David Haskell’s work integrates scientific and contemplative studies of natural world. His book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking Penguin, 2012), was winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award for 2013, finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award, winner the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, and runner-up for the 2013 PEN E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. A profile in The New York Times said of Haskell that he “thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist.” E.O. Wilson called Haskell’s work “…a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry in which the invisible appear, the small grow large, and the immense complexity and beauty of life are more clearly revealed.”

Haskell holds degrees from the University of Oxford and from Cornell University. He is Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of the South, where he served as Chair of Biology. He is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and was granted Elective Membership in the American Ornithologists’ Union in recognition of “significant contributions to ornithology.” His scientific research on animal ecology, evolution and conservation has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the World Wildlife Fund, among others. He has also served on the boards and advisory committees of local and regional land conservation groups.”

Haskell’s classes have received national attention for the innovative ways they combine science, contemplation, and action in the community. In 2009, the Carnegie and CASE Foundations named him Professor of the Year for Tennessee. The Oxford American featured him in 2011 as one of the southern U.S.’s most creative teachers, and his teaching has been profiled in USA Today, The Tennesseean, and other newspapers.

He was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research on his new book THE SONGS OF TREES (to be published by Viking Penguin in April 2017),  a study of humanity’s varied roles within biological networks as heard through the acoustics of trees.

In 2001 Gail Collins became the first woman appointed editor of the New York Times‘ editorial page, and she resumed her twice weekly syndicated opinion column for the New York Times in 2007. Collins also writes for “The Conversation,” a Times blog in which she discusses political issues with David Brooks.

In her recent books, America’s Women and When Everything Changed, Collins offers insightful research and historical perspective, with characteristic wit and humanity.  In the New York Times Book Review, Amy Bloom praised When Everything Changed as a “smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women’s recent history” that provides the “best summary of American women’s social and political history that I’ve read.” Of her columns, New York Magazine finds that “in an age of outbursts, Collins has subverted the pundit’s rude role, performing what amounts to a sly soft-shoe over a rising wave of ideological bombast.”

A native of Cincinnati, Collins earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Marquette and a master’s in government at University of Massachusetts. Before joining The Times,  Collins was a columnist at New York Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International. Her first jobs in journalism were in Connecticut, where she founded the Connecticut State News Bureau (CSNB), which provided coverage of the state capitol and Connecticut politics.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University, a Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and President of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial planning software. An active columnist, Professor Kotlikoff’s columns and blogs appear in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Vox, The Economist, Yahoo.com, and the Huffington Post. Professor Kotlikoff received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1977.

From 1977 through 1983 he served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981-82 Professor Kotlikoff was a Senior Economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Professor Kotlikoff is author or co-author of 16 books and hundreds of professional journal articles. His most recent books are The Clash of Generations (co-authored with Scott Burns, MIT Press), The Economic Consequences of the Vickers Commission (Civitas), Jimmy Stewart Is Dead (John Wiley & Sons), Spend ‘Til the End, (co-authored with Scott Burns, Simon & Schuster), The Healthcare Fix (MIT Press), and The Coming Generational Storm (co-authored with Scott Burns, MIT Press) and Generational Policy (MIT Press). Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security (co-authored with Philip Moeller and Paul Solman) will be published by Simon & Schuster in February 2015.

Professor Kotlikoff’s writings and research address financial reform, personal finance, taxes, Social Security, healthcare, deficits, generational accounting, pensions, saving, and insurance.

Professor Kotlikoff has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Government of Russia, the Government of Ukraine, the Government of Bolivia, the Government of Bulgaria, the Treasury of New Zealand, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Joint Committee on Taxation, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The American Council of Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AT&T, AON Corp., and other major U.S. corporations.

He has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.

Philip Moeller is the co-author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller, GET WHAT’S YOURS: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security, the indispensable guide to retiring with all the Social Security benefits earned over a lifetime of work, published by Simon & Schuster.  His next project will be GET WHAT’S YOURS – Medicare: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Medicare Coverage, to be published in 2016 by Simon & Schuster.

