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Recognized by former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley as "one of the outstanding education leaders in the country," Chad Wick leads KnowledgeWorks Foundation in its mission to increase the number and diversity of people who value and access public education. As the founding president and CEO, he has led the Foundation to achieve this mission by providing not only seed grants and operating funds, extensive technical assistance and training, but policy and advocacy projects that promote and support sustainable, system-wide changes. Prior to leading KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Chad was president and CEO of Rise Learning Solutions. He has also served as president of Mayerson Company, executive vice president of the PNC Bank, and CEO of Southern Ohio Bank.

Tim is the director of the Executive Development Roundtable and a professor of Organizational Behavior in the School of Management at Boston University. He is also a core faculty member of the Human Resources Policy Institute. He has served as acting dean and associate dean of Faculty Development and faculty director for the Masters Programs at the School of Management. Tim's latest book is *Careers In and Out of Organizations* (Sage Publications, 2002). He is the co-author of *The Career is Dead - Long Live the Career: A Relational Approach to Careers*, *Careers in Organizations*, and *Organizational Climates and Careers,*.

Ellen Band creates sound and music pieces for performance and concert settings, installation, sculpture, and tape. Deeply inspired by the infinitely complex textures, rhythms, and colours within the so-called ordinary sounds of everyday life, she uses the time-honoured technique of field recording to collect the source material she uses for her pieces. She then fashions works which reflect the imagistic, mnemonic (memory), and psychoacoustic properties of sound. Having a strong background in both the 20th Century experimental music and sound art traditions, she crafts sound works which transform familiar sounds into new contexts and forms for listening to, perceiving, and experiencing sound.

In November 2002 when the Democratic National Party Chair announced Boston as the site for the 2004 National Convention, the efforts of four Massachusetts politicians were highlighted: the two U.S. Senators for Massachusetts, the Mayor of Boston and State Senator Dianne Wilkerson who served on the DNCs Host Committee. Wilkerson is currently serving her seventh term in the Massachusetts Senate. Wilkerson gained a reputation early on for tackling the most difficult social, economic and political issues. She continues to defy expectations while accumulating one of the most prolific records of legislative and non-legislative accomplishments. Senator Wilkerson holds a B.S. in Public Administration from American International College and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. In 1991, she became the first African American female to obtain a partnership in a major Boston law firm. In 1993, she was sworn in as the first African American female to serve in the Massachusetts Senate and is currently the highest-ranking Black elected official in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Dr. Donald G. Kyle is a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is an internationally recognized expert on ancient sport and spectacles who has delivered numerous invited lectures, been interviewed by the media, and consulted and appeared on History Channel shows on Roman gladiators and on the Ancient Olympics. He has also served on the editorial boards of three journals of sport history. Dr. Kyle's book publications include \_Athletics in Ancient Athens\_ (1993), \_Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome\_ (1998), and \_Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World\_ (2007, second ed. 2015). He has additionally co-edited volumes such as \_Essays on Sport History and Sport Mythology\_ (1990) and \_A Companion to Ancient Sport and Spectacle\_ (2014) and written articles and book chapters on his topics of expertise.

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.

Carmen Fields has been a fixture in Bostons journalism community for over 25 years. Her experience includes both print and broadcast journalism; journalism education and media relations. For many Boston-area residents, Carmens comments on the news of the day, in her *Boston Globe* column and as a television reporter and anchor for Channels 7 and 4 and Channel 2s *Ten OClock News with Christopher Lydon* were part of daily life. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Carmen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from Lincoln University in Missouri and a Master of Science degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. She was a part of the *Boston Globe* team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Bostons school desegregation. After work at the Boston Globe as a reporter, assistant city editor and later as a columnist, Fields became a television journalist. She was also an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University.

Robert V. Ward, a Boston educator and administrator, was recently named Dean of the Southern New England School of Law. Dean Ward replaces Dean David M. Prentiss, who filled the position on an interim basis until a permanent dean was found and now returns to his role as associate dean and member of the faculty. Dean Ward has served as professor of law at New England School of Law since 1982 and was the director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Enrichment program, an academic achievement program designed to increase the number of people practicing minority law. He serves on the executive committee of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Academic Support Programs and is a member of the faculty of the American Academy for Judicial Education.

Abigail Thernstrom a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York and the vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also serves on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and was a member of the Massachusetts state Board of Education for eleven years. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University, in 1975. She is also a recipient of the prestigious 2007 Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. She is currently completing a new book: *Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections* (2009). She serves on several boards: the Center for Equal Opportunity and the Institute for Justice, among others. From 1992 to 1997 was a member of the Aspen Institute's Domestic Strategy Group. President Clinton chose her as one of three authors to participate in his first "town meeting" on race in Akron, Ohio, on December 3, 1997, and she was part of a small group that met with the President again in the Oval Office on December 19th.

Stephan Thernstrom is the Winthrop Research Professor of History at Harvard University where he teaches American social history. He was born in Port Huron, Michigan and educated in the public schools of Port Huron and Battle Creek. He graduated with highest honors from Northwestern University in 1956, and was awarded the Ph.D. by Harvard in 1962. He has held appointments as assistant professor at Harvard, associate professor at Brandeis University, and professor at UCLA before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1973. In 1978-1979 he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University and Professorial Fellow at Trinity College. His most recent book, co-authored with Abigail Thernstrom, is *No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning* (2003), was the winner of the 2007 Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship. He is also the editor of *the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups*, and the author of *Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City*; *Poverty, Politics, and Planning in the New Boston*; *The Origins of ABCD*; *The Other Bostonians*; *Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970*; and a two-volume survey, *A History of the American People*.