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Diane Portnoy is co-founder and Director of the Immigrant Learning Center, a not for profit adult learning center that provides free English classes to immigrants and refugees so they can lead productive lives in the US and become successful workers, parents and community members. Portnoy is active in community, educational and civic organizations and is a speaker on adult education, immigrant issues and the positive impact immigrants have on the economy as entrepreneurs, workers and consumers.

Jay Rosen is the author of PressThink, a weblog about journalism and its ordeals, which he introduced in September 2003. In June 2005, PressThink won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award for outstanding defense of free expression. In April 2007 PressThink recorded its two millionth visit. He also blogs at the *Huffington Post*. In July 2006 he announced the debut NewAssignment.Net, his experimental site for pro-am, open source reporting projects. The first one was called Assignment Zero, a collaboration with Wired.com. A second project is OfftheBus.Net with the Huffington Post. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, *What Are Journalists For?*, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement. Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism (also called public journalism) over a ten-year period, 1989-99. From 1993 to 1997 he was the director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, funded by the Knight Foundation. As a press critic and reviewer, he has published in *The Nation*, *Columbia Journalism Review*, *the Chronicle of Higher Education*, *The New York Times*, *the Washington Post*, *the Los Angeles Times*, *Newsday* and others. Online he has written for Salon.com, TomPaine.com and Poynter.org. A native of Buffalo, NY, Rosen had a very brief career in journalism at the Buffalo Courier-Express before beginning graduate study. He has a Ph.D. from NYU in media studies (1986).

Born in Manhattan in 1952, Leora spent her childhood between Pound Ridge, New York, and Israel, traveling with her family to her mother's birthplace in Jerusalem every three years. She spent a long time as an actress and in the theater. But, during college, the influence of many of the writers who taught her was powerful, and she started to write. She earned her BA and MFA and was awarded a teaching fellowship for graduate work, all at Sarah Lawrence. After being optioned for a contract while still in graduate school, she worked for several years on a novel with an editor. She also began developing writing programs for psychiatric patients with her husband, now a psychiatrist. As the optioned novel failed, she spent her time creating programs for different mentally ill populations in New York City and also became a teacher of writing for homeless women. Her nonprofit organization operated in eight major psychiatric hospitals in the New York area and was fully funded for ten years. In the last few years, she co-founded the Emmett Till/Anne Frank program, a multicultural educational initiative for Afro-American and Jewish youth in Brooklyn.

Product designer Duane Smith received a bachelor of industrial design in 1996 from Carleton University in Ottawa and studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. A native of Newfoundland, he worked as a design consultant at various North American firms before beginning his own venture with partner Stfane Barbeau. In 1999, they co-founded Vessel, a housewares design and distribution company. Smith is also a founding member of Release1, a collaborative that explores design as a cultural activity independent of commercial forces. His firm's work has earned Industrial Excellence Awards, Medical Design Excellence Awards, and Virtu Awards, and has been featured in* I.D.*, *The New York Times*, *Adbusters*, *Real Simple*, and *Wired*.

Rob Jackson is a Professor at Duke University and is currently Director of Duke's Center on Global Change and Duke's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory. His research examines feedback between people and the biosphere, including studies of the global carbon and water cycles, biosphere/ atmosphere interactions, and global change. He also directs the new Department of Energy-funded National Institute for Climatic Change Research for the southeastern US and co-directs the Climate Change Policy Partnership, working with energy and utility corporations to find practical strategies to combat climate change.

Robin Chase is founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. She also founded and leads Meadow Networks, a consulting firm that advises city, state, and federal government agencies about wireless applications in the transportation sector, and impacts on innovation and economic development. Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world. She served on the Massachusetts Governor's Transportation transition team, and the Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force. She is on the Board of the World Resources Institute. Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment. In 2009, she was included in the Time 100 Most Influential People. Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow.