Mind Reels 2026

Chronicling Jacinda Ardern’s tenure as New Zealand PM, navigating crises while redefining global leadership through her empathetic yet resolute approach. Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister, led her nation through unprecedented challenges, implemented bold policies, and became the second leader in history to give birth in office, all while championing an inclusive and empathetic leadership style that changed global expectations of what a leader can be.

MELISSA SAXE BLAUSTEIN
Melissa Saxe Blaustein currently serves as Vice Mayor of Sausalito, where she previously became the youngest mayor in the city’s history. Her public service career began working for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, and continued with roles in the Obama White House and with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She went on to found and lead an international policy nonprofit representing the tech startup ecosystem across 30 countries and four continents, working at the intersection of government, innovation, and global policy.

Melissa has addressed policymakers and leaders at the World Trade Organization, the European Commission, and the European Parliament, and has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, and ABC News, among others. She holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Sciences Po Paris and is pursuing a second Master’s in Homeland Security at the Naval Postgraduate School. An English Channel swimmer, she is currently completing a memoir on ambition and leadership.

 

Follows five international women who participate in ‘La Maestra’, the only competition in the world for female orchestra conductors. Personal stories of survival in this one-of-a-kind event created to break another glass ceiling for women.

NICOLE PAIEMENT
Internationally acclaimed conductor Nicole Paiement has performed with orchestras, festivals, and opera companies around the world, including the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana in Italy, Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Atlanta Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal, and The Dallas Opera. Paiement is the Founder & Artistic Director of Opera Parallèle, a leading opera company based in San Francisco which is committed to contemporary works. Under her baton, Opera Parallèle has brought to the stage numerous world premieres, commissioned many operas, and reorchestrated several larger operatic works for chamber orchestras. Paiement has received numerous awards for her leadership and expertise in contemporary opera, including the “Champion of New Music” award from the American Composer’s Forum. Her work can be found on many recordings and spans a wide range of instrumental and operatic repertoire. In addition to being a leader in the world of contemporary music, Paiement is a specialist in early twentieth-century French music and regularly conducts music from the Baroque and Classical periods.

MARY CHUN
Conductor Mary Chun has been celebrated by Le Figaro for her unmatched “charm, energy, and allégresse” in leading the Paris premiere of John Adams’ hybrid opera Ceiling/Sky. A powerful force in a historically male-dominated field, Mary exemplifies the visionary leadership highlighted in Maestra, breaking boundaries and advocating for diverse, groundbreaking music-making. Known for her fierce commitment to elevating new American voices, she is the Principal Conductor of Earplay and Resident Music Director for Mercury Theater. She has worked with master composers such as John Adams, Tan Dun, and Libby Larsen to bring their music to life. Her artistic leadership shines in her extensive collaborations with rising star Napa composer Carla Lucero. This includes conducting the world premiere of Juana—commanding a complex fusion of Western European and ancient Aztec instruments to critical acclaim from the Los Angeles Times. Further pushing cross-cultural frontiers, she premiered and recorded Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Chinatown with City Opera Vancouver, directing a unique orchestra of Western classical instruments interfused with traditional Chinese instruments. Beyond conducting popular opera productions in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Slovak Republic, she recently led West Edge Opera’s critically praised new opera, Dolores, honoring iconic farm-labor activist Dolores Huerta.

JESSICA BEJARANO
Jessica Bejarano is the Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, Cover Conductor with San Francisco Symphony, Curator and Scholar in Residence with San Francisco Opera, and board member of the International Conductors’ Guild. She was featured on NBC’s The Today Show with Natalie Morales as the “Woman Breaking Barriers as a Trailblazing Symphony Conductor”. PBS News Hour Weekend also featured Jessica as an emerging female conductor and KQED named Jessica 1 of 10 artists to watch in KQED Arts’ Bay Brilliant Top 10 Artists of 2018. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) named Jessica 1 of 100 Honorees for 2023 for her contribution to the Arts in the Bay Area, San Francisco. Jessica has guest conducted the Classical Symphony in St. Petersburg Russia; Urbino Summer Orchestra in Urbino, Italy: Philharmonie Orchestra “Mihail Jora” Bacau, Romania; Ruse National Philharmonic, Ruse, Bulgaria; Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Republic; Antonio Soler Orquestra, San Lorenzo de Escorial, Spain; Falcon Symphony Orchestra, Falcon, Venezuela and various orchestras throughout the United States.

 

The New Yorker’s centennial reveals behind-the-scenes access to editors, writers, and archives of this culturally vital magazine, one of print’s last survivors.

HOST
ISAAC CHOTINER
Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with public figures in politics, media, books, business, technology, and more. Before joining The New Yorker, Chotiner was a staff writer at Slate and the host of the podcast “I Have to Ask.” He has written for The New Yorker, the Times, The Atlantic, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. After graduating from the University of California, Davis, Chotiner worked at The Washington Monthly before joining The New Republic, in 2006, as a reporter-researcher. He went on to run the magazine’s online books section and later became a senior editor.

