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John Podesta is the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Prior to founding the Center in 2003, Podesta served as White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton. He served in the president's cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. While in the White House, he also served as both an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, as well as staff secretary and a senior policy advisor on government information, privacy, telecommunications security, and regulatory policy. Most recently, Podesta served as co-chair of President Obama's transition, where he coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration's agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees.

Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitutions religious liberty provisions. In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues.

Stanley Katz is President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, the leading organization in humanistic scholarship and education in the United States. Mr. Katz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1955 with a major in English History and Literature. He received his M.A. from Harvard in American History in 1959 and his Ph.D. in the same field from Harvard in 1961. He attended Harvard Law School in 1969-70. His recent research focuses upon the relationship of civil society and constitutionalism to democracy, and upon the relationship of the United States to the international human rights regime. Formerly Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University, Mr. Katz is a leading expert on American legal and constitutional history, and on philanthropy and non-profit institutions.

Andrew Carroll is the editor of several bestselling books, including *Letters of a Nation*, *Behind the Lines*, and *War Letters*, which was made into a PBS documentary. He is also the editor of *Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families*, based on the National Endowment for the Arts national initiative of the same name. *Operation Homecoming*, the documentary, appeared on PBS starting in 2007. Carrolls most recent book is *Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War*, published by Doubleday and WaterBrook Press. Carroll is the founder and director of the Legacy Project, a national, all-volunteer initiative that works to honor and remember US troops and veterans by preserving their wartime correspondence. To date, the Legacy Project has received more than 80,000 never-before-seen letters and e-mails from every military conflict in American history. Carroll is also the co-founder, with the late Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, of the American Poetry & Literacy Project. Carroll's efforts have been profiled on *Oprah*, *NBC's Nightly News*, *FOX News*, *CNN*, *The History Channel* (two different documentaries), *C-Span*, *National Public Radio*, *CBS Sunday Morning*, the *Today Show*, *Good Morning America*, and *Nightline* (which devoted a full broadcast to the Legacy Project). Carroll was also featured as a "Person of the Week" on *ABC's World News Tonight*. Carroll has also been a contributing editor and/or writer to many local and national publications, including *Guideposts*, *Time*, the *New Yorker*, and *National Geographic*. A 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University, Carroll has received, among other accolades, the DARs Medal of Honor; The Order of Saint Maurice, bestowed by the National Infantryman's Association; and The Free Spirit Award, presented by the Freedom Forum.

Patrick Hemingway was the second son of Ernest Hemingway, and the author's first child with second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. Patrick was affectionately known within the family as "Mouse," a nickname given to him by his father. He lived in East Africa for most of his adult life, running a safari firm in the savanna called Tanganyika Tour Safaris. Patrick was a White Hunter and a big-game guide, taking European princes, wealthy adventurers, and curious tourists on hunting expeditions in the bush. During dangerous political times, he served as honorary game warden for the nations of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. He became so familiar with the wild that he was appointed by the United Nations to teach game conservation in Africa. After his retirement, he moved to Montana, to a small house at the edge of the Bridger Mountains, where he has lived in relative seclusion for the past quarter-century.

Robert J. Blendon is Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the School of Public Health. He directs the Harvard Opinion Research Program which focuses on the better understanding of public knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about major domestic public policy issues. He also codirects *The Washington Post*/Harvard University/Kaiser Family Foundation survey project and a project for National Public Radio and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation on American attitudes toward health and social policy. Prior to his Harvard appointment, he was senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition, he has served as a senior faculty member for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Governors Association, and the U.S. Congress Committee on Ways and Means. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a doctoral degree in health policy from the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Charlie Anders is the author of the novel *Choir Boy* (Soft Skull Press, 2005) and the co-editor, with Annalee Newitz, of the anthology *She's Such A Geek* (Seal Press, 2006) and the science fiction blog io9. She is the publisher of *other magazine*, the "magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts". She was winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, *The Wall Street Journal*, *Publishers Weekly*, *The San Francisco Bay Guardian*, and the *New York Press*, as well as in two dozen anthologies, including *Pills Chills Thrills & Heartache*, *It's All Good! and Paraspheres: New Wave Fabulist Fiction*. She is also the presenter of Writers With Drinks, a monthly literary night held in San Francisco featuring local writers and performers.

Christopher T. Cross is chairman of Cross & Joftus, LLC, an education-policy consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for Education Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Education Commission of the States. In addition Mr. Cross serves as a consultant to the Broad Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation. He is a member of the advisory board for the School Evaluation Service program of Standard and Poor's. From 1994 to 2002 he served as president and chief executive officer of the Council for Basic Education (CBE). Before joining CBE, Mr. Cross served as Director of the Education Initiative of The Business Roundtable and as Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement in the US Department of Education. Mr. Cross has a BA degree from Whittier College and a MA in Government from California State University, Los Angeles.

Jelani Mandara is a Family and Developmental Psychologist. His primary research examines the nature and effects of socialization, a father's involvement, and how they interact with gender, race, and SES to impact youths' academic and social development. His current projects examine the effects of parenting styles on Black, Latino, and White American youth's academic achievement, sexual activity and behavioral problems. He is also in the process of creating a comprehensive and culturally relevant measure of parenting called "The Socialization and Family Environment Scale" (SAFE). Further interests include socialization differences between teachers and parents, the achievement gap, and typological or person-centered research methods. He regularly teaches courses and conducts workshops on African American child and adolescent development. He and his wife, Keisha, are known to test his theories on their three sons, with promising results thus far.

Mr. Jennings founded the Center on Education Policy in January 1995. From 1967 to 1994, he served as subcommittee staff director and then as general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Labor. In these positions, he was involved in nearly every major education debate held at the national level, including the reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Vocational Education Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Higher Education Act, the National School Lunch Act, the Child Nutrition Act, and the authorization of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Mr. Jennings serves on the board of trustees of the Educational Testing Service, and has served on the Title I Independent Review Panel, the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, the Maryland Academic Intervention Steering Committee, and the Maryland Visionary Panel. He holds an A.B. from Loyola University and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law, and is a member of several legal bars, including the U.S. Supreme Court.