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Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and has lived in London from the age of four. She completed *The Icarus Girl* just before her nineteenth birthday, while studying for her A-levels. She is now a student of social and political sciences at Cambridge University. She has also written two plays, *Juniper's Whitening* and *Victimese*. She is currently at work on her second.

Steve Seidel, Ed.D., holds the Bauman and Bryant Chair in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has been the Director of Project Zero since July 2000 and the Director of the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since July 2004. He continues his work as a Research Associate and Principal Investigator and as Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Steve has worked in the areas of the arts and education for over thirty-five years. He trained and worked professionally as an actor and, later, as a stage director. He has worked with theater companies in Baltimore, New York, and Boston and his directorial work has been seen Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway in New York, in Boston, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In addition to working in theaters, Steve has also worked on short and feature-length films as acting coach, writer, and script consultant.

Dov Seidman has built a career, and pioneered an industry, around the idea that the most principled businesses are the most profitable over the long term. Fourteen years ago, long before Enron, Dov founded LRN with a powerful vision that the world would be a better place if more people did the right thing. From that basic notion, he has grown a successful company that has helped to shape the ways millions of employees, managers and leaders behave and interact all over the globe. Dov is recognized as a thought leader on a range of topics - from achieving significance, not just success, in our new 21st century world, to the importance of trust in personal and business dealings to succeeding with both principles and profits in mind. In the wake of the corporate scandals that rocked global business, Dov testified in 2004 before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, arguing that check-the-box, compliance-only approaches were insufficient. Only by focusing on the underlying corporate culture could scandals be avoided. His views helped shape the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. In 2007, his book, *HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything in Business (and in Life)*, was published by John Wiley & Sons, detailing years of thought about business cultures, philosophy and success.

Janet Wu has been the *NewsCenter 5* State House reporter for WCVB-TV since January, 1983. In 2006 she joined WCVB's investigative unit, *Team 5 Investigates*. Wu is a key member of WCVB's political unit and was a member of the team honored in 2001 and 2005 with the coveted Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Journalism. The station was recognized for its candidate-orientated reporting and its effort to cover issues important to its hometown audience. In 1998, Wu was awarded first place in the Associated Press' Investigative/ Enterprise category and the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting for her report entitled "Public Property, Private Lies". In addition, *the NewsCenter 5* political team was honored in 1989 with a First Place National Headliners Award and with a Murrow Award for the best political coverage of any station in the nation. Wu, a native of Bridgewater, NJ, received a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She is fluent in the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. Wu is married and has two children.

An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Melba Depena is the first member of her family to go to college, attending URI and latter becoming executive assistant to URI's Vice Provost for Urban Programs John McCray. In '98 Depena, developed the first travel program to provide students with an opportunity to travel to Cuba in the company of faculty from the Psychology Department and the Urban Field Center. It comes as no surprise, then, that in December 2003, the Rhode Island Democratic Party chose her as its first female and first Latina executive director. Beyond direct involvement in specific campaigns, Depena impacted Rhode Island's political landscape as president of the Rhode Island Latino Civic Fund. Comprised of two organizations, the Latino Civic Fund and the Latino Political Action Committee, it provides outreach to both the Latino community and candidates. The civic fund promotes the importance of becoming an American citizen and voter participation, while the PAC offers nominal financial support and endorsements to those candidates who show interest in working with the Latino and urban communities.

An advocate of women's issues for more than 30 years, Marie C. Wilson is founder and President of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day and author of *Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World* (2004). Over the last thirty years, Wilson's accomplishments span becoming the first woman elected to the Des Moines City Council as a member-at-large in 1983, co-authoring the critically acclaimed *Mother Daughter Revolution* (Bantam Books), and serving as an official government delegate to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995. In 1998, Wilson founded The White House Project in recognition of the need to build a truly representative democracy, one where women lead alongside men in all spheres. Since its inception, The White House Project has been a leading advocate and voice on Women's leadership. Before she took the helm at The White House Project, Wilson was, for nearly two decades, the President of the Ms. Foundation for Women. She is an honorary founding mother of the Ms. Foundation. In honor of her work, the Ms. Foundation has created The Marie C. Wilson Leadership Fund.

Ridings was named President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council in March 1996 after a distinguished career in the newspaper and communications industries. She has been a newspaper publisher, television producer/host, feature writer, political reporter, consultant/editor in government relations and leader of public policy research projects and organizations. From 1988 until joining the Council, she served as president and publisher of Knight-Ridder's *Bradenton Herald* in Florida. She also served as a Knight-Ridder general executive while based in Charlotte, North Carolina and held editorial and reporting positions at *The Charlotte Observer*, *The Kentucky Business ledger*, and *The Washington Post*. She was president of The League of Women Voters of the United States from 1982 through 1986, and in that capacity was an Akron Roundtable speaker in September 1983. She has been a trustee of the Ford Foundation, a director of the Benton Foundation and serves on the board of Independent Sector. Internationally, she has made speaking tours for the U.S. Department of State led two fact-finding delegations sponsored by NATO and served as a member of the Ford Foundation visitation teams. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master's degree from the University of North Carolina. Recipient of numerous awards, she holds honorary degrees from Spalding University and the University of Louisville, is listed in the International who be Who of Professional and Business Women and in the Foremost Women of the Twentieth Century.