Moeller writes about retirement for Money magazine, the PBS website Making Sen$e (Ask Phil the Medicare Maven) and other media outlets.  He is also a research fellow at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College, and the founder of Insure.com, a site for insurance information that has provided original insurance content to the Web’s leading business portals, including Microsoft, Yahoo, America Online, and MarketWatch.  Formerly a contributing editor at U. S. News & World Report, he has spent forty years as an award-winning financial journalist, Internet entrepreneur, and corporate communications executive for a Fortune 500 financial services firm.  He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Domingo Martinez is the New York Times Best Selling author of The Boy Kings of Texas and was a finalist for The National Book Award in 2012.  The Boy Kings of Texas is a Gold Medal Winner of the Independent Publishers Book Award, a Non-Fiction Finalist for The Washington State Book Awards, and was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

 The Boy Kings of Texas was recently “greenlit” for an HBO series through Salma Hayek’s production company, Ventana Rosa.

His work has appeared in Epiphany Literary Journal, Seattle Weekly, Texas Monthly, The New Republic, Saveur Magazine, Huisache Literary Magazine and he is a regular contributor to This American Life. He has also appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and The Diane Rehm show, and was the recipient of the Bernard De Voto Fellowship for Non-Fiction at Bread Loaf Writer’s Colony in 2013.  Mr. Martinez is also a fundraiser and spokesperson for 826 Seattle, the literacy project founded by Dave Eggers.

His new memoir, My Heart is a Drunken Compass, will be published by Globe Pequot Press in Fall 2014.

Dave Eggers has given this endorsement:

“Domingo Martinez is an essential new American voice, and  My Heart is a Drunken Compass delivers on the promise of The Boy Kings of Texas. In a life of chaos and pain he manages to find grace, and humor, and — contrary to the title of this book — real moral purpose. This is a riveting book.”

Carlos was born in Havana in 1950. He is now the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale, where he has served as chairman of the Department of Religious Studies and the Renaissance Studies Program.  Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, one of them in an office directly across from Einstein’s.  In 1962 he fled to the United States as one of the 14,000 unaccompanied children airlifted out of Cuba through Operation Pedro Pan.  After living in several foster homes in the United States – including one for juvenile delinquents — he was reunited with his mother in 1965, but his father was never able to leave the island.  Working full-time jobs as he attended high school and college, he eventually earned entrance to the Graduate School at Yale University, where he received his Ph.D.  in 1979.

Eire is the author of Waiting for Snow in Havana (Free Press/Simon&Schuster, 2003), a memoir of the Cuban Revolution, which won the nonfiction National Book Award in 2003 and has been translated into thirteen languages.  He is also the author of several highly-acclaimed scholarly books on early modern European religious history, including War Against the Idols (Cambridge, 1986), From Madrid to Purgatory(Cambridge, 1995), and A Very Brief History of Eternity(Princeton, 2009).  In addition to serving on the publications committee of Yale University Press, he is an associate editor of the journal Church History, and was elected President of the American Society for Reformation Research in 2010.  All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state: a distinction he regards as the highest honor of all.  A second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami, was published in 2010 (Free Press/ Simon & Schuster), and is currently being turned into a major feature film.  He is currently working on a biography of St. Teresa of Avila, to be published by Princeton University Press.

Carlos Eire can speak about five different areas, and has several talks ready to deliver within each area.

A world-renowned heart surgeon, Dr. Marc Gillinov’s goal is to keep you out of his Cleveland Clinic operating room. After performing open-heart surgery on more than 7,000 people, ranging from Oscar-winning actors to his local barber, Dr. Gillinov now shares the secrets that will put you on the path to a long life, free of heart disease.

One of the nation’s busiest cardiac surgeons, Dr. Gillinov practices at the Cleveland Clinic, America’s #1 heart hospital. He trained in general and cardiac surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He attended medical school at Johns Hopkins, where he graduated first in his class, and did his undergraduate work at Yale University.

