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A first generation descendant of Portuguese immigrants from the Alto Alentejo region of Portugal, Ana Patuleia Ortins grew up with the ethnic lore and traditions attached to the food of her ancestors. She holds a degree in culinary arts and teaches Portuguese cooking in her own kitchen and at local colleges.

Jay Kaufman has served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives since January 1995 and now chairs the legislature's Committee on Revenue. He had, for two terms, chaired the Committee on Public Service and led the effort to develop and pass major pension reform initiatives. His primary legislative interests are education, health care, campaign reform, environmental protection, and social and economic justice. He led the fight to pass and implement the state's campaign finance reform law, and has chaired special task forces on medical records privacy, the social and ethical implications of genetic technology, and alternatives to property taxes to fund public schools. During his freshman term, he broke a six-year logjam to win passage of the Rivers Act, a major environmental protection bill. He is currently leading the effort to pass the Act for Healthy Massachusetts, a bill that would encourage the substitution of safer alternatives to commonly-used toxic chemicals. He has sponsored legislation aimed at tax fairness and has consistently secured major budget increases for METCO, the state's premier racial desegregation program. His monthly *Open House* public policy forum, now in its fourteenth season, has been recognized with the prestigious Beacon Award as the nation's best televised government relations series. Jay was appointed founding director of Northeastern University's new center for Leadership and Public Life where he now teaches and leads leadership development workshops for those in or aspiring to public life.

Margaret A. McKenna is the president of The Wal-Mart Foundation and the former president of Lesley University. She received her undergraduate degree from Emmanuel College and her law degree from Southern Methodist University. McKenna was a civil rights attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice and held a variety of positions with the U.S. government from 1976 to 1981, including deputy counsel in the White House and deputy under secretary of education. Margaret McKenna has been a Director since 2000.

As Secretary of Education of Massachusetts, Paul Reville directs the Executive Office of Education. The Secretary oversees the three education agencies of the Commonwealth Department of Early Education and Care, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Department of Higher Education. Prior to becoming Secretary, Governor Patrick appointed Paul as the chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. He also served on Governor Patrick's Transition Team and was chair of the Governor's Pre-K-12 Task Force on Governance. Until his appointment as Secretary of Education, Paul was the president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy. Paul was also the Director of the Education Policy and Management Program and a lecturer on educational policy and politics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Paul is the former executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, and was the founding executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE). From 1991-96, he served on the Massachusetts State Board of Education. From 1996 - 2002, he chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning as well as the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission, the state body that provided research and oversight for the state's implementation of education reform in the Commonwealth. In 1985, Paul was the founding executive director of the Alliance for Education, a multi-service educational improvement organization serving Worcester and Central Massachusetts. Prior to his work at the Alliance, Paul was the principal/education director and a teacher in two alternative secondary schools. He is a graduate of Colorado College and holds a Master's degree from Stanford University.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and chair of Harvard's History and Literature Program. She is also a staff writer at *The New Yorker *. Her most recent book, *New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan* (Knopf, 2005), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History; winner of the New York City Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Award; and an ALA Notable Book. She is also co-author with Jane Kamensky of the novel, *Blindspot* (Spiegel and Grau, 2008). Photo courtesy of Nina Subin.

Huston Smith, Ph.D., has spent his career attempting to distill the essence of wisdom from the world's religious traditions. He is visiting professor at U. C. Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union and a former professor at Syracuse, Washington University and M.I.T. His book *The Religions of Man* has sold over 1.5 million copies and has recently been revised and updated as *The World's Religions*.

Diana Eck's academic work has a dual focus, India and America, and in both cases she is interested in the challenges of religious pluralism in a multireligious society. Her work on India includes the books *Banaras*, *City of Light and Darsan*, and *Seeing the Divine Image in India*. Since 1991, she has headed the Pluralism Project, which explores and interprets the religious dimensions of America's new immigration; the growth of Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and Zoroastrian communities in the United States; and the new issues of religious pluralism and American civil society. Her book *Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey From Bozeman to Banaras* is in the area of Christian theology and interfaith dialogue. It won the Grawemeyer Book Award in 1995 and a 10th-anniversary edition was published in 2003. She received the National Humanities Award from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1996, the Montana Governor's Humanities Award in 2003, and the Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award from the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2003. In 2005 and 2006 she served as president of the American Academy of Religion. Diana Eck has worked closely with churches on issues of interreligious relations, including her own United Methodist Church and the World Council of Churches. She is currently chair of the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches.

Gillian Gill, who holds a PhD in modern French literature from Cambridge University, has taught at Northeastern, Wellesley, Yale, and Harvard. She is the author of Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries, and Mary Baker Eddy. She lives in suburban Boston.