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A native of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, Jose Masso moved to Boston in 1973 after completing his studies at Antioch College in Ohio. His career has included prominent and groundbreaking positions in education, communications, politics, entertainment, and sports. On June 22, 2006, Jose celebrated thirty-one years as announcer/producer of "Con Salsa!" on WBUR 90.9FM in Boston. During this period "Con Salsa!" has served as part music show, part party, part community center, the program is a mecca for Latinos and lovers of things Latin. Jose is a member of the Berklee College of Music Community Advisory Board; The Board of Advisors for the Emerging Leaders Program at UMASS/Boston, The Mauricio Gaston Board of Directors, The Board of Directors of Oeste? the Massachusetts Latino Political Organization, the Board of Directors for the Boston Center for the Arts; The Board of Trustees of the Renaissance Charter School; a Visiting Board member of the New England Conservatory; a Foundation Board member at the Boston Arts Academy, a founder and member of the New Majority Coalition, co-convener of Somos Uno - the Latino Alliance for Progress, and co-chair of the Edward James Olmos Americanos/Bostonianos Project.

Paul G. Kirk, Jr. is a founding Board Member of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and currently serves as Chairman of the Foundation's Board of Directors. Mr. Kirk is affiliated with Sullivan & Worcester LLP of Boston, Massachusetts, a law firm (with offices in Washington, DC and New York City) of which he was a partner from 1977-1990. He is also Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kirk & Associates, Inc., a business advisory and consulting firm located in Boston. Mr. Kirk is a member of the Board of Directors of The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., Rayonier, Incorporated and Cedar Shopping Centers, Inc. He served on the Board of Directors of ITT Corporation from 1989 - 1997 and Bradley Real Estate, Inc. from 1991 - 2000. Mr. Kirk is also a Trustee of Stonehill College. He is past Chairman of the Harvard Board of Overseers Nominating Committee and presently serves as Chairman of the Harvard Overseers Committee to Visit the Department of Athletics. From 1985 to 1989, Mr. Kirk served as Chairman of the Democratic Party of the United States and from 1983 to 1985 as its Treasurer. Mr. Kirk served as special assistant for Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) from 1969-1977. From 1992 to 2001 Mr. Kirk served as Chairman of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide. Mr. Kirk was elected Chairman Emeritus of NDI when former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright succeeded Kirk as Chair of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in January 2001. Mr. Kirk is also co-founder and Co-Chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) established in 1987 to sponsor and produce debates for leading U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates and to undertake research and educational activities relating to the debates. The CPD is a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation that has sponsored all the general election debates in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, including the first presidential debate in 2000 hosted by the University of Massachusetts Boston and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. A leading proponent of public and private partnerships to respond to civic needs and issues, Mr. Kirk organized and led the successful efforts of a group of business and civic leaders to keep the New England Patriots from moving from Foxboro, MA to Hartford, CT. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Kirk resides in Marstons Mills, Massachusetts with his wife Gail.

As Ohio's first woman to serve as secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner brings a unique perspective and exceptional credentials to be Ohio's top election official. Her prior service as Legislative Counsel for the Secretary of State's Office, 13 years of election law private practice experience, her years of service as a Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge, a past experience as a member of the Franklin County Board of Elections and work as a special prosecutor for election fraud clearly demonstrate her ability to be an effective and fair Secretary of State. Jennifer Brunner has pledged elections for Ohio that are free, fair, open and honest. She has made it a top goal to ensure confidence in Ohio's elections. Among her stated four goals for office are to ensure business filings that are quick, efficient and easy to retrieve, to protect social security numbers from disclosure and create and to maintain a life quality index to better the lives of all Ohioans. Brunner received a B.A. in sociology-gerontology, cum laude, from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and later a J.D. from Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio with honors. She and her husband, Rick, also an attorney, have three adult children and live in Columbus. In 2008, Brunner was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, the nation's most prestigious honor for elected public servants.