Over the last decade, Dr. Gillinov has taken his message of heart health on the road. He wants people to recognize two critical facts: 1) No matter who you are, heart disease is your number one health threat and 2) You control your fate.  Co-author of the book HEART 411: The Only Guide to Heart Health You’ll Ever Need, Dr. Gillinov is a weekly contributor to the Cleveland Fox News affiliate and a regular health blogger on the Huffington Post. As a speaker, he brings his inspiring, entertaining and life-saving perspectives on heart health to audiences around the country.

David Cay Johnston is an investigative journalist and the winner of a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, while reporting for The New York Times. He has served as president of the 5,700-member Investigative Reporters & Editors and is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling trilogy Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch, and The Fine Print. His latest book is the world-wide bestseller The Making of Donald Trump, now in 10 languages. He is the editor of Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality, recently published by The New Press. He teaches at Syracuse University College of Law.

Johnston is a columnist for The Daily Beast, Investopedia and Tax Notes and a frequent contributor  commentator on economic issues, on MSNBC, Al Jazeera, PBS, CNN, BBC, CBC and numerous public radio shows.

Fen Montaigne is a journalist, author, and editor who specializes in the environment, science, and international affairs. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Guggenheim fellow, and former foreign correspondent who has written extensively for National Geographic magazine, Montaigne has authored or co-authored six books. He helped launch and is senior editor of Yale Environment 360, an online magazine that has won a host of awards and attracts 2.5 million visitors a year.

Fen’s latest book is the critically acclaimed Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica. The book tells the story of Bill Fraser, a U.S. ecologist who has done research in Antarctica for 40 years, documenting the decline of sea ice-dependent Adélie penguins as the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than any place on earth. Fen spent nearly five months in Antarctica as a member of Fraser’s field team. The Sunday New York Times Book Review said, “Fraser’s Penguins leaves one feeling exhilarated — by these remarkable creatures, the landscape they inhabit, and the scientists who’ve devoted their lives to studying both.” The book was excerpted in The New Yorker and Fen appeared on “The Colbert Report” to discuss Fraser’s Penguins. He lectures on Antarctic voyages run by Lindblad and National Geographic.

Fen worked for 20 years as a newspaper reporter, primarily for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he served as the paper’s Moscow correspondent during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Fen then became a freelance writer for 12 years, traveling to every continent but Australia as he reported on the environment and international affairs. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Fen also has written for Outside, Smithsonian, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

Nazila Fathi is a journalist, translator and commentator on Iran and the author of THE LONELY WAR: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran (will be available on December 9, 2014). She reported out of Iran for nearly two decades until 2009 when she was forced to leave the country because of government threats against her.

She was based in Tehran from 2001 for The New York Times, during a time when she penned over 2,000 articles for the Times. Prior to that, she wrote for the Time Magazine, Agence France Press and the Times. She translated a book, History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran, by the Noble Peace Prize Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, into English in 2001. She has written for the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy and Harvard Nieman Report and has been a guest speaker on CNN, BBC, CBC and NPR.

She received her Masters of Arts from University of Toronto in Political Science. She was awarded Raoul Wallenberg Fellowship at Lund University in 2003, Nieman Fellowship for journalism at Harvard in 2010-11, Shorenstein Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2012 and a fellowship at Harvard Belfer Center in 2012-13.

Seth Rosenfeld is an award-winning investigative journalist, book author and expert on public access to government records. His first book, SUBVERSIVES: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power, was published in hardback in 2012 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in paperback in 2013 by Picador, and became a New York Times best-seller.

SUBVERSIVES traces the FBI’s secret involvement with three iconic figures who clashed at Berkeley during the 1960s: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the fierce but fragile student radical Mario Savio, and the liberal University of California president Clark Kerr. Through these converging narratives, Rosenfeld tells a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance, illegal break-ins, infiltration, planted news stories, poison-pen letters and secret detention lists. He reveals how the FBI’s covert operations — led by Reagan’s friend J. Edgar Hoover — helped ignite an era of student protest, undermine the Democrats, and benefit Reagan personally and politically. SUBVERSIVES provides a fresh look at the legacy of the sixties, sheds new light on one of America’s most popular presidents, and tells a timely cautionary tale about the dangers of secrecy and unchecked power.

