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Ever since she was first elected to the State Legislature in 1992, Debra Bowen has been a pioneer in government reform, consumer protection and privacy rights, environmental conservation, and open government.

Project Co-director Catherine Stifter is a Peabody award-winning freelance editor and independent training/production consultant for community media projects and public radio stations around the US. She's worked in a wide variety of station-based, network and independent jobs in public radio for more than 25 years. Recent editing projects include *Crossing East: First Asians in America*, the first public radio series on Asian American history, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, airing on more than 160 PRI stations during May Asian American History Month, 2006; *Dude, Wheres My River?*, an award-winning student film on California water politics and dam removal; and *The DNA Files*, two award-winning series on genetics, ethics and politics produced by SoundVision and distributed by NPR.

George William James is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed "sabermetrics" in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose. In 2006, Time named him in the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world. He is currently a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox. After four years at the University of Kansas residing at Stephenson Scholarship hall, and one course short of graduating, James joined the Army in 1971. James was the last person in Kansas to be drafted for the Vietnam war, although he never saw action there. Instead, he spent two years stationed in South Korea, during which time he wrote to KU about taking his final class. He was told he actually had met all his graduation requirements, so he returned to Lawrence in 1973 with degrees in English and economics. He also finished an Education degree in 1975, likewise from the University of Kansas.

Nino Ricci was born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, and completed university studies in Toronto, Montreal, and Florence, Italy. He now lives in Toronto, where he writes full time. He is a past president of the Canadian Centre of International PEN, a writers' human rights organization that works for freedom of expression. Nino Ricci is a Canadian novelist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He was born in 1959 in Leamington, Ontario, into a family of Italian immigrants from the province of Isernia, Molise. In 1981 Ricci graduated in English literature, in 1987 he earned a second degree in creative writing and Canadian literature, both from York University. Ricci has travelled in Europe and Africa, where, in Nigeria, he taught English literature and language in a high school for two years. Ricci's first novel *Lives of the Saints* was a great critical and commercial success. It won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the 1990 Governor General's Award for Fiction and a Betty Trask Award. Ricci served as one of the directors of PEN Canada from 1990-96, and as president during 1995-96. He was the writer-in-residence at the University of Windsor for the 2005-06 academic year.

Alfred W. Crosby graduated from Harvard College in 1952 and served in the US Army 1952-1955, stationed in Panama. After his army service he earned an MAT from the Harvard School of Education and a PhD in history from Boston University in 1961. His dissertation was published as his first book, *America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon*, a study of relations between Russia and the USA from the time of the American Revolution through the War of 1812. He retired from the University of Texas in 1999 as Professor Emeritus of Geography, History, and American Studies. His involvement in the civil rights movement, teaching African-American Studies, helping to build a medical center for the United Farm Workers Union, and taking a leadership role in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations set him off in intellectually unorthodox directions.

Waris Singh Ahluwalia is a popular Indian American jewelry designer and actor. He immigrated with his family to the United States at the age of five, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He is based in New York City but has also lived in Los Angeles and travels frequently to Rome, Italy, Japan and Rajasthan, India, where most of his jewelry is made. He sells his jewelry through his company, House of Waris, and has collaborated with the fashion designer Benjamin Cho. In addition to his work in jewelry, he has had a number of small roles in films (most notably those of his friend Wes Anderson) and commercials. His lives with his partner Chiara Clemente, daughter of the painter Francesco Clemente.

An exceptional young player from a family of Hollywood royalty, Jason Schwartzman wasn't looking for an acting career. Yet as the star of Wes Anderson's droll comedy *Rushmore* (1998), he proved not only a capable performer, but a powerful screen presence with a promising future. Born on June 26, 1980 in Los Angeles, CA the son of late producer Jack Schwartzman and actress-director Talia Shire, the young actor could count among his clan such notables as cousin Nicolas Cage and uncle Francis Ford Coppola. Although he had auditioned for the role of Tom Hanks' matchmaking son in 1993's "Sleepless in Seattle" (which went to Ross Malinger), acting was not Schwartzman's primary focus. In 1994, he formed a band called Phantom Planet, serving as a drummer and songwriter, hearkening back to another familial influence, his grandfather, Oscar-winning composer Carmine Coppola. Schwartzman chose his subsequent roles carefully, appearing in low-budget, low-profile films which kept their integrity as individual expressions. He appeared in Roman Coppola's directorial debut *CQ* (2001), a period film about a struggling director (Jeremy Davies) making a movie about the future, and the anti-high school comedy *Slackers* (2002). He ended that year appearing in the more mainstream *Simone* (2002), starring Al Pacino as a down-and-out Hollywood director making a last ditch comeback by turning a computer-generated woman (Rachel Roberts) into a star. After gaining recognition for "California," a song he wrote for Phantom Planet that became widely known thanks to the success of the independent film *Orange County* (2002), Schwartzman starred to great effect as a speed freak in the critically acclaimed *Spun* (2003).

Foley has worked at five major metropolitan newspapers and spent six years as the managing editor of the *Daily News*, Philadelphia's second largest daily newspaper and part of the Knight Ridder company. She also has held leadership positions as an editor at the *Minneapolis Star-Tribune* and the *Kansas City Star*. Previously, she earned a reputation as a creative editor and reporter at four other major metropolitan newspapers, including work at the *Milwaukee Sentinel*, the *Detroit News and the Menominee* (Mich.) *Herald-Leader*. She has worked as a news and features reporter and editor for 28 years. She was assistant managing editor for features at the *Kansas City Star* in the late '90s.

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World, published in 1998, uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the kind of disruptive intelligence all cultures need if they are to remain lively, flexible, and open to change. His newest book is *Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership* about our cultural commons, the vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to produce. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde teaches during the fall semesters at Kenyon College, where he is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., has been at the forefront of developing and implementing innovative concepts and strategies for maximizing organizational and individual potential through Diversity Management. As the industry thought leader, Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., CEO of Roosevelt Thomas Consulting & Training (RTCT), has moved the concept of diversity to new levels of application. His leading edge constructs of Diversity and Managing Diversity have been widely circulated in his books: *Building a House for Diversity*; *Beyond Race and Gender*; and *Redefining Diversity*. These are considered landmark works in the diversity field. His fifth major work, *Building on the Promise of Diversity*, was released in the fall of 2005.