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Marc Prou is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Co-Director of the Center for African Caribbean and Community Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He has published several articles and chapters on Caribbean social history and culture, Creole language, immigration and education. Prou's research on Haiti addresses educational reform, language, race and ethnicity. He is the author of Spoken Haitian Creole: Kreyol Pale Kreyol Konprann. He is currently the Executive Director of the Haitian Studies Association, a scholarly organization that addresses research on Haiti from a multi disciplinary perspective.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of *Democracy Now!*, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 750 TV and radio stations in North America. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the Alternative Nobel Prize for developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media. She is also one of the the first recipients, along with Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald, of the Park Center for Independent Medias Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. Goodman is the co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers, *Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times *(2008), *Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back* (2006) and *The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them* (2004). Goodman has received the American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award; the Paley Center for Medias Shes Made It Award; and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.

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.