Rosenfeld began the research that would lead to SUBVERSIVES in 1981, while a journalism student at UC Berkeley writing for the campus newspaper. Little did he know he was embarking on what would become a three-decade legal odyssey into the FBI’s covert campus activities; that he would bring five lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act in a precedent-setting legal fight; and that seven federal judges would order the FBI to release more than 300,000 pages of once-secret files and pay his pro-bono attorney’s fees of more than $1 million. These cases revealed the bureau’s covert operations at one of the nation’s preeminent public universities and strengthened the public’s right to know. The New York Times Book Review called SUBVERSIVES “electrifying.” NPR’s On the Media cited its “stunning revelations,” and Bookforum described it as “a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and narrative propulsion.”

Rosenfeld was a staff reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 25 years, focusing on legal affairs and law enforcement. His stories exposing Dow Corning Corporation’s cover-up of manufacturing defects in silicone gel breast implants that caused women to undergo avoidable surgery led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to restrict the use of implants, and won a George Polk Award for Health Reporting. Rosenfeld’s articles have also won honors from the Society of Professional Journalists; Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.; the American Association of University Professors; and Harvard University’s Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting.

Rosenfeld has been featured on National Public Radio and other national and local broadcasts, and has given many talks. His topics include the conflicts between civil liberties and national security; the Freedom of Information Act, excessive government secrecy and the role of the press in democracy; Ronald Reagan’s hidden relationship with the FBI in the years before he became president; and the secret history of the FBI’s activities during the sixties and how they affected individuals, institutions, and politics.

Joan DeJean has been Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1988.  Before then, she taught at Princeton and Yale.  She grew up in Louisiana in a French-speaking family and was educated at Newcomb College/Tulane and then at Yale.

She has written extensively about France and the French and about the city of Paris.  Her most recent books include How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (Bloomsbury, 2014), The Age of Comfort – When Paris Discovered Casual, and the Modern Home Began (Bloomsbury, 2009), and The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (Simon and Schuster/The Free Press, 2005).

Miroslav Volf is “one of the most celebrated theologians of our day” (Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams). He is Founder and Director of Yale Center for Faith and Culture and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School. He studied philosophy and theology in his native Croatia and United States, and earned doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany.

His book EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE  (1996) was a winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion and Christianity Today named it one of the 100 most important religious books of the 20th century. He was a member of the Global Agenda Council of WEF on Faith and Values and for three years taught a course on Faith and Globalization with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Rob Reid is a writer and technology entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California.  He’s the author of YEAR ZERO (Random House/Del Rey, 2012) – a New York Times best-selling novel about aliens with a disastrously expensive weakness for American pop music.  In reviewing Year Zero, the Associated Press said, “Reid’s extreme imagination never wanes as he builds an entire universe,” while Wired’s Editor-in-Chief named it “my pick for best (and funniest) sci-fi book of the year.”  Amazon.com named YEAR ZERO one of the ten best Science Fiction and Fantasy books of 2012, as did Apple’s iBookstore.  The novel also finished sixth in the science fiction category from a field of (literally) thousands of qualifying titles in the annual Readers Choice Awards on GoodReads.

Rob’s essays, articles, and op-ed work have included pieces in the Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, and a cover story for Wired magazine, in addition to pieces in innumerable highly trafficked websites and blogs.  He is also a widely cited speaker on issues connected to media, technology, and public policy.  A talk that he gave about copyright law from the main stage at TED’s flagship 2012 conference has been viewed millions of times across YouTube, the main TED site, and other video sites, and was the third most heavily-viewed talk from that conference on TED.com.  Rob has been interviewed about his writing and his viewpoints on nationally distributed NPR shows including On the Media, All Things Considered, West Coast Live, and LiveWire.

