Forum Network

Dale Maharidge has been teaching at the journalism school since 2001; he first taught here in the early 1990s. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University for 10 years and before that he spent 15 years as a newspaperman, writing for the *Cleveland Plain Dealer*, *The Sacramento Bee*, and others. He's written for *Rolling Stone*, *George Magazine*, *The Nation, Mother Jones*, *The New York Times* op-ed page, among others. Most of his books are illustrated with the work of photographer Michael Williamson. Maharidge's first book, *Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass* (1985), later inspired Bruce Springsteen to write two songs; it was reissued in 1996 with an introduction by Springsteen. His second book, *And Their Children After Them* (1989), won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1990. Other books include *Yosemite: A Landscape of Life* (1990); *The Last Great American Hobo* (1993); and *The Coming White Minority: California, Multiculturalism & the Nation's Future* (1996, 1999); *Homeland* (2004); and *Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town* (2005). Maharidge attended Cleveland State University. He was a 1988 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2004, Maharidge held a Yaddo artist's residency.

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at *The New York Times* and a frequent contributor to *The New York Times Magazine*. A graduate of Duke University, DeParle won a George Polk Award in 1999 for his reporting on the welfare system and was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Nancy-Ann, and their two sons.

William Julius Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. Wilson received a Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1966. He then taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1972. In 1990 he was appointed the Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality. Joining the faculty at Harvard in 1996, Wilson studies race and urban inequalities. His most recent work is *When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor*. Wilson is the recipient of numerous awards, including 41 honorary degrees and the National Medal of Science.

David T. Ellwood, the Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy, has served as Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government since July 1, 2004. As Dean, Ellwood sets the strategic direction of the Kennedy School and leads its efforts to advance the public interest. Ellwood joined the Kennedy School faculty in 1980 and served two separate terms as the School's Academic Dean. In 1993, he was named Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) where he served as co-chair of President Clinton's Working Group on Welfare Reform, Family Support and Independence. At HHS, Ellwood played a key role in the Administration's development and implementation of critical social policy. Ellwood was recipient of the David N. Kershaw Award, given by the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management to outstanding individuals under the age of 40 who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy. He also received the Morris and Edna Zale Award for Outstanding Distinction in Scholarship and Public Service from Stanford University.

Ratna Omidvar is President of Maytree, a private foundation dedicated to accelerating the settlement of immigrants and refugees. Under Ratna's leadership, Maytree has gained international recognition for its expertise in developing, testing, and implementing programs and policy solutions related to immigration, integration and diversity. Ratna also serves as a director of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, and is a member of the board of the Tamarack Institute. She was the first executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council and is currently the chair of its Board of Directors. Ratna is a Fellow of Centennial College, and received an honorary diploma from George Brown College. In 2006, Ratna was appointed to the Order of Ontario.

Melinda Marble is the Executive Director of the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Charitable Foundation. Formerly, she was a Senior Associate at TPI where she created the Boston Neighborhood Fellows Program. She also served as Vice President of Program for The Boston Foundation and Associate Director at the Lincoln Filene Center at Tufts University. Before moving to Boston, Melinda was a Program Executive for the San Francisco Foundation and she also chaired the Bay Area Foundations/Corporations Emergency Fund. Marble has drawn on her experience to develop training programs and material for donors and foundation staff. For the past three years, she had helped the Associated Grant Makers of Massachusetts develop its "Insights" series on nonprofit management issues and has led sessions on nonprofit life cycles.

Following the creation of the American Legacy Foundation in 1999, Dr. Cheryl Healton joined the staff as the first president and chief executive officer of this groundbreaking public health nonprofit, created by the historic Master Settlement Agreement between 46 state attorneys general, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. During her tenure with the foundation, she has guided the highly acclaimed, national youth tobacco prevention counter-marketing campaign, "Truth", that has been credited in part with reducing youth smoking prevalence to its current 28-year low. She is a frequent commentator in national and local broadcast and print news coverage regarding tobacco control issues, which include guest appearances on ABC's *Good Morning America*; CNN's *Larry King Live*; NBC's *Today*, MSNBC's *Hardball with Chris Matthews*, National Public Radio and more. Healton is currently writing a book on the topic of women and smoking, with common sense strategies to increase successful quit attempts. She joined the American Legacy Foundation from Columbia University's Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health in New York, where she served as head of the Division of Socio-medical Sciences and associate dean for Program Development. She founded and directed the school's Center for Applied Public Health.

Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski attended The University of Connecticut, graduating as University Scholar with a BS in the Biological Sciences in 1989. Dudzinski completed and was awarded her doctorate in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences with a focus on Dolphin Communication and Behavior in August 1996. Her first experience related to marine mammals was as an intern with the Atlantic Cetacean Research Center in the Summer of 1987. Dudzinski was awarded a National Science Foundation Three Year Pre Doctoral Fellowship in 1990 and began graduate studies with Dr. Bernd Worsig and the Marine Mammal Research Program at Texas A&M University in September of the same year. During her graduate program, Dudzinski studied communication between Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) in Bahamian waters with a focus on contact behavior and signal exchange among dolphins. In 2002, Dr. Dudzinski became an Adjunct Faculty member in Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. With Dr. Stan Kuczaj, Kathleen advises two to three graduate students currently studying various aspects of dolphin sounds and behavior. Kuczaj and Dudzinski are preparing protocols for gathering data on dolphin behavior with a focus on comparing data from both captive and wild study sites. In 2004 and 2005, respectively, Dudzinski became Adjunct Faculty in Animal Science at the University of Rhode Island and in Environmental Science at Alaska Pacific University.

John Calambokidis is a Research Biologist and co-founder of Cascadia Research (in 1979). He has served as the Principal Investigator of more than 50 research studies on marine mammals, marine birds, and pollution. He has supervised a staff of up to 20 researchers. He has co-authored over 50 papers in scientific journals and two books: the award-winning *Guide to Marine Mammals of Greater Puget Sound* (Island Publishers, with R. Osborne and E.M. Dorsey) and *Blue Whales* (Voyageur Press, with G.H. Steiger). He is a charter member of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, as well as a number of other scientific societies, and periodically teaches a Marine Mammal Biology course as an Adjunct Faculty Member of The Evergreen State College in Olympia.