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John Foster is a leading naturalist and environment educator. He has conducted wildlife research for the US Fish and Wildlife and the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. He has also trained staff for Americorps, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, Project Learning Tree, National Park, and Audubon. Foster has written natural history articles for Yankee, Wild Earth and Backpacker. He is a Commonwealth Award nominee for excellence and leadership as a naturalist; the state's highest awards for a variety of Humanities. Foster has appeared several times on TV; including WCVB's Chronicle, having reported on New England's flora and fauna species populations.

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.

David Broder is a twice-weekly columnist for The *Washington Post*, writing on national politics. Before joining the paper, he was a political reporter at the *Congressional Quarterly*, *The Washington Star* and *The New York Times*. His books include *Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money* (2000); *Behind the Front Page: A Candid Look at How the News is Made* (1987); *The Party's Over: The Failure of Politics in America* (1972); and *The Republican Establishment: The Present and Future of the G.O.P.* with Stephen Hess (1967). Broder's awards include the White Burkett Miller Presidential Award in 1989, and the 1990 4th Estate Award and 1993 Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award from the National Press Foundation. He received the Elijah Parrish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 1990, and was elected to Sigma Delta Chi's Hall of Fame. He won the William Allen White Foundation's award for distinguished achievement in journalism in 1997, and received the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Lifetime Achievement Award in the same year. He won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1973.

Sheldon M. Stern is historian and director of the American History Project for High School Students at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ernest Green was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 22, 1941. Green made history as the only senior among the Little Rock Nine. His place in Arkansas civil rights history was solidified when he became the first African-American to graduate from the previously all-white high school in May of 1958. An active member of the community from an early age, Green regularly attended church. He was involved in the Boy Scouts and eventually became an Eagle Scout. He was a student at Horace Mann High School before volunteering to integrate all-white Central High School. Green persevered through a year of daily harassment by some of his fellow students to become the first African-American Central High graduate on May 25, 1958. Sitting with Green's family at the event was the Martin Luther King, Jr., who attended the graduation virtually unnoticed. After graduating from high school, Green attended Michigan State University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1962 and a master's degree in 1964 in sociology. Afterwards, he served as the director for the A. Phillip Randolph Education Fund from 1968 to 1977. He then was appointed as the assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs during President Jimmy Carter's administration from 1977 to 1981. Currently, Green is managing director at Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C. and has been with the company since 1987. He has served on numerous boards, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.

Mish Michaels is an Emmy Award winning broadcast meteorologist and environmental reporter. She joined the WBZ-TV Weather Team in September 2001. Before joining the WBZ-TV Weather Team, Michaels worked for The Weather Channel (TWC) as co-host of Atmospheres, a prime-time weather magazine show. Prior to that, she worked for WHDH (NBC) in Boston from 1992-2000. During that time, she was twice named "Boston's Best Meteorologist" by the Improper Bostonian. Before joining WHDH, she worked as weekend meteorologist/environmental reporter for WMUR-TV 9 in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was born in Kolkata, India. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Cornell University in New York and Master's degree in Technology from Harvard University.

A former high school teacher and college professor, Dr. Urbanski is an active proponent of change in education. In Rochester, he proposed and designed an internship program for new teachers; a peer review intervention plan; a career ladder; and a homework hot-line service for students. Dr. Urbanski is the director of the newly established Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN), aimed at creating a new vision of teachers' unions that supports needed changes in education. Dr. Urbanski has appeared on several nationally-broadcast television programs, including the NBC *Today Show*, ABC *News World Report*, CBS *Newswatch*, and PBS *MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour*. Articles about him and his work have appeared in *U.S. News and World Report*, *Teacher Magazine*, *EducationWeek*, *The New York Times*, *The American Teacher*, *Newsweek*, *Fortune Magazine*, *Business Week*, *Los Angeles Times*, and many other publications.

Howard Zinn grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At the age of 18 he became a shipyard worker and three years later joined the Air Force. He flew bomber missions during World War II, after which he returned to Brooklyn, got married, and occupied a basement apartment. His experiences in the shipyard and in the Air Force helped shape his opposition to war and passion for history. He went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. He taught at Spelman College, where he served as an advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and worked with young Civil Rights Movement activists, including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. He was fired from Spelman for his support of the students. Zinn led antiwar protests, went to Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan, and testified in Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers trial. His politically engaged life brought him into many arenas: imprisonment for civil disobedience, fights for open debate in universities, and activist work from the Vietnam era to the present. Zinn is the author of dozens of books, including the classic *A People's History of the United States* and *Declarations of Independence*. His essays have appeared in more than 20 books, and his plays include *Emma*, *Unsafe Distances*, and *Marx in Soho*. Zinn has won numerous awards, including the Albert J. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, the Lannan Literary Award, and the Havens Center Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship. His best-known work, *A People's History of the United States*, earned the New England Book Award for nonfiction and was nominated for an American Book Award.