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  • ohn Q. Barrett is a Professor of Law at St. John's University in New York City, where he teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure and Legal History. He also is Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow and a board member at the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York, and he serves on the Expert Advisory Committee of the Nuremberg Principles Academy in Nuremberg, Germany. Professor Barrett has been named a "Professor of the Year" by St. John's law students and received a Faculty Outstanding Achievement Medal from the University. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School.
  • Maria Szonert is the Founder and President of Libra Institute, Inc. She is also the President of Kresy-Siberia Foundation, USA. A law graduate of the of the University of Warsaw and Rutgers University, she worked as corporate counsel on privatization and restructuring in Eastern Europe and as a USAID capital markets specialist for Europe and Newly Independent States. Subsequently, she served as Vice President and Corporate Counsel for KeyCorp in Cleveland. For the past decade she has been publishing extensively, drawing upon her post-graduate journalism training from the University of Warsaw. She collaborates with numerous papers, including a Polish-language cultural weekly Przegląd Polski, focusing on legal, historical and current affairs issues. She is the author of World War II Through Polish Eyes (EEM Columbia University Press 2002) and Null and Void; Poland: Case Study on Comparative Imperialism (University Press of America 2008).
  • Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, of Polish-American heritage with humble, working class roots, mirrors the bootstrap nature of her district. Her family operated a small grocery where her mother worked after serving on the original organizing committee of an auto trade union at the Champion Spark Plug Company. Congresswoman Kaptur became the first member of her family to attend college, receiving a scholarship for her undergraduate work. Trained as a city and regional planner, she practiced 15 years in Toledo and throughout the country. Appointed as an urban advisor to the Carter White House, she helped maneuver 17 housing and neighborhood revitalization bills through the Congress during those years. Subsequently, while pursuing a doctorate in urban planning and development finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the local Democratic Party recruited her to run for the U.S. House seat in 1982. Kaptur had been a well-known party activist and volunteer since age 13. Although she was outspent by a 3-to-1 margin, she parlayed her deep roots in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Toledo and the rural areas of the district to pull the national upset of 1982. Congress Congresswoman Kaptur fought vigorously to win a seat on the House Appropriations Committee . She has risen in seniority and now serves as the senior Democratic woman on the committee. She has secured appointments to three important subcommittees: Agriculture, the leading industry in her state; Transportation/Housing and Urban Development (HUD); and Defense. Congresswoman Kaptur was also appointed by party leadership to serve on the prestigious House Budget Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the 112th Congress. Kaptur is the first Democratic woman to serve on the Defense subcommittee. During her legislative career, she has also served on the banking and veterans affairs committees. Congresswoman Kaptur has focused strong efforts on rebuilding the economic might of her district such as improvements in bridge, road, rail and port facilities, including the New Maumee River Crossing - the largest bridge project in Ohio's history; expansion of Toledo's Farmers' Market; development of the Maumee River Heritage Corridor between Ohio and Indiana, which includes passage of legislation and funds to acquire the Fallen Timbers battlefield site as a national affiliate of the U.S. Park Service; clean-up of the waterways adjacent to Lake Erie; development of initiatives to enhance the earnings potential of Northwest Ohio crops; shipping of federal cargos on the Great Lakes; acquisition of wildlife refuges and shoreline recreation; and expansion of university-related research.
  • Olga Broumas has published twelve volumes of poems and translations and teaches at Brandeis University.
  • Victor Shih is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University. He is interested in political economy in developing countries broadly, and how politics affect economic outcomes in China specifically. His book, *Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation* (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008) explores the timely question of how politics affects the large volume of underperforming loans on the books of Chinese banks. His on-going projects investigate the performance of Chinese banks, signaling in elite politics, and elite selection in China. Victor Shih received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
  • Dr. Kaufman is Professor of Biology, Boston University Marine Program; Senior Marine Scientist, Conservation International; Research Scholar, The New England Aquarium. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University and later joined the faculty of the Department of Biology, Boston University. Dr. Kaufman has contributed greatly to the understanding of climate effects on the ocean. In addition to his academic work, he has written works for the general public and for young people. He has received numerous awards for his work in the restoration of ocean habitats.
