Forum Network

Abigail Garner is a writer, speaker and educator who is dedicated to a future of equality for LGBT families and communities. She speaks from her own experience of having a gay dad who came out to her when she was five years old. Bringing voice to a population of children that is often overlooked, Abigail has been featured on CNN, *ABC World News Tonight*, and National Public Radio. She is the author of the Lambda Literary Finalist, *Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is* (2004). She is currently completing her master's degree in Organizational Leadership at the College of St. Catherine with a certificate in dispute resolution from Hamline University. Upon completion of her degree in 2009, her goal is to secure a position in a grant-making foundation or a not-for-profit organization.

**Dr. Gregory Skomal** is an accomplished marine biologist, underwater explorer, photographer, aquarist, and author. He has been a fisheries biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries since 1987 and currently heads up the Massachusetts Shark Research Program. Greg holds a master's degree in marine biology from the University of Rhode Island and a PhD from the Boston University Marine Program in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His research has spanned multiple fish habitats around the globe, taking him from the frigid waters of the Arctic Circle to coral reefs in the tropical Central Pacific. He has written numerous scientific research papers and has appeared in a number of film and television documentaries, including programs for the National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, ESPN, and CBS. Although his research passion for the last 23 years has been sharks, he has been an avid aquarist for more than 30 years and has written nine books on aquarium keeping. His home and laboratory are on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.

David Dearinger is Susan Morse Hilles curator of paintings and sculpture at the Boston Athenaeum. An art historian and curator, he received his PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, with a specialty in nineteenth-century American art. He taught art history in New York at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and, for many years, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Before coming to Boston, he was chief curator at the National Academy of Design in New York. He has published and lectured widely on the history of American painting and sculpture.

Larry Madin is a Marine Biologist and WHOI Senior Science Advisor; and retired Deputy Director/VP for Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). His main research interests are in the biology of oceanic and deep-sea zooplankton, particularly medusae, siphonophores, ctenophores and pelagic tunicates. He was among the first biologists to use SCUBA and submersibles to study oceanic plankton in the early 1970s. Some of his recent research has been on the population dynamics and biogeochemical effects of salp blooms in the Antarctic and elsewhere, distribution of macro-plankton and fishes in the Arabian Sea, biodiversity of oceanic plankton in the Sargasso Sea, and development of new instrumentation for sampling and exploration. Dr. Madin was previously the Chair of the WHOI Biology Department, and Director of the Ocean Life Institute.

Robert Patrick Cooper is Senior Counsel for OneUnited Bank. He is responsible for raising capital, negotiating acquisitions and directing all legal, regulatory and external affairs for the bank. As a corporate attorney for over seventeen years, he honed his practice skills with the law firm of Hale and Dorr and acquired international merger and acquisition experience as Associate General Counsel for Battenfeld GmbH in Germany. Admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, Mr. Cooper holds a Bachelor's degree in economics from Yale College and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Mr. Cooper is a member of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and serves as Secretary of the National Bankers Association. Mr. Cooper also serves on the steering committee for Black and White Boston Coming Together, Inc. He is a Boston Fellow with the Partnership, Inc. and a member of the NAACP and the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.

For more than 30 years Kathleen McDermott has popularized History and Culture. As a Consulting Historian from 1986 to 1998, she authored illustrated histories of large American fashion, beauty, and consumer product companies including Max Factor, Butterick Patterns, Kinney Shoe, Timex, Buxton Wallet, Sherwin-Williams, and Price Waterhouse (Harvard Business School Press). As Fashion History Instructor from 1998 to present at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and concurrently for five years at Rhode Island School of Design (2005-2011), she has presented slideshows and lectures on 500 years of Western fashion, culture, and art history to hundreds of students. Her classes are designed to create informed and activist adults, passionate about women’s history, fashion history, and art museums. She wrote, illustrated, and published in 2010 an accessible fashion history handbook Style for All: Why Fashion, Invented by Kings, Now Belongs to All of Us. See her online resume for fashion history public lectures and museum gallery talks as well as TV, radio, and print commentary. Since 2001, Kathleen has created and sold fashion-history-inspired handmade hats and accessories for private clients and Boston Lyric Opera as donor gifts.