Speakers confirmed:

Elyse "MoFo" Anders is the bad ass behind the Women Thinking Free Foundation, a science and critical thinking organization focusing on women and women's issues; and the superhero in charge of the Hug Me! I'm Vaccinated campaign, a vaccine advocacy and education project; as well as a podcaster emeritus, Skepchick, writer, and pants-less activist-extraordinaire who takes on multi-national corporations from her living room. As mother of two, Elyse is heralded as the anti-Jenny McCarthy. She's not the hero you deserve, but she is the hero you need.

Ben Blanchard is a senior at Saint Cloud State University studying microbiology & medicine. He is a president for SSA@SCSU (Secular Huskies), the Chair of OUTLoud, and President of the American Society of SCSU. He is an expert in woo science, networking, and Doctor Who. He is also the SSA Volunteer Network Coordinator for the Upper Midwest, and blogs at thesweatervest.com . Follow him on twitter @bensweatervest.

August Brunsman is the executive director of the Secular Student Alliance.  He has served in that position since 2001, and started getting paid for it in 2004. He also worked as a programmer for the Institute for Humanist Studies from 2001 to 2004. In 1997 he co-founded Students for Freethought at the Ohio State University (now the Secular Student Alliance at OSU) where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2001 majoring in psychology and minoring in mathematics and cognitive science.

August has served as the Secretary of the Board of the Secular Coalition for America since 2006 and is also the Secretary of the Board of the Humanist Community of Central Ohio. Additionally, he is the camp director of Camp Quest Ohio where he has volunteered since 1999.

Natalie Casanova is a journalism student at Austin Community College and has been working at college newspapers for the past four years. She is the former president and current co-secretary of the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. She has written several controversial pieces on religion, atheism, science and social issues, and has received recognition and several awards for some of her op/eds. She currently works in social media and moonlights as a video game commentator. You can follow her on Twitter @TheZombiUnicorn

Greta Christina is one of the most widely-read and well-respected bloggers in the atheist blogosphere. She is author of Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, an Amazon best-seller in the Atheism category, and was ranked by an independent analyst as one of the Top Ten most popular atheist bloggers. She is a regular atheist correspondent for AlterNet, the online political magazine with over 1,200,000 hits a week, and has been writing about atheism and skepticism for her own cleverly-named Greta Christina's Blog (now part of the Freethought Blogs network) since 2005. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including Ms., Skeptical Inquirer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong. She has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is an experienced and entertaining public speaker, who has been doing public speaking for many years.

Mr. Deity's interest is in concretizing thoughtlessly accepted, abstract religious concepts (as he does with the new newsletter "Mr. Deity and The Way of the Mister"), in order to make people think about what they really believe. He promotes the idea that in order to determine what is good, right, and true, we must use reason, inquiry, and wisdom; whereas Western religion is institutionally at war with not only those concepts but virtually all the great ideas and values which have inspired and informed the great democracies of the West (human rights, liberty, equality, tolerance, justice, knowledge, science, and due process).

In his presentations, Mr. Deity demonstrates how Western religion, if taken seriously and lived devoutly, will make the world a hell on Earth, just as it has in the past and is currently doing in the Islamic world.

Jerry Dewitt’s ministry began at age seventeen. He evangelized the United States and assisted in three Pentecostal churches. Later he held the pastorate of two fundamentalist congregations. After more than twenty-five years of ministry he realized he had become an Atheist.  In 2011 he became the first graduate of The Clergy Project and later that year he was appointed to the Directorship of Recovering from Religion. 

Currently Jerry is working on his memoir 'Hope After Faith', scheduled for release in June 2013 by Da Capo Press.   Jerry DeWitt was married for twenty-two years, has one son and still lives in rural Louisiana. 

A Southern Baptist for more than 20 years, Matt Dillahunty began a broad, prolonged investigation into all things religious in an attempt to bolster his faith and pursue a career in the ministry. This investigation continues, though he abandoned faith and religion in favor of skepticism, reason, logic and scientific evidence. His interest in apologetics led to the creation of IronChariots.org, though the site's current incarnation is the result of the combined efforts of many dedicated individuals.