  • Peter S. Jensen, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Chair, Division of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Mayo Clinic. Concurrent with this position, Dr. Jensen serves as President & CEO of the REACH Institute (Resource for Advancing Children’s Health), a federally chartered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating evidence-based interventions for child & adolescent mental health. Prior to these current duties, Dr. Jensen was the Ruane Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and founding Director of the Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health at Columbia University in New York (1999-2007), and Associate Director for Child & Adolescent Mental Disorders Research, National Institute of Mental Health (1989-1999). Dr. Jensen is the author of nearly 300 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and 20 books, and has received awards for his teaching and research from many national organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the Society for Child Psychiatric Nursing, NAMI, and CHADD. His research focuses principally on the testing of optimal methods for encouraging and assisting healthcare and educational professionals to apply evidence-based interventions for improving children’s mental health.
  • As Senior Writer in the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, Joanne Kenen runs a blog focusing on the intersection between health policy and health politics. She also writes for both the foundation’s Web site and outside publications on the health reform challenges—coverage, cost, and quality—facing the next administration. Ms. Kenen is a journalist and author who spent more than a decade covering health policy on Capitol Hill. A longtime Reuters correspondent in New York, Florida/the Caribbean, and Washington, she has covered everything from voodoo festivals to U.S. presidential campaigns. As a freelance writer with an eclectic reach, she has contributed both policy and consumer-oriented articles to numerous newspapers, Web sites, and magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Washingtonian, The Washington Post, Stateline.org, AARP, American Prospect, CURE and Parenting. As a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow in 2006–07, Ms. Kenen wrote extensively about palliative medicine, the evolution of hospice care, and changes in medical education. A graduate of Radcliffe College at Harvard University, she also reported from Central America earlier in her career and was the recipient of an Inter-American Press Association fellowship to write about the development of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
  • Marie Morilus-Black is currently the Director of Child and Youth Services for the District of Columbia. Previously, Morilus-Black was the Director of Family Voices Network of Erie County, the children’s division of the Department of Mental Health of Erie County, Buffalo, New York where she successfully ran and sustained a System of Care Grant. She obtained her Master of Social Work at the University of New York at Buffalo. She has been in the field of Human Services for almost 20 years. She is an expert in the field of Child Welfare and Mental Health and is very knowledgeable of the Juvenile Justice System. She is responsible for managing and implementing the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrative (SAMHSA) grant of $9.5 million dollars over six years for the Erie County Department of Mental Health, which works in collaboration with the Department of Social Services and Juvenile Justice Probation of Erie County. Most recently, Marie Morilus-Black published a peer reviewed article in the Community Mental Health Journal entitled “Social Supports for Youth and Families.” Morilus-Black has conducted numerous workshops on issues impacting children and families involved in the multiple systems cited above both, locally and nationally. For the last couple of years, she has presented and served as a facilitator at the SAMHSA New System of Care Communities Orientation Meeting. She has served as faculty member at both The Annual Conference of the Research and Training Center for Children’s Mental Health the Human Services host by University of South Florida and the Bi-annual Training Institute held by The National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health at the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development with a focus on local systems of care for children, adolescents, and young adults with or at risk for mental health challenges and their families. Marie is also known for her work in utilizing data to improve practice, particularly in the area of clinical service delivery in a culturally and linguistically competent manner. This particular area of interest drove her study to become a Six Sigma Green Belt.
  • Thomas M. Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs and a former chairman of the Strategy Department at the United States Naval War College in Newport, R.I., where he also holds the Forrest Sherman Chair of Public Diplomacy. He previously taught international relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth and Georgetown. He holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, an M.A. from Columbia University, the Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia, and a B.A. from Boston University. He was personal staff for defense and security affairs in the United States Senate to the late Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania and served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is currently a senior associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York and a fellow of the International History Institute at Boston University. His most recent book, about the revolutionary changes taking place in how nations go to war, is Eve of Destruction: The Coming Age of Preventive War (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). His current project is on the reform of nuclear strategy and the reduction of international nuclear inventories.