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Richard Blanco is an American poet, public speaker, author and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet.

**Roberto G. Gonzales** is Assistant Professor of Education at Harvard University. His research focuses on the factors that promote and impede the educational progress of immigrant and Latino students. His academic work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, La Opinion, TIME, CNN and NPR. In 2014 he was awarded the American Sociological Association Award for Public Sociology in International Migration.

Maharaj K. Pandit, Ph.D., is a Hrdy Fellow (2015-2016) at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University. Pandit is a former head of the Department of Environmental Studies, University of Delhi (India).

**Jean-Louis "Dutch" DeGay** has been at the U.S. Army's Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) since 2000. While there, he has been a project officer and equipment specialist on numerous projects for the Marine Corps, Army, and Special Operations communities ranging from personal protection to advanced soldier technologies to small combat unit operations. Before going to work at the NSRDEC, DeGay was a Captain with ten years of service in the United States Army with a number of assignments, including light, mechanized, airborne, and special operations.

**Honorable John E. McDonald, Jr.** is the first justice of the Boston Municipal Court, East Boston Drug Court Division.

**Liz Malia** is a Massachusetts State Representative (D-Jamaica Plain) and House Chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health and Substance Use.

**Windia Rodriguez** is the Northeast and Boston Regional Coordinator of the Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery (MOAR).

**Henrietta Robin Barnes**, M.D., is a primary care physician and author of \_Hijacked Brains: The Experience and Science of Chronic Addiction\_. Dr. Barnes is a resident of Jamaica Plain.

**Mark Davy** founded Futurecity in London, England, in 2007. Since its founding, Futurecity has planned over 50 culture- and art-driven development strategies for the UK's urban centers. (Photo: [Futurecity](http://futurecity.co.uk/wp-content/themes/futurecity/functions/timthumb.php?src=http://futurecity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Mark1.jpg&w=640&h=400&zc=1 "Futurecity"))

**Janet Echelman** is an American public artist whose studio is based out of Brookline, MA. Echelman received the 2014 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Visual Arts, and in 2015 her studio constructed an aerial structure titled "As If It Were Already Here" over Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Matthias Waschek, PhD, became Director of the Worcester Art Museum in November 2011. He wrote his PhD on French art theory at the end of the 19th century and served as Head of Academic Programs at the Louvre Museum in Paris from 1992 to 2003. Dr. Waschek aims to engage the local community in the Worcester Art Museum, maximizing the Museum's regional impact, and he [spoke at the Northeastern University School of Architecture on November 24, 2014](http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/architecture/people/matthias-waschek-phd/ "Matthias Waschek").

Barbara Hannigan is a soprano and conductor, Artist in Residence with the Gothenburg and Bamberg Symphony Orchestras and conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and Münich Philharmonic in 2015 to 2016. The Berliner Philharmoniker commissioned her to sing Hans Abrahamsen's \_let me tell you\_, which she recorded in January 2016 and subsequently premiered in the US with the Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.