In the early 1970s John Francis gave up using motorized vehicles after witnessing the devastating effects of an oil spill in San Francisco Bay. Soon afterwards he took a vow of silence lasting 17 years, during which he undertook a pilgrimage by foot across America on behalf of the environment and world peace, earning a PhD in environmental studies along the way. Through his silence and walking, he learned to truly listen, both to other people and the world around him. Since ending his vow of silence in 1990, Francis has served as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Environmental Program, contributed to the US Coast Guard's Oil Pollution Act of 1990, rewriting transportation regulations in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, and founded Planetwalk, a nonprofit environmental education organization. He relates the experience of his quiet protest in his book Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking, 17 Years of Silence.

Jesikah Maria Ross is an educator, media maker, and community development practitioner. She has been involved in the documentary arts field for the past 15 years, working in radio and video production, training and curriculum development, and digital storytelling. She works with schools, community-based organizations, and social action groups to create participatory projects that generate media literacy, public engagement, and community story-sharing. She has worked with: Appalshop, Kentucky; California Communities Program, UC Davis; Listen Up Youth Media Network, New York; Radio Netherlands, Holland; MediaWorks, South Africa; Community Media Network, Ireland. She is the sound recordist and Community Development Coordinator for the ITVS and Sundance Documentary funded film *Maquilapolis*.

Bruce Bodaken is chairman, president and CEO of Blue Shield of California, a 3.3 million member not-for-profit health plan that serves the commercial, individual and government markets in California. A native of Iowa, Mr. Bodaken doesn't fit the typical profile of a health plan CEO. He earned a masters degree and taught philosophy at the college level before embarking on a career in health care. During Mr. Bodaken's eight-year tenure as CEO, Blue Shield has been among the fastest growing health plans in California. Membership and revenues have more than doubled and the company won two large government contracts covering California state employees and U.S. military families enrolled in the TRICARE program. Passionate about his company's not-for-profit mission, in 2002 Mr. Bodaken became the first health plan CEO to offer a specific proposal for universal healthcare coverage. His plan for universal coverage based on shared responsibility is similar to President-elect Obama's current proposal. He also transformed the Blue Shield of California Foundation into one of the state's largest healthcare grantmakers, with nearly $100 million in donations in the past three years. In addition to his work at Blue Shield, Mr. Bodaken serves on numerous professional and civic boards. He is a director of the California Business Roundtable, WageWorks, the University of California, Berkeley's Health Services Management Program, and Youth Tennis Advantage (serving inner-city youth). He is co-author of The Managerial Moment of Truth, published by Simon & Schuster (Free Press) in 2006.

Rob Neyer has written about baseball for ESPN.com since 1996 and appears regularly on ESPNews . He has written four baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James) and Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Lineups . His website, www.robneyer.com, contains additional material related to this and his other books.

Scott Doney researched oceanography, climate and biogeochemistry, with an emphasis on numerical models, remote sensing, and data analysis. He is interested in how the global carbon cycle and ocean ecology respond to natural and human-driven climate change signals such as ocean warming, sea-ice loss, and ocean acidification due to the invasion of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Before joining the University of Virginia, Doney was a senior scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.He graduated with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joint program in 1991 and was a postdoctoral fellow and later a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, before returning to Woods Hole in 2002. He was awarded the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2000 and was a 2004 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow.

Randy Olson lived a whole life as a marine biologist, but got so frustrated with boring documentary films about his profession that he quit being a scientist and went to film school to see if he could make something better himself. After spending most of the 1980s earning his Ph.D. (Harvard University, 1984) and working in Australia studying the Great Barrier Reef, he began making award-winning humorous short films about sea creatures, such as his music video about the sex life of barnacles, *Barnacles Tell No Lies*. In 1994, he resigned from his tenured professorship at the University of New Hampshire to attend film school at the University of Southern California. His student film at USC, a 20-minute musical comedy, *You Ruined My Career*, was selected for the "Filmmakers of Tomorrow" showcase at the Telluride Film Festival and chosen as one of the Top 100 Student Films in the history of USC Cinema School. After film school, he began combining his comic filmmaking skills and his marine biology background to create the Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project for which he wrote and directed short films and commercials with Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Henry Winkler, Tom Arnold, and the Groundlings Improv Comedy Theater.