Forum Network

Jasmine Waddell is the senior officer for Research and Learning for the US Regional Office of Oxfam America.

Rebecca Woodcock is the parent of a child with autism.

James T. Brett is president and Chief Executive Officer of The New England Council, and chair of the Governor's Commission on Developmental Disabilities. The Council, a nationally respected and influential regional organization, was established in 1925. It is an alliance of schools, hospitals, corporations, and other private organizations throughout New England, working together to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. It identifies and supports federal policies of importance to New England, and advocates for its membership regionally and nationally. While a legislator, Mr. Brett was formally honored on several occasions by labor, human service, and law enforcement organizations for outstanding public service. Many other groups honored him as "Legislator of the Year," and organizations such as Friends of the John F. Kennedy Library, Central Remedial Clinic in Ireland, and the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers have publicly honored him for his service. Mr. Brett has continued to be a tireless advocate for the physically and mentally challenged, and has been recognized for his humanitarian work by Action for Boston Community Development (Lifetime Public Service Award) and Hospice of Boston (Humanitarian of the Year). In 1996, Bay Cove Human Services of Boston named a new community home for disabled adults "Brett House" in his honor. Mr. Brett also received the Distinguished Leadership Award from Massachusetts Special Olympics in 2008.

Dan Thornhill is interested in the evolution and ecology of marine invertebrates, especially those that form symbioses with eukaryotic or prokaryotic microbes. Ultimately, his research investigates the physiological, ecological, and evolutionary processes driving speciation in marine environments. His past and current research examines a variety of marine organisms and habitats. Recently, he has studied marine organisms from tropical coral reefs, Norwegian fjords, deep-sea methane seeps, and the waters around Antarctica. He plans to continue developing a diverse and collaborative research program while at Bowdoin College. In the near term, much of his work will focus on symbioses in corals and siboglinid annelids. In addition to being also important 'keystone' species in coral reef and chemosynthetic ecosystems, these organisms offer a diversity of both host and symbiont taxa, enabling comparative testing of many ecological and evolutionary hypotheses.

Susan M. Wilczynski is the Executive Director of the National Autism Center. She chairs the National Standards Project, which will serve to establish national standards for the educational and behavioral treatment of individuals on the autism spectrum, and works in collaboration with experts from all over the country. Dr. Wilczynski is charged with developing state-of-the-art Autism Screening and Diagnostic Clinics in underserved areas. In addition, she spearheads "Pathways", a parent education series for parents whose children have recently received a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Before joining the National Autism Center as Executive Director, Dr. Wilczynski developed and directed an intensive early intervention program for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) at Munroe-Meyer Institute for Genetics and Rehabilitation. She has authored multiple articles and book chapters on the treatment of ASD and has co-edited the book *Effective Practices for Children with Autism*. A licensed psychologist and a board certified behavior analyst, Dr. Wilczynski has held academic appointments at the University of Southern Mississippi, the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and UMASS-Boston.

Emma Ambrose has been a producer and reporter for the Sudan Radio Project since January 2009. Her reports strive to examine the politics of Sudan in a broader international context, as well as exploring the experiences of Sudanese expatriates.

Atul Gawande is a surgeon and writer based in Massachusetts. From 1992 to 1993 he served as senior health policy advisor to the Clinton campaign and the Clinton White House. Since 1998 he has been a staff writer for *The New Yorker*. He is on the currently faculty of Brigham and Women's Hospital as a general and endocrine surgeon, and is a staff member of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He is also an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Research Director for the Brigham and Women's Center for Surgery and Public Health. He has written two best-selling books, *Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science* and *Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance*.

Robin Kirby is a heart centered therapist, combining traditional cognitive techniques with hypnotherapy, regressive therapy, conscious connected breathing, meditation, and guided imagery to find the source of troubling emotions and patterns and facilitate healing at the deepest level. She provides a nurturing environment that allows individuals, couples, and family members to open their hearts and live from that place of authenticity. She holds a masters degree in education, and a PhD in clinical psychology. She is a certified clinical hypnotherapist, certified release therapist, certified life coach, and educator. She is also a Reiki practitioner and is constantly studying, learning, and incorporating new energetic and spiritual healing modalities into her work. She is the founder of Loving Impact, a private practice dedicated to the healing of mind, body, and spirit.

Having survived breast cancer, Carolyn Buttram combines an knowledge base with innovative, uplifting, and entertaining presentation skills to encourage spiritual celebration and growth. For over 10 years, she has been inspiring and informing her audiences about living their best and most joyful life, while changing the world in the process. She consistently challenges old belief patterns and inspires her audiences to greater involvement in their own lives. She also is a talented landscape and portrait photographer.

Raj Patel, the author of *Stuffed and Starved*, is an activist and academic who has been hailed as "a visionary" for his prescience about the food crisis. Raj has worked for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and has protested against them on four continents. He is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First.

Elizabeth Kostova graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress for *The Historian,* which went on to become a bestseller, and to win her the Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year and the Book Sense Award for Adult Fiction.

Robert S. Lyons has covered professional and college sports for over 35 years, for the Associated Press and he has contributed articles to numerous national publications. He is the author of *Palestra Pandemonium: A History of the Big Five*, and co-author (with Ray Didinger) of *The Eagles Encyclopedia*. He is the former director of the *La Salle University News Bureau*, editor of the university's alumni magazine, and instructor in the school's Communications Department.