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  • Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick was elected in November of 2006. He brings to the Governor's office a broad range of leadership experience at the top levels of business, government and non-profits. Hoping for the best and working for it, his life has traced a trajectory from the South Side of Chicago to the US Justice Department, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and now the Massachusetts State House. After graduating from Milton, Patrick went on to Harvard, the first in his family to attend college. He received his degree, with honors, in 1978 and spent a post-graduate year working on a United Nations youth training project in the Darfur region of Sudan. He returned to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School in the fall of 1979, where he lead the Legal Aid Bureau, the nation's oldest student-run legal services organization, and won the Ames Moot Court competition. Following law school, Patrick served as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge before joining the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and was named partner in 1990, at the age of 34. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation's top civil rights post. At the Justice Department, Patrick worked on a wide range of issues, including prosecution of hate crimes and abortion clinic violence, and enforcement of employment discrimination, fair lending and disabilities rights laws. During his tenure, Patrick led the largest federal criminal investigation before September 11th, coordinating state, local and federal agencies to investigate church burnings throughout the South in the mid-1990s. Governor Patrick has also served on numerous charitable and corporate boards, as well as the Federal Election Reform Commission under Presidents Carter and Ford, and as Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Council by appointment of Governor Weld. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, and is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Diane and Deval Patrick have been married for over twenty-five years and have two adult daughters, Sarah and Katherine. The Patrick family has lived in Milton, in a house on Deval's high school paper route, for the last 20 years.
  • Bernard A. Margolis began serving as New York State Librarian and Assistant Commissioner for Libraries in January 2009. Reporting to the Commissioner of Education, Margolis administers the New York State Research Library and the Division of Library Development. Margolis came to the State Library from his previous post as President of the Boston Public Library (BPL), Boston, Massachusetts, where he served from 1997 to 2008. Bernard Margolis holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Librarianship, both from the University of Denver.
  • Graduated from Boston University's School of Communications, Robert Patton Spruill, uses his father, actor and teacher James Spruill, in all his films. Also, he recently was set to direct *Trifect*a, an independent crime thriller centered on gambling. The film was to star David Caruso (who also co-wrote the script) but the film never came to fruition. Spruill purchased the Roxbury, Massachusetts home of the late Henry Hampton with plans to renovate the property's 32-garage stalls into larger offices for his company The Film Shack . He currently teaches film at the Massachusetts College of Art.
  • Award-winning journalist and documentary producer, Liz Walker is Host and Executive Producer of WBZ 4's *Sunday With Liz Walker*, a half hour newsmagazine airing Sundays presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. The show, which focuses on the power of community, is an extension of Liz's new ministry. An ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a 2005 graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Walker has chosen to combine her communication skills with her spiritual passion to serve the world. Walker has been a television news journalist for 32 years, anchoring WBZ Television's evening newscasts for almost 20 years before stepping down to enter seminary and begin the ordination process. Recognized often for her exemplary work on the air and in her community, Walker received the Prestigious Governor's Award from the New England branch of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1997. In addition to her work in news, Walker has hosted and co-produced several documentaries for WBZ4, including "Friends Like These," for which she received recognition from the prestigious Gabriel Awards. A graduate of Olivet College in Michigan, Walker earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications. She holds a number of honorary degrees from colleges and universities around the commonwealth, including Northeastern University and Bridgewater State University. She is also a member of the board of Trustees at Andover Newton Theological Seminary.
  • Roger Rees is a five-year veteran of the Williamstown Theatre Festival where he has directed Jon Robin Baitz's *The Film Society*, *The Rivals* by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, *The Late Middle Classes* by Simon Gray, and Shakespeare's *The Taming of the Shrew* in which he also played Petruchio opposite Bebe Neuwirth. He appeared in WTF's 2004 production of *Cabaret & Main*, and took part in the Festival's 50th Anniversary Celebration, As Dreams Are Made On, this past August.
  • Lisa Simmons is the founder and president of The Color of Film Collaborative, Inc., (TCOF), an organization of actors, producers, directors and others with an interest in creating and supporting positive images of people of color in film, theater, and other media. The Color of Film Collaborative co-produces the Roxbury Film Festival, a festival that celebrates the vision and the voice of independent filmmakers of color. Lisa has been producing independent films in the Boston area for over 10 years and serves on the Board Filmmakers Collaborative and The League of Women for Community Service, and is a former member of Women in Film and Video/New England for which she served for two years. She has received the Image Award from Women in Film New England, the Diversity award from Our Place Theater Project and a leadership award from the Urban League Guild of Eastern Massachusetts. Currently Lisa spends most of her time behind the camera producing, mentoring and creating more and better opportunities for filmmakers of color. In addition to producing other filmmakers' work, Lisa is also an independent producer and is currently producing and writing a documentary on the history of Boston's Black theatre during the WPA. She has also produced live theater in and around the Boston area.
  • American producer/director/cinematographer George Stevens made his professional acting debut at age five in the company of his actor-parents. Developing an interest in photography as a hobby, Stevens became an assistant movie cameraman at the age of 17. From 1927 through 1930, he was principal cameraman at Hal Roach Studios, shooting such classic two-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's *Two Tars *(1928) and *Below Zero* (1930), as well as a handful of feature films, including the 1927 Western *No Man's Law*. Stevens was elevated to director in 1930 for Roach's *Boy Friends* series. Stevens' directorial style displayed the same acute sense of visual dynamics that had distinguished his earlier work as a cameraman; the director refined and improved upon that style through sweat and persistence. Once he reached the "A" list, Stevens became one of the most meticulous and painstaking directors in the business, commencing production only after extensive research, filming take after take until perfection was achieved, and then spending as much as a full year editing the finished product. During World War II, Stevens was made an officer in the Signal Corps, filming vivid color footage of such historical milestones as the D-Day maneuvers and the liberation of the death camps; much of this footage was incorporated into the 1984 documentary *George Stevens: A Filmaker's Journey*, assembled by George Stevens Jr. After the war, Stevens produced and directed his final RKO assignment, *I Remember Mama* (1948), then moved to Paramount for what many consider his crowning achievement -- 1951's *A Place in the Sun*, a brilliant filmization of the Theodore Dreiser novel *An American Tragedy*. *A Place in the Sun* won Stevens his first Oscar for best directing in 1951. The more time and effort Stevens expended on his individual projects, the fewer he produced. His output between 1953 and 1959 consisted of *Shane* (1953); *Giant* (1956), in which he put the awkward Cinemascope screen to superb artistic use, winning his second Oscar in the process; and *The Diary of Anne Frank* (1959). While George Stevens' reputation was tarnished by the disappointments of his last years, critics and fans alike have taken a "forgive and forget" stance since his death in 1975, preferring to cite his huge manifest of hits rather than his final faltering misses.