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Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to be a newspaper reporter and after graduating from the University of Sydney she went to work for the *Sydney Morning Herald*. Three years later, she won a scholarship to attend Columbia University's Graduate school of Journalism. From there, she was hired by *The Wall Street Journal*. After a year covering basic industry in Cleveland, she returned home to Sydney and opened one of the *Journal*'s farthest flung bureaus, filing stories from the New Guinea highlands, Arnhem Land and South West Tasmania. From New Zealand, in 1987, she filed what she considers her most notable dispatch, on the opportunity to study global warming afforded by the country's huge, methane-producing, sheep population. The so-called "farting sheep" story led to her appointment as Middle East bureau chief for the *Journal*, where she spent six years covering regional conflicts, including the first Gulf War, and wrote her first book of non-fiction, *Nine Parts of Desire*, published in 1994. Later, as the *Journal*'s UN Correspondent, she covered conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia and African development issues. In Nigeria to report on Shell Oil's collusion with the Abacha military dictatorship, she was arrested and thrown in a lock up in Port Harcourt, accused of being a spy. While there, she began to consider a midlife career change. In 1995 she wrote a memoir, *Foreign Correspondence*, which chronicles a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them. Her first novel, *Year of Wonders*, published in 2001, was inspired by the true story of Eyam, Derbyshire, where villagers voluntarily quarantined themselves when plague struck in 1665. He second novel, *March*, a retelling of Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic *Little Women* from the point of view of Mr. March, the absent father, won the Pulitzer prize for Fiction in 2006. Her most recent novel, *People of the Book*, has been translated into more than 20 languages and was an instant *New York Times* bestseller.

Steele is mayor of Fayetteville and a retired pilot for Delta Air Lines. He served in the United States Navy for seven years and served several more years in the reserves. He serves on the board of directors, legislative policy council, budget committee and is the district vice president and task force chair for the Georgia Municipal Association. He is a member of the Livable Communities Coalition board, the Community Foundation of Fayette County and the board of directors of the Atlanta Regional Committee. Steele serves as secretary/treasurer of the executive committees of the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District Governing Board. Steele served as city councilman in Fayetteville.

Larry Cox was appointed executive director of Amnesty International USA(AIUSA) in 2006. A veteran human rights advocate, he came to AIUSA after serving 11 years as a senior program officer for the Ford Foundation's human rights unit. He has a bachelor of arts degree in history from Mount Union College, has done graduate work at the University of Geneva, and is currently pursuing a master of arts degree in religion and human rights at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Ambassador Alan Holmer was appointed Special Envoy for China and the Strategic Economic Dialogue in 2007. Ambassador Holmer leads an Administration team which manages the bilateral economic relationship between the US and China.

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for *The New York Times*, won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his writing on Darfur, which got the world's attention focused on this heartrending situation. He writes op-ed columns that appear each Wednesday and Saturday. Previously, he was associate managing editor of *The Times*. Kristof graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in three years, and then won first class honors in his study of law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. Kristof joined *The New York Times* in 1984. After that, he served as a business correspondent based in Los Angeles, and was Bureau Chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign and in particular Governor Bush, and he is the author of the chapter on Mr. Bush in the reference book *The Presidents*. In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a *Times* journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Kristof has won other prizes including the George Polk Award and the Overseas Press Club awards.

Alexandros P. Mallias was born in 1949 in Stemnitsa, Arcadia. He graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Athens, with post-graduate studies in Geneva. Alexandros P. Mallias, Greece's Ambassador to the United States, presented his credentials to President Bush in October 2005. Joining the Greek Foreign Service in 1976, Ambassador Mallias has been at the forefront of Greece's stabilizing role in the Balkans. He has served as Director of the Southeastern Europe (Balkan Affairs) Department at the Foreign Ministry in Athens, as Ambassador to Albania, Head of the first Mission in FYROM, and as Head of the European Community Monitor Mission Regional Office in Sofia. He also served in Libya and at the Greek Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, as First Counselor for Political Affairs.

After more than two decades as travel correspondent for ABC's *Good Morning America *and as travel editor for NBC's *Today* show, Peter Greenberg continues to be America's most recognized, honored and respected front-line travel expert. He is also host of the nationally syndicated *Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio* show, heard live each week on more than 150 stations from a different remote location around the world. His other current titles include Travel Editor at Large for AARP, Contributing Editor for *Men's Health* magazine, a contributor to *The New Yorker* magazine and a guest on the *The Oprah Winfrey Show* and *The View*. Peter was the creator, co-executive producer and host of CNBC's acclaimed ratings winner *Inside American Airlines: A Week in the Life and Cruise, Inc: Big Money on the High Seas*. His investigative work resulted in his reporting a one-hour NBC Dateline special entitled *Black Box Mystery: The Crash of the Concorde*, which premiered February 2009, revealing for the first time what really happened to Air France Flight 4590.

Julie Gerberding is a physician and an expert in infectious diseases. As director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), she also holds what may be the most important medical job in the United States since the CDC is the federal agency in charge of protecting the health and safety of the American public. That task has been a challenge since Gerberding took on the job of director in July of 2002. Before she could settle into her position, she was confronted with the mysterious viral infection known as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). That epidemic was followed by an outbreak of the rare monkeypox virus, and an especially widespread threat of the West Nile virus. In addition, as head of the CDC, it is up to Gerberding to make sure that the American health system is prepared to handle a bioterrorist strike, a very real threat since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Gerberding, the first woman to hold the post of CDC director, remains undaunted. In 2004 she announced a massive reorganization and vowed in Time magazine that she is "redefining [the] CDC as the nation's health-protection agency." Julie Louise Gerberding was born on August 22, 1955, in Estelline, a tiny rural town in South Dakota, where her father was the police chief and her mother was a schoolteacher. Gerberding knew from the very beginning that she wanted to be a doctor. In fact, she built her first laboratory to study the life cycle of bugs in her parents' basement. After high school, Gerberding moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend Case Western Reserve University. While an undergraduate she received the school's top science prizes, and in 1977, she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology, graduating with honors. After some consideration, Gerberding decided to stay at Case to pursue her medical degree. She graduated in 1981, again with high honors. Gerberding also took home Case Western's Alice Paige Cleveland Prize, which is awarded to a woman graduate who displays outstanding leadership qualities. "There is no time to lose. Our waistlines are expanding while our health is deteriorating." Gerberding headed to the West Coast to complete her internship and residency training at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). This was in the early 1980s, and San Francisco was being hit hard by an unknown disease; as a result, the young physician became involved in the early battle against acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). As Gerberding explained in a 2003 CWRU interview, "My clinical training really evolved with the AIDS epidemic and it was natural for me to get started in the infectious disease area during that time." She completed a fellowship in pharmacology (the study of drugs and their effects) and infectious diseases, and in 1990 was named director of UCSF's Epidemiology Prevention and Interventions (EPI) Center. Epidemiology is the area of medicine that deals with the control and transmission of disease. Gerberding and her colleagues at the EPI were instrumental in creating guidelines to help prevent the transmission of AIDS to healthcare workers. They also developed a medical procedure to combat infection in workers who had been exposed through needles. In addition, the EPI became an information center for businesses about how to deal with people infected with HIV in the workplace. Gerberding quickly became known in the medical community as an authority on AIDS and she continues to be a leading advocate to this day at the CDC. As she commented to Lois Bowers of CWRU: "AIDS is the number one health problem affecting most of the developing world as well as the developed world. It is an agency priority that we do our share of interventions to prevent its spread."