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Reginald H. Pitts is a professional historical researcher and genealogist. Pitts performs primary source historical and genealogical research services for a host of international, national and local individual clients and institutions. He is co-editor of the Penguin 2005 edition of Our Nig by Harriet Wilson.

Secretary Ian Bowles oversees the Commonwealths six environmental, natural resource and energy regulatory agencies. Massachusetts is the first state in the nation to combine energy and environmental agencies under one Cabinet secretary. He also serves as Chairman of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and Chairman of the Energy Facilities Siting Board. He brings nearly 20 years of experience in the energy and environmental sectors. He was a Director or Advisor to three early stage clean energy technology companies and has broad leadership experience in environmental policy. Bowles served in the Clinton Administration as Associate Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and as Senior Director of the Global Environmental Affairs directorate at the National Security Council. Following his service in the Clinton Administration, Bowles held appointments as a Senior Research Fellow at Harvards Kennedy School of Government and as Senior Advisor at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a multi billion dollar charitable foundation established by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore. Bowles also served as President & CEO of MassINC, a Boston-based research institute, and as Publisher of *CommonWealth* magazine. He holds an A.B. in economics cum laude from Harvard College and a Masters degree from Oxford University, where he remains an adjunct member of the teaching faculty at the graduate school of the Environment and Geography. He has an honorary Doctorate from Emerson College. He lives in Charlestown with his wife Hannah and daughter Margaret.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is currently the chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and has held this position since 2006. She also served as Acting-Director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute in the Spring 2008. Professor Higginbotham earned a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in American History, an M.A. from Howard University, and her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Before coming to Harvard, she taught on the full-time faculties of Dartmouth, the University of Maryland, and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and New York University. Higginbotham is the author of *Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church: 1880-1920* (1993), which won numerous book prizes, most notably from the American Historical Association, the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Black Women Historians, and the Association for Research on Non-Profit and Voluntary Organizations. *Righteous Discontent* was also included among the New York Times Book Review's Notable Books of the Year in 1993 and 1994. Her writings span diverse fields--African American religious history, women's history, civil rights, constructions of racial and gender identity, electoral politics, and the intersection of theory and history. One of her most cited and reprinted articles is "African American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," winner of the best article prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians in 1993.

Paul Harrington, is an economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University who specializes in the economics of education and career development. For the past several years, Paul often speaks on youth-related labor market issues to a variety of workforce and education-related audiences.

Marty Meehan is the second chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the fourteenth leader of the institution and its predecessor schools, founded in the 1890s. A UMass Lowell alumnus, Meehan graduated cum laude in 1978, having studied education and political science. He received a master's degree in public administration from Suffolk University in 1981 and a juris doctor from Suffolk University Law School in 1986. He holds honorary degrees from Suffolk and Green Mountain College in Vermont. Meehan served as an adjunct faculty member in political science at UMass Lowell in the late 1980s. A resident of Lowell, Meehan represented the fifth congressional district of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2007. He served on the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees. Widely respected as a reformer, he established a national reputation for his legislative leadership in reforming campaign finance laws and protecting people against the health risks in tobacco use. Among his priorities were maintaining a balanced federal budget, preserving Medicare and Social Security, supporting and strengthening the military, and supporting economic growth that is worker- and environment-friendly. Meehan served as Massachusetts deputy secretary of state for securities and corporations from 1986 to 1990. The Boston Globe reported, "During Meehan's four years as deputy secretary, the Securities Division [went] from being a frequent embarrassment to gaining a national reputation as hard-hitting and activist." In the early 1990s, Meehan was the first assistant district attorney of Middlesex County, supervising more than 150 people, including 80 prosecutors, in an office admired for aggressive prosecution of child abuse, domestic violence and other violent crimes.

Ellen Hume is an Annenberg Fellow in Civic Media at the Center for Media and Communication Studies at Central European University in Budapest. She was also the Founding Editor and Publisher of the New England Ethnic Newswire. Hume is an experienced journalist, teacher, speaker, administrator, conference director and television commentator. As the founding Executive Director of PBS's Democracy Project, from 1996 to 1998, she developed special news programs that encouraged citizen involvement in public affairs. She oversaw PBS's 1996 and 1998 election coverage, creating PBS Debate Night, a nationally televised Congressional leadership debate, as well as local candidate debates on PBS stations across the country. Hume has more than 30 years of experience as a reporter and analyst for US newspapers, magazines and television. She was a White House and political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal from 1983 to 1988, and a Washington based national reporter with The Los Angeles Times from 1977 to 1983.

Robert Siegel, a senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine *All Things Considered*, got started in radio news when he was a college freshman in 1964. He's still at it. As a host, Siegel has reported from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Israel. He now concentrates on domestic stories. During the fall of 1992, Siegel took a short leave from the show to anchor *Talk of the Nation*, NPR's nationwide live call-in program. A graduate of New York's Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University, Siegel began his career in radio at the college radio station WKCR-FM where he anchored coverage of the 1968 Columbia demonstrations. The station's work received an award from the Writers Guild of America East.