Rob has worked as an executive, venture capitalist, and entrepreneur in the technology world since 1994.  He was the sole founder, CEO, and Chairman of Listen.com, the online music company that developed the Rhapsody music service. Rhapsody was the world’s largest seller of online music until it was eclipsed (rather badly, he’ll admit) by Apple’s iTunes service.  Rob sold Listen and Rhapsody to RealNetworks. Viacom’s MTV Networks division later bought half of Rhapsody, and in March of 2010 it was spun out as an independent company. Rhapsody now has over a million paying subscribers.  Rob holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA and an MA from Stanford University, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Cairo Egypt.

He is currently working on his second novel, EMERGENT.

William Knoedelseder is a veteran journalist, best-selling author and television news executive who honed his investigative and narrative skills during 12 years as a staff writer at The Los Angeles Times, where his ground breaking coverage of the entertainment industry produced a long string of exposes. His two-year investigation of payola and other corrupt practices in the record business sparked five federal grand jury investigations across the country, led to the arrest and conviction of a score of organized figures, and formed the basis of his first best-selling book, Stiffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business and the Mafia (Harper Collins). Stiffed was named Best Non-Fiction work of 1993 by Entertainment Weekly, which called it “the scariest book of the year…and the funniest.” Two of the book’s main characters—New Jersey crime boss Gaetano “Corky” Vastola and Roulette Records founder Morris Levy–later served as the models for HBO’s Tony Soprano and his music mogul advisor, Herman “Hesh” Rabkin.

In a subsequent 13-year television career, Knoedelseder served as the executive producer and creator of news programs and documentaries for Fox Television, Disney, Knight Ridder and USA Broadcasting. For six of those years, he worked closely with Barry Diller, first at Fox and then at USA, where, as Vice President of News, he created an innovative nightly news program in Miami called The Times, which The Miami Herald praised as “a daring blend of newsmagazine-style exploratory journalism with irreverence, humor, dollops of opinion and a wink-of-the-eye attitude.” Miami’s New Times named it “Best Newscast in South Florida.”

Knoedelseder also produced two nationally televised documentaries. Marilyn: Something’s Got to Give, a critically acclaimed two-hour special about the making Marilyn Monroe’s last unfinished film during the final few months of her life, set a primetime ratings record for Fox. All the Presidents’ Movies, a three-hour special for Bravo, examined the movie viewing habits of the modern U.S. Presidents—what they watched, when, with whom, and how it connected to world events—based on the never-before-seen private logs of the official White House movie projectionist from 1953 to 1986. Aired over three nights, the special was narrated by Martin Sheen.

Since 2000, Knoedelseder has written three more books. In Eddie’s Name (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) chronicles the brutal murder of a Philadelphia teenager that made national headlines when Knoedelseder, as executive producer of the Knight Ridder news program Inquirer News Tonight,pressured the city to make public the content of 911 tapes recorded the night of the killing, which ultimately revealed a complete breakdown of Philadelphia’s emergency response system. I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Standup Comedy’s Golden Era (Public Affairs/Perseus) recounts Knoedelseder’s time as cub reporter covering the L.A. comedy club scene when David Letterman, Jay Leno, Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman were young and undiscovered. Film/TV rights have been acquired by actor Jim Carrey and the project is in development as a TV series. Knoedelseder’s latest, Bitter Brew: the Rise and Fall of Anhueser-Busch and America’s Kings of Beer, tells the riveting story of one of our nation’s most colorful and longest lasting business dynasties. Called “intoxicating reading,” by The Wall Street Journal, the book became a New York Times best seller and film rights were optioned by Lionsgate Television in association with Michael London, the Oscar-nominated producer of Sideways.

Knoedelseder is currently at work on his third book for Harper Collins, Fins, about the visionary car designer Harley Earl and his role in the phenomenal rise of General Motors.

Robert Carlin has followed North Korea since 1974, first as an analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency and later as the chief of the Northeast Asia Division in the State Department’s intelligence bureau.  He is considered by many as one of this country’s premier experts on North Korea.

