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Steve is the President and CEO of ML Strategies, where he manages a team of consultants in Boston and Washington D.C. and advises a range of clients from Fortune 100 companies to entrepreneurs on a wide range of issues. He also currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Massachusetts. Steve was Chairman of the Board of Higher Education in Massachusetts from 1999 to 2006. From 1993 to 1997, Steve served as Executive Director and CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority. Prior to that, he was Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Affairs and also served as Special Assistant to both Governor William Weld and Governor Paul Cellucci. As one of Governor Weld's and Governor Cellucci's most trusted advisors, he earned a reputation as an aggressive problem-solver and strategist. During his years of service to the Commonwealth, he was involved in a host of major growth initiatives, including the new Fleet Center, the state track facility and many bio-chemical development projects. Prior to entering state government, Steve founded his own public-sector consulting firm, and served as president of The Strategy Group, the management consulting arm of a public accounting firm. Steve earned a B.S. degree in pharmacy and chemistry from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. He was awarded a CSS for graduate work in administration and management from Harvard University (1989). Steve also received an honorary Ph.D. in humane letters from Nichols College (2001).

Jonathan Raymond is the Chief Accountability Officer in the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, NC, a district with more than 126,000 students in 150 schools. Previously, he served as president and CEO of the Boston based Commonwealth Corporation, a non profit organization with a mission of building stronger communities through innovative education and workforce development programs.

Linda Nathan is the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy, the city's first and only public high school for the visual and performing arts. BAA sends over 95 percent of its graduates to college all residents of the city of Boston. Under her leadership, the school has won state, national, and international recognition and awards. These include a Massachusetts Compass Award, a Breaking Ranks award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and a Mentor School award from the Coalition of Essential Schools. Linda was instrumental in starting Boston's first performing-arts middle school, and was a driving force behind the creation of Fenway High School, recognized nationally for its innovative educational strategies and school-to-work programs. She is also a co-founder and board member of the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston, a nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to creating more equitable and democratic schools. She has served on the National Academy of Science's Commission for the Science of Learning. She was named Teacher of the Year by Chronicle on Channel 5, ABC's affiliate in Boston. In 2003, Linda received the Nadia Boulanger Educator's Award from the Longy School of Music for her work in arts education. In 2006 she received the first Fidelity Inspire the Future Award given to community leaders who excel in encouraging the next generation of artists and arts advocates. She was named a 2007 Barr Foundation Fellow, and spent June 2007 in South Africa and Zimbabwe as part of this fellowship. Linda received the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's Morton R. Godine Medal for Service to the Community at the college's commencement ceremony in May 2009. Linda's articles have appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, Horace, and other publications. Fluent in Spanish, she has worked on issues of school reform in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. In 2006, she presented to the first UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in Lisbon, Portugal. Linda is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she teaches the course, Building Democratic Schools. She has written a book about teaching and leadership in urban schools, The Hardest Questions Aren't On the Test, that will be published by Beacon Press in September 2009. Linda earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley; a master's degree in education administration at Antioch University; a master's of performing arts at Emerson College, and a doctorate in education at Harvard University. She is married to Steve Cohen, a professor at Tufts University and they have three children ages 22, 19, and 15.

Professor Csikszentmihalyi is the director of the Quality of Life Research Center (QLRC). The QLRC is a non-profit research institute that studies "positive psychology"; that is, human strengths such as optimism, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and responsibility. Professor Csikszentmihalyi is a member of the American Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Leisure Studies.

Steve Cohen is a lecturer at the Department of Education and is in his sixth year at Tufts. Professor Cohen edited and wrote anthologies to accompany the public television documentaries *Vietnam A Television History* and *Eyes On The Prize* . Steve has been a Program Associate with "Facing History and Ourselves" for two decades and written articles about teaching controversial issues like Vietnam, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust.

Nancy Faust Sizer is a career teacher who has worked in public and private high schools, including Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Phillips Academy, and the Wheeler School. With her husband, Theodore R. Sizer, she has taught at Brown University and currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Both Nancy and Ted recently served as Acting Co-Principals at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School where Nancy also was Transition Counselor, helping to lead its first graduating class through the transition to postsecondary education. *The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract* (Beacon Press, 1999) is her most recent book, written with her husband Ted.

Professor Orfield received his B.A. in political science from the University of Minnesota and his M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Chicago. He is primarily interested in the study of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity. He was co-founder and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project and is now co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. Orfield's central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy, with a central focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American society. Orfield received the 2007 "Social Justice in Education" Award by the American Educational Research Association for "work that has had a profound impact on demonstrating the critical role of education research in supporting social justice." He is a member of the National Academy of Education. Professor Orfield, together with Professor Patricia Gondara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, received two new research grants since June 2007. The first initiative, funded by the Eleanor Foundation of Chicago, is entitled, "The Future Rests on Working Moms: Unequal Opportunity and Policies to Help Them Realize Their Dreams for Their Children." The second study, funded by the Ford Foundation, is called "Breaking the Chain of Failure: Moving from Weak High Schools to Strong Community Colleges for Students of Color."