Matt has served as President of The Atheist Community of Austin since 2005, co-hosts the groups atheist-oriented podcast, The Non-Prophets, and hosts the group's public access television program, The Atheist Experience. The program is a 90-minute, live, weekly program that takes live calls from listeners in Austin and around the world, prompting many debates and discussions on a variety of religious, philosophical and skeptical topics. He's been hosting for the program since 2004 and, thanks to fans posting clips on YouTube, the show has broken out of the Austin public access arena and is available to the world as a live stream and podcast.

JT Eberhard is a former campus organizer and high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance, author of the blog What Would JT Do?, and has been a contributing author to AtheismResource.com.

Before joining the SSA, JT was most known as a debater on atheism and LGBT rights and as the co-founder of the Skepticon annual conference. From 2008-2010, JT worked as the organizing team leader for Skepticon 1, 2, and 3. The event would usher in a new format of conventions featuring rock star lineups while allowing people to attend for free. 

JT also co-founded and led the SSA-affiliated Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster at Missouri State. The group would go on to make news on several occasions, often for their unconventional approach to combating religion such as building a cardboard box fort in the middle of campus to counter-protest evangelists or massing on their school's free speech zone with expletive-bearing signs in response to the school saying bands could not use coarse language.

David Fitzgerald has been called "one of the busiest atheist activists in the Bay Area." In addition to serving on the board of San Francisco Atheists and Center For Inquiry-SF, he is also the Director/Co-Founder of both the world's first Atheist Film Festival and Evolutionpalooza!, San Francisco's oldest annual Darwin Day celebration.

In addition, he is a writer and historical researcher who has been actively investigating the Historical Jesus question for over ten years. He has a degree in history and was an associate member of CSER (the former Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion). He is at work on the follow-up book to his NAILED: Ten Christian Myths that Show Jesus Never Existed at All  (Secretly, he is also a fiction writer under the name Kilt Kilpatrick).

Kelley Freeman is a senior at the University of South Carolina studying Russian language & literature. She is a president for SSAUSC (formerly the Pastafarians at USC) and the founder & chair of Forward Progressive Alliance at USC. She is also on the board of directors for Camp Quest South Carolina, a former Secular Student Alliance intern, an SSA Volunteer Network Coordinator for the Southeast, a contributor to the Friendly Atheist, and can crochet like a fiend. Follow her on twitter @ramenneedles.

Sikivu Hutchinson has written extensively on the politics of atheism and secular humanism and its implications for African Americans. For black atheists, actively breaking with religious tradition is an even graver rejection than that of white intellectuals galvanized by the work of Hitchens or Dawkins. This is partly due to the fact that the history of African American civil and human rights resistance is heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian religious dogma. Sikivu's work explores the tensions that exist in African American culture around living a moral life beyond the boundaries of organized religion. She has addressed the role secularism/atheism plays in shaping contemporary black perspectives on such issues as abortion, intimate partner violence and same-sex marriage, the particular challenges of "coming out" as an atheist female of color and how the cultural knowledge and lived experience of atheists and secular humanists of color "nuance" the conversation around American atheism.

Zack Kopplin is a sophomore at Rice University.  For the last few years, Zack has been leading the repeal of Louisiana's creationism law, the misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act, with the support of 78 Nobel laureate scientists and many others.  Kopplin has also investigated school voucher programs in partnership with MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry Show and exposed hundreds of school voucher schools nationwide that are teaching creationism and receiving public money.  Kopplin is working on his new campaign, calling for a Second Giant Leap for Mankind, 1 trillion dollars of new science funding, and an end to science denial legislation.

Dorian Mooneyham is the writer of Trans and Godless, a blog about feminism, transgender and queer rights, and the secular movement. Dorian is a psychology student at Texas Woman's University specializing in counseling for LGBT youth. She has provided safe space presentations to Fort Worth ISD, Plano ISD, and Dallas ISD schools as well as private organizations. Dorian is also the Center Manager for Youth First Texas, a non-profit safe space for LGBT youth in the DFW area.

Anthony Pinn completed his undergraduate degree (BA) at Columbia University, and received the Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University Divinity School, as well as the MA and PhD from Harvard University in the study of religion.  He taught at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN) before becoming the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is also the founding director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning – a Center meant to foster creative partnerships between Rice and the larger Houston community that impact both the work of the University and the quality of life in Houston. Related to his research, he is the author/editor of twenty-six books, including By The Hands: A Documentary of African American Humanism (2001); African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (2004); and, The End of God-Talk:  An African American Humanist Theology (2012).