As intelligence adviser in the State Department, Carlin attended virtually all US-DPRK negotiations from 1993-2001, including crucial talks on the nuclear and missile issues.  He also took part in numerous behind the scenes contacts.  He accompanied Secretary of State Madeline Albright to Pyongyang in October 2000.  From 2002-2006, Carlin served as political adviser in the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO), created by the US, ROK, and Japanese governments in 1995 to build two light water nuclear reactors in North Korea.  While in KEDO, he led numerous delegations to the North for negotiations, and he  was on the last ship that withdrew KEDO personnel from the North in January 2006.  From 2006 until the present, Carlin has been a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Over the years, Carlin has made more than 30 trips to North Korea.  In 2010, as part of a small CISAC delegation, Carlin was invited by the North Koreans to view a new nuclear reactor under construction and a large, previously unknown facility for enriching uranium — both potentially part of a nuclear weapons program.  He continues to meet frequently with North Korean officials and to write on Korean issues, appearing frequently on news programs.

In 2013, Carlin revised and updated THE TWO KOREAS, a highly respected contemporary history of the Korean peninsula.  Carlin received his MA. from Harvard University in 1971, and his BA from Claremont Men’s College in 1969.

Carlin is a regular contributor to the blog 38north.org which concentrates on North Korean developments and cited often in the press.

James B. Conroy is the author of OUR ONE COMMON COUNTRY: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865, published by Lyons Press in 2014. In a starred review, Kirkus called Our One Common Country “a brilliant account of the doomed effort to end the Civil War through diplomacy.” Publisher’s Weekly praised its “fascinating insight into the war’s major players.” The leading Lincoln historian Harold Holzer said “Conroy shows that it is possible to write exciting prose with scholarly integrity intact.” Bob Schieffer of CBS News called him “a terrific writer.” The book resulted in Conroy’s election as a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he is now at work on a second book, Lincoln’s White House. Enhanced by a striking collection of computer-colorized Civil War photography that brings the past to life, Conroy has made presentations on OUR ONE COMMON COUNTRY at the Museum of the Confederacy, Harvard Law School, the Boston Athenaeum, and many other venues.

In addition to his historical research and writing, Conroy has practiced law as a commercial litigator in Boston for 33 years. He earned his law degree, magna cum laude, at Georgetown after receiving a B.A. degree from the University of Connecticut and a master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University. He has taught at the Suffolk University School of Law as an adjunct faculty member and has been named a “Massachusetts Super Lawyer,” a peer-generated designation, for many consecutive years.

Before joining the bar, Conroy served as Press Secretary for the United States Senate Committee on the Budget and wrote speeches delivered by its successive Chairmen, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (D. Me.) and Senator Ernest F. Hollings (D. S. C.) to the Senate, the National Press Club, and many other distinguished audiences. Conroy subsequently served as Administrative Assistant (chief of staff) to Congressman James Scheuer (D. N. Y.).

From 1971 to 1977, Conroy served in the United States Navy Reserve in antisubmarine aviation units as a Navy photographer and journalist. He lives in Hingham, Massachusetts, where he has coached youth sports teams and has chaired the Town’s Advisory Committee, its Government Study Committee, and its Task Force on Affordability and has served as Assistant Moderator of the Hingham Town Meeting, a New England institution through which the Town has governed itself since 1635, well before Conroy’s time.

David Albright, a physicist, is founder and President of the non-profit, non-partisan Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. He regularly publishes and conducts scientific research. During the last three decades, he has written countless assessments on secret nuclear weapons programs throughout the world, particularly those of Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan.  Albright has testified many times on nuclear issues before the U.S. Congress and advised numerous governments.

Albright has been frequently quoted in the media and appeared often on television and radio. His work has been cited regularly in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, Washington Times, Boston Globe, London Sunday Times, Guardian, Der Spiegel, and by Reuters, Associated Press, AFP and Bloomberg wire services. He has also appeared frequently on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, Newshour, 60 Minutes, Dateline, and multiple National Public Radio shows.

He has authored four books, including 2010’s PEDDLING PERIL: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies, listed by The Atlantic as one of the best foreign affairs books of 2010.

