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A high school teacher during the 1960's and early 1970's, Myron ("Mike") Arms abandoned the formal classroom in 1977 in favor of a different kind of educational setting: a 60-foot traditional wooden schooner called Dawn Treader. As founder and director of a program of "sea learning" experiences and as a Coast Guard licensed Ocean Master, he sailed for the next five years with hundreds of teenage boys and girls. "The curriculum was life," says Arms of his program. "The teacher was the sea. I learned as much as my students. We measured the sea's chemistry, sampled its bottom sediments, studied its microscopic populations with a plankton net and microscope. It was the beginning, really, of my own emerging awareness of the stresses being suffered by virtually all of the world's marine environments."

Richard Parker is Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard Kennedy University. An economist by training, he is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Oxford University. He has worked as an economist for the UNDP, as co-founder of *Mother Jones Magazine*, and as head of his own consulting firm, serving congressional clients, including Senators Kennedy, Glenn, Cranston, and McGovern, among others. Parker has held Marshall, Rockefeller, Danforth, Goldsmith, and Bank of America Fellowships. His books include: The Myth of the Middle Class , a study of U.S. income distribution;Mixed Signals: The Future of Global Television News ; and the intellectual biography, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. His articles have appeared in numerous academic anthologies and journals and in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Nation, Harper's, Le Monde, Atlantic Monthly, and International Economy, among others.

Judy Norsigian, executive director and a founder of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, is a co-author of *Our Bodies*, *Ourselves*, *Our Bodies*, *Ourselves: Menopause and Our Bodies*, *Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth*. Judy speaks and writes frequently on a wide range of women's health concerns, including abortion and contraception, sexually transmitted infections, genetics and reproductive technologies, tobacco and women, women and health care reform, and midwifery advocacy. She has appeared on numerous national television and radio programs, including *Oprah*, *the Today show*, *Good Morning America*, *The Early Show* and *NBC Nightly News* with Tom Brokaw. She served on the board of the National Women's Health Network for 14 years and currently serves as a board member for Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research. Judy is a founder and longtime board member of Community Works, which raises funds for Boston area social change organizations through payroll deduction charitable giving programs. Her personal recognitions include: the Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association (1989); Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Annual Recognition Award (1995); Boston YWCA's Academy of Women Achievers (1996); the 2002 Massachusetts Health Council Award; and an honorary doctorate degree from Boston University (2007).

Deborah Leff is president of the Public Welfare Foundation, a half-billion dollar philanthropy based in Washington, DC that is dedicated to ensuring fundamental rights and opportunities for people in need. From 2001-2006, Ms. Leff was director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. She has held a variety of leadership positions in the public, private, and non-profit sectors including CEO of Feeding America (formerly known as America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization, and president of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. Ms. Leff was Senior Producer at *ABC News Nightline*, *ABC News World News Tonight*, and *ABC News 20/20* from 1983 to 1992, where she won DuPont and Emmy Awards for news coverage such as a week-long *World News Tonight* series. Ms. Leff has also held several positions with the federal government, including Trial Attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice and Director of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission. Ms. Leff received her undergraduate degree cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, where she was named a University Scholar. She earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Prudence L. Carter is an associate professor in the School of Education and the Department of Sociology at Stanford. She teaches a range of courses on racial and ethnic relations, social and cultural inequality, the sociology of education, urban education and research methods. Professor Carter's first book, *Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White* (Oxford University Press 2005), is the 2006 co-winner of the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, (Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association) for its contribution to the eradication of racism; a 2005 finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award (Society for the Study of Social Problems); and an a 2007 honorable mention recipient of the distinguished book award (Section on Race, Class, and Gender, American Sociological Association). At present, Professor Carter is completing a book tentatively titled *The Paradoxes of Opportunity: Race, Culture, and Boundaries in "Good" Schools*, which documents a cross-national study of desegregated and majority-minority high schools in the United States and South Africa and examines how school practices can either facilitate or diminish academic and social divides in education.

Peggy Dulany is Chair of The Synergos Institute, an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to creating effective, sustainable and locally based solutions to poverty. Her career has included heading a Boston area public high school program for drop outs for six years and consulting with the United Nations and the Ford Foundation on health care and family planning in Brazil, the United States and Portugal, and with the National Endowment for the Arts on nonprofit management and planning. She was Senior Vice President of the New York City Partnership for five years, where she headed the Youth Employment and Education programs. Dr. Dulany is an honors graduate of Radcliffe College and holds a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University. She is also Chair of ProVentures, a business development company for Latin America and Southern Africa. She has sat on over 30 nonprofit and corporate boards including Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Africa-America Institute, among others.

Jessica Hoffmann Davis is a cognitive developmental psychologist and founder of the Arts in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of *Framing Education as Art: The Octopus Has a Good Day *.