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Youth activist Reverend Eugene Franklin Rivers, III was born on April 9, 1950 in Boston, Massachusetts. Rivers spent his early years in Chicago where his parents, Mildred Bell Rivers and Eugene F. Rivers, Jr. were members of the Nation of Islam. His father, as Eugene 3X, designed the masthead for Muhammad Speaks. Mentored by Reverend Benjamin Smith of Philadelphia's Deliverance Evangelistic Temple, Rivers graduated from Dobbins Vocational High School in 1968. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, while becoming active in street level organizing and black church politics. In 1970, Rivers was a part of the Black Economic Development Conference working with Muhammad Kenyatta. He joined Lucius Walker and James Forman in the Reparations Movement. He attended Yale as an unregistered activist from 1973 to 1976. Officially admitted to Harvard University in 1976, Rivers was mentored by Dr. Martin Kilson. Recognized as one of the most effective crusaders against gang violence, Rivers founded Azusa Christian Community in 1984 in the Four Corners section of Boston's inner city Dorchester neighborhood. As President of the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation, he is working to build new grassroots leadership in forty of the worst inner city neighborhoods in inner city America. Rivers has appeared on CNN's *Hardball*, NBC's *Meet the Press*, PBS's *Charlie Rose*, BET's *Lead Story*, and National Public Radio, among other programs. He has been featured or provided commentary for publications such as *Newsweek*, *The New Yorker*, *The New York Times*, *the Washington Post*, *the Los Angeles Times*, the *Boston Herald*, and the *Boston Globe*, as well as periodicals such as the *Boston Review*, *Sojourners*, *Christianity Today*, and *Books and Culture*.

Michael J. Sullivan is the mayor of the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts. A Republican, Sullivan has been the mayor since 2001 beating Isabel Melendez, and was re-elected in 2005 beating Marcos Devers in non-partisan elections. Although he formed an exploratory committee to enter the Special Election to replace Congressman Marty Meehan, Sullivan ultimately decided not to run and endorsed Republican candidate Jim Ogonowski.

Andrew M. Sum is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. He has authored or co-authored numerous articles, monographs, and books on regional, national, and state labor markets, on the labor market behavior and problems of young adults and the role of education, literacy, and training in influencing the labor market experiences of adults. Among his publications are *Toward a More Perfect Union: Basic Skills, Poor Families, and Our Economic Future* (1988), *The Subtle Danger: Reflections on the Literacy Abilities of Young Adults* (1987), *Poverty and Adolescence* (1991), *From Dreams to Dust* (1996), *Literacy in the Labor Force: Results from the National Adult Literacy Survey* (1998), *State of the American Dream in New England *(1996), *Young Workers, Young Families, and Child Poverty* (1996), *The Road Ahead: Emerging Threats to Workers, Families and the Massachusetts Economy* (1998), and *A Second Chance for the Fourth Chance: A Critique of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998* (1999).

Gerardo Villacres is presently the managing partner of the Massachusetts based international company Ultra-Linx Marketing Group LLC. He was the Executive Director of the Hispanic-American Chamber of Commerce, where he created a range of community related programs including conferences, seminars, advocacy, networking, and cultural events. In addition to his work with the Chamber, he hosted and produced the weekly TV program *Vision*, on which he interviewed business people, politicians, community leaders, scholars, and interesting personalities. Gerardo moved to New England in 1998 to launch two Spanish radio stations in Boston. Before coming to the Boston area, he worked at CBS in New York for close to 20 years and was the General Manager of CBS Hispanic Radio Network. Prior to that he worked in Business Affairs Department at CBS Records (Sony/BMG now) administrating music video production. Villacres has been recognized by the Greater Boston Hispanic Lyons Club with the Humanitarian Award, and has received many other national and international awards and recognitions, including Premios Ondas in Spain and the Billboard Award for the program *Buenas Noches America*. He was featured in *Boston Magazine* as one of the emerging leaders of the minority community, in the Boston Area in 2002 and that year he won The Minority Advocate of the Year award by the SBA in Massachusetts furthermore he was the Commencement Speaker for Bunker Hill Community College.

In 1964 Jonathan Kozol began work as a teacher in low-income, predominately black Roxbury, first in a freedom school and later in a public elementary school. He grew up in Newton, was educated at Harvard and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. His first published nonfiction, *Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools *(1967) winner of the National Book Award, drew upon his experiences as a fourth-grade teacher. The practice of immersing himself in the lives of his subjects became the pattern for his subsequent searing studies of the injustices a wealthy society visits upon its most vulnerable members. A commission to study the problem of adult literacy resulted in *Illiterate American* (1980). In *Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America* (1988) Kozol examines the stunted lives of people deprived of the raw necessities. *Savage Inequalities* (1991) details the differences between schools in affluent neighborhoods and those attended by the children of the poor. In 1995 Kozol produced another study, this time based on first-hand experience among schoolchildren in the South Bronx: *Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation*. *Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope* (2001) revisits the courageous and resilient children of the South Bronx.

Louis Crompton is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Nebraska. Co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the Modern Language Association, he is author of the highly acclaimed *Byron and Greek Love, and Homosexuality and Civilization *, among numerous other works.

Dan Shaughnessy is a sports columnist and associate at t_he Boston Globe_. He has been named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year 14 times and 12 times has been voted one of America's top ten sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 2016 Shaughnessy was the recipient of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing,'' presented at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Shaughnessy has written thirteen books, including New York Times bestseller _Francona, The Curse of the Bambino,_ and_ Senior Year_. He most recently wrote "_Wish It Lasted Forever – Life With The Larry Bird Celtics_", a book about his days covering the 1980s Bird Celtics.

Stephen McCauley grew up outside of Boston. He attended the University of Vermont as an undergraduate and studied for a year in France at the University of Nice. Upon graduation, he worked at hotels, kindergartens, ice cream stands, and health food stores. He taught yoga in a church basement and cleaned houses. For many years, he worked as a travel agent. In the 1980's, he moved to Brooklyn. After taking a few writing courses at adult learning centers, he enrolled in the writing program at Columbia University. At the suggestion of writer Stephen Koch, he began working on his first novel.

Tom Perrotta is the author of six works of fiction including *Bad Haircut*, *The Wishbones*, *Election*, and the New York Times bestsellers *Joe College*, *Little Children*, and most recently, *The Abstinence Teacher*. In 1999, *Election* was made into an acclaimed feature film directed by Alexander Payne and starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. In 2006, Perrotta was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay for the movie version of *Little Children*, which was directed by Todd Field and starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly. He lives with his family outside Boston.

Carolyn Porco is a planetary scientist and the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission presently in orbit around Saturn. In 1999, she was selected by The London Sunday Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century, and by Industrial Week as one of 50 Stars to Watch.