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Renzo Piano is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize Piano was born into a family of builders in Genoa, Italy in 1937. He studied at Milan Poitechnic Architecture School under the design guidance of Franco Albini. Piano's principal work includes more than 40 world famous projects including museums, galleries, churches, music parks, institutes and national centers, shopping centers, bridges, reconstructions of squares, and airports.

Dr. Margot Minardi is an Assistant Professor of History at Reed College in Oregon . Her work centers around commemorative practices associated with Northern slavery and she has a forthcoming book on the subject, New England Slaves in Myth and Memory.

Maggie Gallagher is president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. Maggie is a nationally syndicated columnist, the author of three books on marriage (including most recently with University of Chicago Prof Linda Waite, *The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially*), and a leading voice of the new marriage movement. *National Journal* named her to the 2004 list of the most influential people in the same-sex marriage debate.

Elizabeth Riely is a journalist and food historian whose articles have appeared in *Bon Apptit*, *Gourmet*, the *Boston Globe*, and *The New York Times*. She is editor of the *Radcliffe Culinary Times*, the newsletter of the Schlessinger Library, a contributor to Gastronomica, and the author of the cookbook *A Feast of Fruits*.

Dr. Mustafa Ceric is the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is serving his second 7-year term until 2013. He is fluent in Bosnian, English and Arabic, and cites a "passive knowledge" of Turkish, German and French.

Miles, chair of the department of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., will give a talk titled "Persuasion and Power: Presidential Portraits Past and Present." The talk is presented as part of the yearlong series "Visual Culture in the 21st Century," and is open to the public. Admission is free. Ellen Miles recently served as co-curator of Gilbert Stuart, an exhibition organized jointly by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, and is co-author of the exhibition's catalogue. The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is home to several Gilbert Stuart portraits, including the famous Portrait of Thomas Jefferson and Portrait of James Madison, both painted in 1805-07. Miles is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, and earned her Ph.D. in art history at Yale University. A recipient of a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship, she was selected the Smithsonian Secretary's Distinguished Research Lecturer in 2004.

Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at *The New Yorker* since 1999. Her stories for the magazine have included political profiles, book reviews, Comment pieces, and extensive writing on climate change. Her three-part series on global warming, "The Climate of Man," won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Award, and the 2006 National Academies Communication Award. Kolbert came to the magazine from the *New York Times*, where she wrote the "Metro Matters" column and, from 1992 to 1997, was a political and media reporter. She also contributed articles to the *New York Times Magazine* on subjects ranging from the use of focus groups in elections to the New York water supply. From 1988 to 1991, she was the *New York Times* Albany Bureau Chief. Kolbert began working for the *Times* in 1984, as a stringer based in Germany, and moved to the *Metro* desk in 1985. Her first book, *The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit*, was published in 2004. Her second book is called *Field Notes from a Catastrophe*.

Joyce Chaplin is James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History and Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. She has taught at five different universities on two continents and an island, and in a maritime studies program on the Atlantic Ocean. Her research interests include early American history, intellectual history, and environmental history. She is currently writing a 500-year history of around-the-world travel.

Robert Kuttner is a journalist, author, economist and eminent public intellectual. Mr. Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of *The American Prospect* magazine, and senior fellow at the New York think-tank Demos. A longtime columnist for *BusinessWeek*, he continues to write for *Huffington Post* and the *Boston Globe*. He was a co-founder of the Economic Policy Institute and serves on its board. His magazine writing has appeared in *The New York Times Magazine* and *The New York Times Book Review*, *The Atlantic*, *The New Republic*, *The New Yorker*, *Dissent*, *Foreign Affairs*, *Columbia Journalism Review*, and *Harvard Business Review*. He has contributed major articles to *The New England Journal of Medicine* as a national policy correspondent. He contributes columns to *The New York Times international edition*. Mr. Kuttner has served as national staff writer on *The Washington Post*, chief investigator of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, economics editor of *The New Republic*, and assistant to renowned journalist I.F. Stone. Educated at Oberlin College, The London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley, he has taught at Brandeis, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Harvard's Institute of Politics. He is the author of eight books, including the 2008 *New York Times* bestseller, *Obama's Challenge: American's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency*. Bob's latest work is *A Presidency in Peril*, dealing with the financial crisis and the related political and regulatory battles of President Obama's first year. A fascinating and incisive look at both the promise that Barak Obama brought when assuming the mantle of the presidency and the factors that have served to tamp down that promise.