Susan Shapiro Barash is an established writer of thirteen nonfiction women’s issue books, her most recent title is The Nine Phases of Marriage (St. Martins, 2012). A well recognized gender expert, Barash is frequently sought out by the media and blogs for the Huffington Post and Psychology Today.  She has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Elle, Marie Claire, The Examiner.com and Yahoo Shine! and has appeared on national television including the Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox News, The O’Reilly Factor and  MSNBC. Barash has been a guest on national radio including NPR and Sirius Radio, and her speaking appearances include Credit Suisse, Bayer Diagnostics, UBS, UJA Federation, and the Society of the Four Arts. Several of her titles have been optioned by Lifetime and HBO.

Barash holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and New York University.  She teaches in the Writing Department at Marymount Manhattan College where her focus is on gender studies. She has served as a literary panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, as a judge for the International Emmys, and as Vice Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the Women’s Leadership Board at the JFK School of Government, Harvard.

Ilyce Glink is an award-winning television and radio personality, a communications and media strategist, an innovator in content marketing and the founder of three Chicago-based companies.

She hosts a popular radio talk show for WSB-AM, is the “Good Cents” contributor to WGN radio, a nationally-syndicated columnist, a top blogger for CBSNews.com and Yahoo!, and a best-selling author. She also hosts the “Real Estate Minute,” a daily radio/web video series, “Big Money Real Estate” for WITNation.com, and is a frequent guest on NPR.

Ilyce is the author of over a dozen books, including the best-selling 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask and Buy, Close, Move In!, and she has nearly 1 million books in print. Her latest ebook/webinar offering is Intentional Investor: How to be Wildly Successful in Real Estate. She is the managing editor of the Equifax Finance Blog and the publisher of ThinkGlink.com, a site dedicated to helping consumers make the best decisions with their money.  Ilyce’s YouTube channel has over 5 million video views.

She was an on-air talent/producer for WGN-TV, hosted two syndicated radio programs, and has appeared on every major network’s morning news programs, Oprah, CNBC, CNN, and Fox Business.

More than 15 years ago, Glink started Think Glink Media, a digital communications agency that combines technology, creativity and experience to build online and offline connections through powerful communities, breakthrough native advertising, and first-person social engagement. The result is award-winning work, profitable campaigns and loyal customers. Her clients include Fortune 1000 companies in the financial services, real estate, and health industries as well as start-ups and nonprofits.

Glink has won numerous awards throughout her career, including Best Consumer Reporter, Best Magazine Report, Best Blog, and Best Television Report from the National Association of Real Estate Editors. She has won several top awards from the Society of Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), including Best in Business Blog. She also won the first Money $mart award from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and received two Peter Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism from the Chicago Headline Club. In 2006, she was nominated for an Emmy® Award. She was co-founder of the Medicare Newsgroup, and part of the team that won the 2012 Web Marketing Association’s award for outstanding achievement in web development for MedicareNewsGroup.com.

Dr. Katrina Firlik is co-founder and chief medical officer of HealthPrize Technologies, an Internet company with a novel solution for improving adherence to prescription medications, critical to improving health outcomes. Before founding HealthPrize, Katrina was a neurosurgeon in private practice at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, and on the clinical faculty at Yale University School of Medicine.

In addition to her scientific publications, Katrina is the author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe:  A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside, published by Random House and reviewed by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and O Magazine. She enjoys conveying medical concepts to the public and has appeared on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC as a commentator on a variety of medical issues.  She is also co-inventor of a brain stimulation device designed to enhance recovery after stroke.

Katrina grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio and attended Cornell University, with an undergraduate major in cultural anthropology.  She attended medical school at Case Western Reserve University in her hometown of Cleveland, and completed her neurosurgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh, one the largest neurosurgery centers in the country, where she was the first woman accepted to the program.  Katrina also completed a specialty fellowship in epilepsy surgery at Yale University. She is currently working on her second book.

Katrina lives in Darien, Connecticut with her husband Andrew, a neurosurgeon-turned-venture capitalist, and their daughter Annika.

A native San Franciscan, David Downie lived in New York City, Providence, Rome and Milan before moving to Paris in the mid-1980s. He divides his time between France and Italy. His travel, food and arts features have appeared in over 50 leading print publications worldwide.

