequality, rural demographic data and rural politics.

Assistant Producer at Voxtopica

Chairman of the Shelby County Ohio Democratic Party and Chair of Rural Voices USA

Christopher Vondracek is a journalist with the Minnesota Star Tribune. He helmed the agriculture beat for three years but now covers D.C. His works include the memoir Dancing with Welk, about traveling in his college indie band and reading Lawrence Welk’s autobiography, and Rattlesnake Summer, a collection of poems for each of South Dakota’s 66 counties.

Master Sergeant Morales is currently the Director of the Military Aligned Student Program at St. Bonaventure University. He was awarded the Silver Star medal, which was bestowed for his heroic actions on Aug. 26, 2006, when Morales’s unit was ambushed. He was inducted in 2024 by State Sen. George Borrello in the Senate Veteran Hall of Fame in recognition of his outstanding service and dedication to the nation and fellow veterans.

Heidi Marttila-Losure is a writer and designer who describes herself as “rural by choice”—after spending a dozen years away getting an education in Minnesota and work experience at daily newspapers in North Carolina and Iowa, she returned in 2008 with her young family to the South Dakota farm where she grew up and chose to make her life there.

Isaac Nehring was born and raised in Helena, Montana. He is currently pursuing a BA in American Studies and coterminal MS in Civil & Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. At school, Isaac leads the Stanford Rural Engagement Network, works on the campus farm, and previously served as an undergraduate senator. Isaac is a 2025 Truman Scholar representing Montana.

Head of Production at Voxtopica

J.C. Bowman is the Executive Director and CEO of Professional Educators of Tennessee, with nearly 40 years of experience in the field of education. He began his career teaching high school social studies and special education in Tennessee public schools. Since 2011, he has led Professional Educators with a focus on legislative priorities and education policies.

J.D. Scholten is a State Representative from Iowa House District 1, a board member of One Country.

Jerry Hagstrom is a Washington journalist covering agriculture, food and rural America.d He writes the daily Hagstrom Report and his work also appears on DTN/The Progressive Farmer and in National Journal. He grew up on a farm northeast of Wilton, North Dakota., where his grandparents were homesteaders.

Jessica Petrick is a business leader, Army National Guard veteran, and dedicated community advocate from southwestern North Dakota. She holds an MBA in Business Management from the University of Mary, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and currently serves as Vice President of People Operations at HIT, Inc a large nonprofit that serves people with disabilities and low-income families.

Jess is a fierce advocate for rural communities and public schools. She was an American literature teacher for 16 years and decided to run for a house seat in Missouri’s first district in 2022. Although she lost the race, she continues her activism. She is the Executive Director of Blue Missouri and writes a substack called "The View from Rural Missouri."

He is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013 and as a U.S. Senator from 2013 to 2019.

John Volk is a researcher and journalist with Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. He manages, updates and analyzes the LNI’s nationwide database of news organizations and reports on trends in the American local news landscape.

Joshua P. Darr is an associate professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and a Senior Researcher in the Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship at Syracuse University, teaching classes in political communication. His research focuses on local news, partisan polarization, and campaign strategy. Darr has co-authored two books: Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization (2021) and Storefront Campaigning (2024). He received an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2022 for his project investigating how newspapers can earn trust and reduce polarization. Darr earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Julie von Haefen has represented the 36th District in the North Carolina House of Representatives since January 1, 2019. Rep. von Haefen was a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) leader at the school, county and state level and is a fierce advocate for North Carolina’s public schools. Rep. von Haefen served as the President of the Wake County PTA Council from 2017-2018 and served on the Board of Directors for five years. She also served on the North Carolina PTA Board of Directors from 2017-2019 and was the State Advocacy Chair and Federal Legislative Chair for NCPTA. Rep. von Haefen is still a proud member of the PTA at the schools her children attend in Wake County, and she also works as a substitute teacher with Wake County Public Schools.

American politician serving since 2025 as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Martin formerly served as chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, and a vice chair of the DNC.

Host of The Rural Impact podcast

Executive Director for Kansas Farmers Union

Phil Snape is a co-founder of Impact Social. Impact Social is a specialist social media, online monitoring and analysis company. Impact Social uses data software to track over 60 million online sites.

Richard Fawal is founder and CEO of Voxtopica.

Robert Leonard is a retired News Director for KNIA/KRLS radio in Knoxville/Pella/Indianola, Iowa. He has bylines in the New York Times, TIME, USA Today, the Des Moines Register, the Iowa Capital Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, and many more publications. He also writes at Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture.

He is the president and founder of PRRI and a leading scholar and a New York Times bestselling author.

Sarah Longwell is a political consultant who has conducted hundreds of hours of focus groups nationwide. She is the publisher of The Bulwark, an independent media company with millions of followers and subscribers on Substack. She hosts the Bulwark podcasts “The Focus Group” and “The Secret Podcast.”

Sarah Melotte is a rural geographer and journalist based in Western North Carolina. She began her work at the Daily Yonder in 2021 while completing her graduate degree in Applied Geography at the University of Colorado - Denver.

Lieutenant Colonel Coulter served honorably for 23 years with assignments that included Chief Operations for the 25th Infantry Division, Commander of Logistics for the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment 1st Armored Division in Iraq, as well as Senior Advisor to the Afghan Army. He was the former Professor of Military Science at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, NY.

Outreach Coordinator at Voxtopica

American comedian

CEO of The Back Forty media company