PANELISTS
MARK ULRICKSEN
Artist and Illustrator Mark Ulriksen is a Bay Area native (San Carlos) and has lived in SF’s Cole Valley for 40 years. He began working with the New Yorker in 1993 and has since contributed 75 covers and over 150 illustrations within the magazine. He’s worked for most of the countries leading periodicals over a varied career, including a dozen years as a graphic designer as well as art director of the KQED magazine San Francisco Focus. He was SFJAZZ’s illustrator for over ten years, has done murals for the Chicago Bears, covered The Masters for Golf Digest, published an illustrated book on his love of dogs (Dogs Rule Nonchalantly). He’s won awards in most every illustration competition for over three decades and has been a recipient of three gold and three silver medals from the Society of Illustrators. He enjoys speaking to art students and aficionados and is currently working on a graphic memoir entitled “My Four Fathers”.

ANNA WEINER
Anna Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, covering the Bay Area, technology, and the cultural influence of Silicon Valley. Her first book, “Uncanny Valley,” a memoir of her time in the tech industry, was published in 2020. Excerpts of “Uncanny Valley” were published by The New Yorker as “Girl, Disrupted.” The book expands on a lightly fictionalized piece by the same title, published by n+1 in 2016.She lives in San Francisco.

The extraordinary life of Peter Asher—pop star, producer, manager, and confidant to legends such as Paul McCartney, James Taylor, and Linda Ronstadt.

HOST
BEN FONG-TORRES
Ben Fong-Torres, a native of Oakland, began, in the late 60s, as an editor and writer at Rolling Stone magazine. He was depicted in a movie (Almost Famous), and is the subject of a documentary, Like a Rolling Stone. He has published ten books, including his best-selling memoirs, The Rice Room, and two compilations (Not Fade Away and Becoming Almost Famous). At the magazine, he wrote more than 30 cover stories, subjects including Linda Ronstadt and Peter Asher as well as Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Grace Slick, and Ray Charles. While at Rolling Stone, he doubled as a weekend DJ on FM pioneer KSAN, and, from 1997 to Covid, co-anchored the Chinese New Year Parade on KTVU, for which he won five Emmys. Ben attended San Francisco State University and is in its Alumni Hall of Fame. He also has been bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.

PANELISTS
PAUL LIBERATORE
Paul Liberatore is an award-winning Bay Area journalist who has written about rock music and pop culture over the past five-plus decades. Until his retirement in 2018, he was a longtime music and feature writer for the Marin Independent Journal. Since then, he has written a biweekly music and entertainment column for the IJ and the Bay Area News Group. In the 1980s, he was on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle as a general assignment reporter, feature writer and assistant city editor. As an author, his nonfiction book, “The Road to Hell,” an investigation of the Marin County Courthouse Shootout and the infamous case of “Soledad Brother” George Jackson, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press and was a New York Times Book of the Times. He has been honored with a Milley Award from the City of Mill Valley for his contributions to the arts and became the eighth recipient of the County of Marin’s Cultural Treasure Award in 2014. He has also been a musician, fronting his own band, the Liberators, and is proud to have been a member of the Bay Area writers band, the Rock Bottom Remainders.

DAN GELLER & DAYNA GOLDFINE
For over 35 years, Emmy-award winning directors/producers Geller and Goldfine have jointly created critically acclaimed multi-character documentary narratives that braid the personal stories of their protagonists to form a larger portrait of the human experience. In addition to PETER ASHER: Everywhere Man, their work includes: HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song (2021), which debuted at both the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, had a worldwide theatrical release via Sony Pictures Classics and was shortlisted for a documentary Oscar.

Other films of Geller and Goldfine include The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013), which had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and its European premiere in Berlin, and played theatrically internationally; Something Ventured (2011), which premiered at SXSW and went on to play festivals and screen internationally, including a national PBS broadcast in January 2013; Ballets Russes (2005), which was recognized as one of the top five documentaries of 2005 by the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review, appeared on a dozen critical top-ten lists, including Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Reporter, the San Francisco Chronicle and Slate; Now and Then: From Frosh to Seniors, which premiered theatrically in October 1999 and aired on PBS in October 2000 as the lead program of the Independent Lens series; Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins + K.O.S. (1996), a feature-length documentary about the South Bronx-based art group, which aired on Cinemax in September 1998 and was the recipient of two national Emmy Awards; Frosh: Nine Months in a Freshman Dorm (1994); and, the award-winning Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul (1988).

Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine were admitted to the Documentary Branch of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2014.

JOEL SELVIN
Joel Selvin has been covering pop music for the San Francisco Chronicle since shortly after the Civil War. His magazine articles have appeared around the world in publications you would have thought knew better. He has written several books that some people have actually read.