Print partial page content from a Page Template

I have a custom page template in my child theme for displaying speakers for a conference. I have the speakers set up as posts in a specific category. Right now, it loops through all the posts and prints out the featured image thumbnail and title of each post in a 2-column layout.

This part works well. However, what I want to add is a little more detail to the main page without printing ALL the content of the post. If I use the_content() in my loop, it prints the entire content of the post (obviously). Is there a way to print just the first line of content, or set up an excerpt or something? TIA!