2012 marked his twentieth anniversary as a humanist in thought and deed.  And during these twenty-years, he has made an effort to think and act consistently with the best of humanism. Both his personal humanism and his involvement with humanist organizations speak to his deep belief that humanists are uniquely positioned to provide productive approaches to public life that move away from theistically charged ideas and practices. 

Beth Presswood is the host of the Godless Bitches podcast and occasional guest on The Non-Prophets and Atheist Experience podcasts. She grew up strict Southern Baptist and was a closeted atheist in her teens. When she came out, she co-founded the Atheist and Freethought club of East TN State University and had a blog called Atheist Girls. She is now on the board of the Atheist Community of Austin and is married to Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist Experience TV show.

Äron Ra is one of the "YouTube atheists" and an advocate for rationalism in science classrooms.  He grew up in an exclusively creationist environment where he felt like a lonely outcast just for understanding evolution, let alone accepting it.  Being raised in a mostly-Mormon family encouraged him to explore other denominations and eventually non-Abrahamic spiritualism before rejecting faith-based beliefs altogether.  He was drawn into activism when the Religious Right dominated his state's Board of Education, and began undermining education in history, health, science, and social studies.  His videos often focus on evolution and the evidence indicating an interrelated tree of life.  His series summarizing the 'Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism' and his subsequent series, 'Falsifying Phylogeny' (including the Phylogeny Challenge') have been mirrored, featured, referenced, and recommended by many professional scientists, secularists, and educators, and has attracted more than 60,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/aronra

David Smalley is a former Christian musician who deeply studied Christianity, psychology, sociology, and world religions for more than 15 years, and became an atheist. He founded the Dogma Debate web-forum in 2008, which later developed into a live radio show & podcast with more than 140,000 downloads in its first 4 months. David remains an activist for the equality of all people. He is the author of Baptized Atheist (2010), former editor of the American Atheist magazine, and host of the Dogma Debate live radio show. He's also a public speaker on issues concerning civil rights, marriage equality, and freedom from religious dogma. 

Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist likes to point out that "unlike you" he has a creator. That's why he claims to identify with God. "We're both totally made up," he explains. Brother Sam, as his friends refer to him, considers himself inevitable. "Sooner or later somebody like me was bound to happen if families kept [messing] with their children's heads. I'm surprised it took this long. You know what Hosea 8:7 says about reaping the whirlwind. Well, here we are.

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, bills itself as an after-school program of “Bible study.” But Stewart soon discovered that the Club’s real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their “unchurched” peers, all the while promoting the natural but false impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.
 
Astonished to discover that the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed this—and other forms of religious activity in public schools—legal, Stewart set off on an investigative journey to dozens of cities and towns across the nation to document the impact. In this book she demonstrates that there is more religion in America’s public schools today than there has been for the past 100 years. The movement driving this agenda is stealthy. It is aggressive. It has our children in its sights. And its ultimate aim is to destroy the system of public education as we know it.

Katherine Stewart has written for Newsweek International, Marie Claire, The London Times, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. She has published two novels and was the coauthor of Rent by Jonathan Larsen, the book about the musical of the same name. She and her family recently moved from Santa Barbara, California, to New York City.

David Tamayo is president and founder of Hispanic American Freethinkers (HAFree), a national nonprofit educational organization with emphasis on serving the Latino community in the U.S.  Mr. Tamayo received his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from George Washington University and his Masters degree in Management in Information Technology from University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He currently serves as Vice President of Technology for large corporation in the Washington DC area. 

Mr. Tamayo developed a critical thinking program for English as a Second Language (ESL) students at the high school level.  This program is currently being used by some high schools in Northern VA and is in the process of being expanded to other high school systems.  He is also one of the producers and conductors of the HAFree podcast (mostly in Spanish) discussing issues of religion in the Hispanic communities and encouraging young Latinos to pursue careers in the “hard” sciences such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, etc.

On other miscellaneous notes, Mr. Tamayo recently testified in West Chester, PA against the removal of the Tree of Knowledge “nativity” display and he is an active supporter and writes extensively on  adogmatic freemasonry in the U.S.