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Paula A. Kerger is president and chief executive officer of PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, the nation’s largest non-commercial media organization with 356 member stations throughout the country. Kerger joined PBS as its sixth president and chief executive in March 2006.

Kodac Harrison has fronted several bands and made 14 recordings of original songs for three different record labels. As an acoustic guitarist, he uses a wide variety of tones. Harrison performs solo, as a spoken word artist, and with a band that varies from three to ten pieces. Kodac was a member of the 2000 & 2001 Athens, GA. Poetry Slam teams. Also in 2001, Kodac was commissioned to write the song he performed at the Andrew Young tribute. The tribute was hosted by Maya Angelou and Harry Belefonte and attended by 1500 guests including Ray Charles and President Clinton. Harrison was also honored to performed for former President Jimmy Carter at the Carter Center in 2001. In 2002, Kodac was the master of ceremony at the Nader Rally, where he introduced and sang with Patti Smith. Kodac was named "Best Spoken Word Artist" (critic's choice in 2002 and reader's choice in 2003 & 2004) in Atlanta's Creative Loafing. In the spring of 2003, Kodac released his 10th full-length studio recording, *Portraits & Passages*.

In the southwest and Latin America, Daniel D. Beck continues to work with Gila Monsters and Beaded Lizards, primarily on projects related to conservation and public outreach. In St. George, Utah, he is working with resource management agencies and public schools in efforts to prevent Gila Monster populations from disappearing in the wake of rapid recreational and residential development. His teaching interests include general biology, physiology, ecology, and field biology. He teaches courses in introductory biology, ecology, herpetology, and physiology, as well graduate courses in research design and analysis.

Bailey White's commentaries can be heard on NPR's award winning newsmagazine *All Things Considered*. White was born in 1950 in Thomasville, Georgia. White still lives in the same house in which she grew up, on one of the large tracts of virgin longleaf pine woods. Her father, Robb White, was a fiction writer and later a television and movie script writer. Her mother, Rosalie White, was a farmer, and worked for many years as the executive director of the local Red Cross Chapter. She has one brother, who is a carpenter and boat builder, and one sister, who is a bureaucrat. White graduated from Florida State University in 1973, and has taken a break from teaching first grade to pursue writing full-time. White is the author of *Sleeping at the Starlite Motel*, *Mama Makes Up Her Mind*, and *Quite a Year for Plums*.

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of 21 books about a wide range of things, from the first woman president of the US to what barnyard animals are thinking. He is a panelist on NPR's *Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me*, the president of the Authors Guild, a member of PEN and the Fellowship of Southern Authors, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, a Boston Public Library Literary Light, a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary, and an original member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. He comes from Decatur, Georgia, and lives in western Massachusetts.

Professor Scott's interests include U.S. foreign policy, development theory, gender politics, feminist theory, and U.S. foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era.

Most recently a principal in the Atlanta office of the Boston Consulting Group, Shipman also has an extensive educational background in issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. His undergraduate and graduate studies include the relationship between economics and poverty, the history of American minority groups and religion, and the American civil rights movement.

Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and its parent company Sound Portraits Productions. Over the past two decades his radio documentary work has won nearly every award in broadcasting, including five Peabody Awards, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow award, and two Livingston Awards for young journalists. Dave has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), a MacArthur Fellowship (2000), and a United States Artists Fellowship (2006). He is the author (or co-author) of four books based on Sound Portraits radio stories including: *Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago* (1997), *Flophouse* (2000), and the first-ever StoryCorps book, *Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project* (2007).

Melvin Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer. He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films.

Lewis H. Butler received his AB, Bachelor of Laws degree from Princeton University, and his Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1952. He spent 10 years there practicing law as a partner in a local law firm, in addition to serving as chairman of the California State Bar Committee. In April 1961 the United States Peace Corps initiated a nationwide search for potential overseas leaders for the fledgling program. Butler was chosen as one of only eighty-six individuals, from over one thousand possible applicants. He was chosen to act as deputy director of the Malaysian Peace Corps program in 1961 and stayed on as the national, Peace Corps Director for Malaysia from 1963 to 1964. He continued to serve as a consultant for the Peace Corps until 1968, evaluating educational programs in Somalia, Nigeria, and Nepal. He continued to serve his nation acting as assistant secretary for Planning and Evaluation, in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, from April 1969 to July 1971. He tendered his resignation to President Nixon in 1971, objecting to the administrations decision to invade Cambodia. He remains politically active as of 2008, acting as chairman emeritus of California Tomorrow, chairman emeritus of the Ploughshares Fund, and as co-chair of the Revolt of the Elders Coalition.