Kheda Garchakhanova is a native speaker of Chechen and earned a Bachelor of Science in teaching the Chechen language and literature in 2016 from the Chechen State Pedagogical University in Grozny, Chechnya. After earning her degree, she moved to the U.S. and began a career teaching high school English. She has been teaching Chechen as a foreign language since 2017, and has developed an online self-paced comprehensive course for beginners.  Currently she is pursuing a master's degree in Applied Linguistics from Liberty University. She resides in Germantown, Maryland.

John Lechner holds an MS in Foreign Service (MSFS) from Georgetown University. He is an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa, and speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic). He currently works as a freelance journalist and researcher, reporting on the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya. He is an expert on the history, languages, and politics of Central Africa, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Kyiv Post, The Diplomat, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, The National Interest, and Defense One, among others. He resides in Washington, D.C.