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Jay O'Callahan is a storyteller known for his theater, festival, and radio performances, playing venues such as the Lincoln Center and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and performing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Geographic Society. O'Callahan has commissioned his stories to National Public Radio, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and College of the Holy Cross. Some of his more popular stories have been published as illustrated children's books, including *Tulips*, *Orange Cheeks*, and *Herman and Marguerite*. He's also taught workshops at Oberlin College, Kenyon College, and Boston College.

Paul Starr is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-founder and co-editor of *The American Prospect*. At Princeton he holds the Stuart Chair in Communications and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. Professor Starr has written extensively on American society, politics, and both domestic and foreign policy. He received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and Bancroft Prize in American History for *The Social Transformation of American Medicine* and the 2005 Goldsmith Book Prize for *The Creation of the Media*. His most recent book *Freedom's Power*, on the history and promise of liberalism, is now out in paperback. In 1990, with Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich, he co-founded* The American Prospect*, a liberal magazine about politics, policy, and ideas. Published quarterly in its early years, the magazine now appears monthly in print as well as online. A short book by Professor Starr, *The Logic of Health-Care Reform* (1992) laid out the case for a system of universal health insurance and managed competition. During 1993 he served as a senior advisor at the White House in the formulation of the Clinton health plan Sandra Starr, Paul Starr's first wife, died in 1998. Now married to Ann Baynes Coiro, he has four children and three step-children.

Lynne Conner is a theatre and dance scholar, playwright, arts activist/advocate and educator. She taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to Colby, and for many years was very active in Pittsburgh's arts and culture community as a playwright, arts advocate and arts consultant. Her areas of scholarship and artistic practice are all centered on a passionate belief in the power of the arts to enhance the quality of individual lives and to build communities. As an educator, Lynne is committed to the value of a liberal arts education for myriad reasons, beginning with the undeniable fact that freedom of the body politic starts with broadly educated minds. Lynne is the resident playwright for Carnegie Mellon University's Interactive Theatre Company, a professional troupe performing scripts on workplace and campus life issues, for which she received a Pennsylvania Economy League Learning and Development Award and a College and University Professional Association Innovation Award. Her latest scripting project involves developing a series of video scripts for Carnegie Mellon University's Program for Research & Outreach on Gender Equity in Society (PROGRESS). As an arts advocate, Lynne was the founding co-chair of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Alliance (now the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council), where she helped to develop a nationally recognized advertising campaign for the arts in Pittsburgh. She currently serves as a council member of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and as a board member for ArtUp, a Pittsburgh-based arts organization devoted to new works and studio activities that enhance the quality of Pittsburgh's downtown living.

Born in Glasgow in 1964, he was a Demy at Magdalen College and graduated with First Class Honors in 1985. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a Research Fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1989, subsequently moving to a Lectureship at Peterhouse. He returned to Oxford in 1992 to become fellow and tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, a post he held until 2000, when he was appointed Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford. Two years later he left for the United States to take up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004.

Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, is a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an advocate for programs to battle homelessness and promote refugee rights, and an overseer at the New England Conservatory of Music. She revealed her ongoing struggle to overcome depression and her accompanying addictions to alcohol and diet pills in her 1990 memoir, Now You Know.