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Brian Williams is the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of *NBC Nightly News*, which represents the largest single daily source of news in America. Recently, Williams became the most honored network evening news anchor. He received four Edward R. Murrow awards, his fifth Emmy award, the duPont-Columbia University award and the industry's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody award. Most were given for his work in New Orleans while covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and all were awarded to Williams in only his second year on the job. Williams was the first and only network evening news anchor to report from New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit and was the only network news anchor to report from the Superdome during the storm. He remained in New Orleans to report on the aftermath and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and continues to travel back and forth to the region to cover the recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Alexander Haig was born on December 2,1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was best known as Four-star general and U.S. Secretary of State from 1981 to 1982. Al Haig graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1947, served in Europe and Asia until 1960, worked in Washington until a combat tour in Vietnam in 1966-67, and then returned to Washington in 1969 to work in the White House for Henry Kissinger. After President Richard Nixon's top aides resigned during the Watergate scandal in 1973, Haig served as White House Chief of Staff until after Nixon's resignation in 1974. Haig also served as NATO commander (1974-79), and in 1981 he became Ronald Reagan's secretary of state. Haig abruptly resigned in 1982, reportedly over policy disagreements. In 1988 he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in the U.S. presidential election.

Tim Naftali is the director of the Nixon Presidential Materials Project and director-designate of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, which will officially open this summer in Yorba Linda, California. Before joining the National Archives and Records Administration in October 2006, Tim was at the University of Virginia's Miller Center where he wrote widely on foreign policy and presidential history. His latest books are Khrushchev's Cold War (co-authored with Aleksandr Fursenko) and Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. His views on this blog are emphatically his own and do not represent the policies or positions of the US government.

Dan Rather is a journalist and former news anchor for the CBS Evening News and is now managing editor and anchor of a television news magazine, Dan Rather Reports, on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of The CBS Evening News for 24 years. He also contributed to CBS' 60 Minutes.

Steve Bell has been a broadcaster in the US and overseas all his adult life. Bell, who now is a professor of Telecommunications and Endowed Chair Emeritus at Ball State University, has traveled with presidents, interviewed heads of state and was once captured at gunpoint with his camera crew while serving as a Vietnam war correspondent in Cambodia.

FitzGerald was the daughter of New York lawyer Desmond FitzGerald. FitzGerald is best known for her book, *Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam*(1972), which was met with great acclaim when it was published and remains one of the most notable books about the Vietnam War. She was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. FitzGerald's subsequent volumes include *America Revised,* a highly critical review of high school history textbooks (1979); *Cities on a Hill* (1987); *Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War* (2000); "Rewriting American History", a short article in *The Norton Reader*; and *Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth* (2002). FitzGerald's writing has also appeared in *The New Yorker*, *Esquire*, *Architectural Digest*, and *Rolling Stone*. She serves on the editorial boards of The Natio and Foreign Policy, and is vice-president of International PEN.

Dr. Evan Dobelle was appointed as the nineteenth president of Westfield State College in December of 2007. Before coming to Westfield, he served as president of The New England Board of Higher Education since 2004, working to develop the Creative Economy of the region. Dr. Dobelle began his professional career in 1971 as executive assistant and head of the Boston Office to then US Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. In 1973 he was elected mayor of Pittsfield, and in that role served as chair of the School Committee. In 1976 he was named Massachusetts Commissioner of Environmental Management. Always actively involved in community activities, his period as president of the Board of Jacob.

Eric Schwarz is President & CEO, and a co-founder of Citizen Schools. Schwarz has been tapped to speak about education reform and Expanded Learning Time at numerous conferences across the country. He has served as a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Task Force on 21st Century Skills, the Center for American Progress working group on Expanded Learning Time, the transition team of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and the Social Entrepreneur Advisory Board for the New Profit, Inc. Gathering of Leaders. He is the author of "Realizing the American Dream: Historical Scorecard, Current Challenges, Future Opportunities", a widely cited essay examining social change efforts and the role of social entrepreneurs, and co-editor of *The Case for Twenty-First Century Learning*. Previously, Schwarz served as a Public Service Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, as Executive Director of City Year Boston, and as a Vice President at City Year. He also served on Gary Hart's 1984 Presidential campaign and as a journalist and columnist at The Oakland Tribune and The Patriot Ledger, where he won two national awards and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Schwarz earned his B.A. at the University of Vermont and his Masters in Education at Harvard University.