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  • Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, journalist and former Reuters foreign correspondent. Her first job was at the BBC World Services in the Arabic Department. She has written eight books, several short stories and introductions to reprinted novels. She is a member of the Society of Authors Executive Committee and is working on a biography of Wallis Simpson. In September 2007 she launched her major new biography - *Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother* published by John Murray in the UK to widespread acclaim. In November W.W. Norton published it in the US as *American Jennie: the Remarkable Life of Winston Churchill's Mother*. In 2008 Anne was consultant for the Channel 4 film, *Lady Randy: Churchill's Mother*, broadcast to coincide with the launch of the paperback. Anne started her working life as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, partly in Rome, and in 1993 wrote a history of women reporters called *Battling for News: The Rise of the Woman Reporter* and is regularly invited to lecture on the subject in university media departments. In 1990 *Laura Ashley: A Life By Design* was published in UK and US and also reached several bestseller lists. This was a biography of a businesswoman, wife, mother and proto-feminist who became one of the leading influences on British twentieth century design and marketing.
  • Carol Thompson was appointed the High's first Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art in September 2001. Since her arrival at the High, she has curated Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art (2007), African from the Glassell Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004), and For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection (2002). Thompson has taught at New York University, Vassar College, City College in Harlem, Fashion Institute of Technology and other institutions. Thompson's in-progress dissertation at New York University studies African art as p across diverse contexts both within Africa and beyond. She received her M.A. in art history with a specialization in African Art from the University of Iowa (1988) and her B.A. in art history from Hamline University in Minnesota (1980). She is the author of *African Art Portfolio: Masterpieces from the 11th to the 20th Century*(1993) and *For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection* (2002). Thompson is a Research Fellow at the Center for Public Scholarship, Emory College
  • Kai Ryssdal took the reins as host of Marketplace in August 2005. He previously hosted the *Marketplace Morning Report* for more than four years. Before joining *Marketplace*, Kai was a reporter and substitute host for* The California Report*, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM in San Francisco. His radio work has won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, Kai was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China.
  • James Hanken studies the evolution of morphology, developmental biology, and systematics. Most work by his group focuses on amphibians but otherwise addresses a wide range of topics, taxa, and methodologies. His current subjects include the evolution of craniofacial patterning in vertebrates; the developmental basis of life-history evolution; systematics, taxonomy and evolution of African frogs and neotropical and Asian salamanders; and amphibian declines and conservation. His active field programs are maintained in Mexico, Argentina, China, Africa, and Sri Lanka, and his laboratory serves as a community research facility for NSF's AmphibiaTree project.
  • Joe Conason is national correspondent for *The New York Observer*, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His books *Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth*, and *The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, with Gene Lyons*, were both national bestsellers. His latest book, *It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush*, was released in February 2007. His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including *Harpers*, *The Guardian*, *The Nation*, and *The New Republic*. He also appears frequently on television and radio (notably as a regular Friday guest on "Air America's The Al Franken Show"). He lives with his wife in New York City.
  • A scholar of American literature, Lewis' first book was on *William Faulkner: The Indians of Yoknapatawpha: A Study in Literature and History. *For much of his career, Lewis has been the preeminent scholar on the work of Edmund Wilson, the American writer and literary critic. In 2006, Lewis published his crowning achievement, *Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature*, which received prominent notices, including front-page coverage in *The New York Times Book Review*. Outside of the English Department, Lewis spent a year as director of UWs American Heritage Center and he received fellowships from the National Humanities Institute, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Institute for the Humanities.
  • Hazel Rowley, brought up in England and Australia, lives in New York City. She is currently writing a book called *Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: An Extraordinary Marriage*, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hazel Rowley's essays have appeared four times in *The Best Australian Essays*. Her essay "Beauvoir, Brazil, and 'Christina T'" was published in *BookForum* in April/May 2007. Back in December 1996, she mourned the dramatic changes in tertiary education in an article published in *The Australian*, called "Universities are losing on points." She has published articles in *Partisan Review*,* Mississippi Quarterly*, *Antioch Review*, *Contemporary Literature*, *Prose Studies*, *a/b: Auto/Biography Studies*, *Texas Studies in Literature and Language*, *Southerly and Westerly*, and has reviewed books for *The Times Literary Supplement* (UK),* The London Times Higher Education Supplement*, *Boston Globe*,* Washington Post*, *The Nation*, and *L.A. Times*. A passionate speaker, she has appeared at numerous book festivals and literary events in the United States, Canada, the UK, France, and Australia. Her recent speaking engagements include the Athenaeum (Boston), the Smithsonian (Washington), the New York Society Library, the Alliance Francaise, Chicago, and the Sydney Writers' Festival.
  • Anne M. Mulcahy is chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation. In May 2009, Mulcahy announced that she is retiring as CEO of Xerox, effective July 1. She will remain as chairman. Mulcahy was named CEO of Xerox on August 1, 2001 and chairman on Jan. 1, 2002. Mulcahy was president and chief operating officer of Xerox from May 2000 through July 2001. Prior to that, she was president of Xerox's General Markets Operations, which created and sold products for reseller, dealer and retail channels. She began her Xerox career as a field sales representative in 1976 and assumed increasingly responsible sales and senior management positions. From 1992-1995, Mulcahy was vice president for human resources, responsible for compensation, benefits, human resource strategy, labor relations, management development and employee training. Mulcahy became chief staff officer in 1997 and corporate senior vice president in 1998. Prior to that, she served as vice president and staff officer for Customer Operations, covering South America and Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa, and China. Mulcahy earned a bachelor of arts degree in English/journalism from Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y. In addition to the Xerox board, she is a board director of Catalyst, Citigroup Inc., Fuji Xerox Company, Ltd., Target Corporation, The Washington Post Company, and is the chairman of the corporate governance task force of the Business Roundtable.
  • Charles Euchner is the author or editor of eight books on politics and sports, including *Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them* (1993), *Extraordinary Politics: How Protest and Dissent Are Changing American Democracy* (1996), *Urban Policy Reconsidered: Dialogues About the Problems and Prospects of American Cities* (coauthored with Stephen McGovern, 2003), *The Last Nine Innings* (2006), and *Little League, Big Dreams* (2006). He is now working on a book about the civil right movement and a guide to writing nonfiction narrative and analysis. He also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines. He was the founding executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University and once directed the comprehensive planning process for the city of Boston.