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Albie Sachs' career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. Three years later he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention.In 1966 he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye. During the 1980s working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the ANC in exile, he helped draft the organization's Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bomb he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court.

Paul Hayes Tucker, who has taught art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston since 1978, is currently The Paul Hayes Tucker Distinguished Professor of Art, a Chair established in his name by two Boston patrons of the arts, Barbara Lee and Ellen Poss. Hailed by *Time Magazine* as one of America's foremost authorities on Claude Monet and Impressionism, Professor Tucker earned his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D from Yale University. Professor Tucker has served on the faculties of the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU), Williams College, and the University of California Santa Barbara, and has been honored with many awards and grants, including the Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Scholarship (UMass Boston); the Yale Press Governor's Award for the best book published by an author under 40; and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies as well as from the Florence Gould Arts Foundation. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Professor Tucker served as the President and Chairman of the Board of the Terra Foundation for the Arts and is the founder and Director of Arts on the Point, a public sculpture park in Boston. In addition to his many publications, Professor Tucker has served as guest curator for more than half a dozen major exhibitions, including The Sculpture of William Tucker (2002); Renoir. From Outsider to Old Master. 1870-1892. (2001); The Impressionists at Argenteuil (2000); Monet in the 20th Century (1998-99); Monet. A Retrospective (1994-5); and Monet in the '90s. The Series Paintings (1990).

Andrea Lee was born in Philadelphia and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University. She is a former staff writer for *the New Yorke*r, and her fiction and nonfiction writing has also appeared in *The New York Times Magazine* and *The New York Times Book Review*. She is the author of *Russian Journal*, the novel Sarah Phillips, and the short story collection "Interesting Women." She lives with her husband and two children in Turin, Italy.

Jennifer Jordan is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and screenwriter, with over twenty-five years experience as a journalist, broadcast producer, radio and television news anchor, voice-over/narration talent, and motivational speaker. Jordan spent most of the 1990s at WGBH-FM in Boston where she anchored National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She also worked with public television’s most prolific production house—WGBH Channel 2—as an on-air talent, segment producer and host, researcher, and writer. She is the author of *Savage Summit: The Life and Death of the First Women of K2* and *The Last Man on The Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2*. *Savage Summit* won the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award for Best Mountain Literature and was selected as an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review. She also has produced and written several documentaries, among them Kick Like a Girl, which won several international film festivals and was bought and aired by HBO. She co-owns Skyline Ventures Productions with her husband, cinematographer and adventurer Jeff Rhoads, in Salt Lake City, where she spends as much of her free time as possible exploring the backcountry of the Wasatch Mountains.

Danticat is the first Haitian woman to compose a novel entirely in English, and she is also the first author to bring the Haitian/American experience to American literature. Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning Haitian-born writer who now lives in Miami. In *Brother, I'm Dying*, she told the devastating story of her 81-year-old uncle, Reverend Joseph Dantica's death in the custody of immigration officials. He had arrived from Haiti seeking political asyslum following threats on his life. Denied his medicines and accused of faking an illness, he died just days after his detention. Her latest book, *Create Dangerously*, reflects on her responsibility as an immigrant artist in the United States toward her native country, especially at this time when impoverished Haiti is suffering the devastation of earthquake and disease.

Colson Whitehead was born in New York City. His first novel, *The Intuitionist*, won the QPB New Voices Award and was an Ernest Hemingway/PEN Award finalist. His second novel, *John Henry Days*, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. He is also the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award. Whitehead lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Caryl Phillips is a British writer with a Caribbean background, best known as a novelist. He is now professor at Yale University and a visiting professor at Barnard College of Columbia University. He has tackled themes on the African slave trade from many angles. His work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1993 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book award for A Distant Shore.

Gail Snowden heads the Community Investment Group (CIG) within FleetBoston Financial and is a member of the company's Leadership Advisory Group, comprised of the top 36 executives. She directs and invests the bank's resources into low and moderate-income communities through the delivery of innovative financial services, wealth and equity creation programs. Ms. Snowden oversees a diverse group of business units that includes Fleet Community Bank Small Business Services, Fleet Development Ventures, established as the first urban investment bank in America chartered by a commercial bank, and Commercial Real Estate Lending. Recognition for FleetBoston Financial's approach to low and moderate-income markets has included winning the 1998 Presidential Ron Brown Award and a profile on Ms. Snowden in* Fortune* magazine's March 1998 feature article, "Banking in Urban America". Most recently, Ms. Snowden was appointed President of the FleetBoston Financial Foundation, one of the nation's largest financial services philanthropic organizations and named Outstanding Corporate Philanthropist in 1999. In this additional role, she will set strategy at an international, national and regional level for Fleet's $25 million philanthropy portfolio, and will be responsible for all charitable giving at the Bank. She is a recipient of numerous awards including: the Abigail Adams Award (2001), honorary Doctor of Public Service degrees from Simmons College (2001) and Bridgewater State College (1997), an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Babson College (1998), Doctor of Humane Letters from Emmanuel College (1998), the 1996 YWCA Academy of Women Achievers Award and the 1992 SBA Small Business Minority Advocate of the Year. She was selected as an Outstanding Member of both the Boston Urban Bankers Forum and the Urban Financial Services Coalition (formerly the National Association of Urban Bankers). She also received the YMCA Black Achievers Award, the Simmons College Alumnae Achievement Award and the New England Women's Leadership Award. A frequent local and national public speaker, she was named one of the nation's Top Business and Professional Woman by *Dollars and Sense* magazine and one of 50 African-American Women at the top in corporate America in the March 2001 issue of *Ebony *magazine. Ms. Snowden is a 1967 graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College and earned an MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Management in 1978. She currently resides in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

From 1983 until 2004, Jenkins-Scott served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Prior to joining Dimock, she held several positions with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Departments of Public and Mental Health. As a community leader, public health advocate and innovative administrator, she has been a nationally known figure for nearly thirty years. Jenkins-Scott has served on many professional, civic and community boards and committees. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Boston Foundation, the Kennedy Library Foundation and Museum, the Boston Plan for Excellence, WGBH, the National Board of Jumpstart and the Council on Social Work Education. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Century Bank and Trust Company and the Tufts Health Plan. In April 2007, Boston's Mayor Thomas M. Menino selected Jenkins-Scott to Co-Chair his School Readiness Action Planning Team, charged with developing specific strategies to prevent the achievement gap among the next generation of students. Jenkins-Scott has received numerous awards and citations including the 2005 Associated Industries of Massachusetts Legacy of Leadership award, 2004 Pinnacle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the 2004 Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University.