Downie’s latest book is A PASSION FOR PARIS: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light (Spring 2015, St. Martin’s Press), a lively literary romp through Paris from the Romantic Age to the present. Among Downie’s many other nonfiction books are the classic critically acclaimed collection of travel essays PARIS, PARIS: Journey into the City of Light, and the bestselling PARIS TO THE PYRENEES: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James. An authority on Italian and French food and wine Downie has authored half a dozen works on these topics, including COOKING THE ROMAN WAY: Authentic Recipes from the Home Cooks of Rome, and three award-winning volumes of Terroir Guide/Food Wine travel-food-and-wine books. He is also the author of two thrillers including PARIS CITY OF NIGHT. Downie’s Paris Timeline and Food Wine Rome travel apps are available from iTunes.

A frequent speaker about Paris, France, Rome and the Italian Riviera, Downie is co-owner with his wife Alison Harris of Paris, Paris Tours which offers custom walking tours of Paris, Burgundy, Rome and the Italian Riviera.

(author photograph by Alison Harris, (c) 2014)

Linda Marsa is an award-winning investigative journalist and a contributing editor at Discover who has covered medicine, science, health and the environment for more than two decades. She is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of FEVERED: Why a Hotter Planet Will Harm Our Health and How We Can Save Ourselves (Rodale, 2013), which the New York Times called “gripping to read.” FEVERED won an honorable mention as best general nonfiction book of the year from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She has also written for U.S. News & World Report, Aeon, Popular Science, The Daily Beast and Pacific Standard, among numerous others.

A popular speaker, Linda has lectured widely on climate change at major universities, leading environmental organizations, public health institutes and for general audiences, speaking at venues like George Washington University, Emory University, UC Irvine, University of Colorado and the Public Health Institute in Oakland. She has also been an instructor at The Writer’s Program at UCLA Extension for more than two decades and was named Teacher of the Year in 1999.

Craig K. Collins is a San Diego-based author and executive. His first book THUNDER IN THE MOUNTAINS: A Portrait of American Gun Culture is a work of literary non-fiction that offers readers a unique and personal look at our country’s ongoing gun crisis. Collins is a master at spinning eloquent coming-of-age tales set against the majestic backdrop of the American West and in the small towns of his youth. One of the seminal events of his life occurred during a deer hunt with his father and brothers in the rugged wilderness of Northeastern Nevada. That’s when Collins, at the age of 13, accidentally shot himself in the foot with a high-powered deer rifle. It was a harrowing incident, and he uses it as a jumping-off point for his engaging and poignant memoir about the historical formation of America’s gun culture and how the effects of that culture came to reverberate daily coast-to-coast.

A native of Pocatello, Idaho, Collins attended college in San Diego, where he has lived since. He holds a BA in English and an MBA from San Diego State University. After a stint as a journalist, he served as a senior executive for Fortune 500 companies. Later, he founded a series of technology start-ups and has raised over $60m in venture capital. He currently serves as President & CEO of Boost Academy, a venture-backed educational technology firm.

Collins is well-versed in big data and analytics, and since his gun accident, has had a long and abiding interest in America’s ongoing epidemic of gun violence. This interest and expertise led him to found and serve as Executive Director of the Center for Gun Analytics. The San Diego-based non-profit is dedicated to leveraging the power of technology and big data to accurately illuminate the true nature of American gun deaths and injuries. The organization’s team of scientists, statisticians and researchers employ the latest software, analytical and algorithmic systems to glean insight from current gun violence data. The findings and data are then shared, publicized and made widely available for the public good. The CGA advocates for increased federal funding – to agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health – that’s on a level commensurate with the pervasive scope of American gun violence, an epidemic that claims over 114,000 casualties annually.

Steven Fink, the nation’s leading expert in crisis management and crisis communications, has been called “the Dean of Crisis Management” for his pioneering work in the field. His seminal work on the subject, Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable, still the most successful and widely-read book on crisis management ever published, not only explains how to manage a crisis when one occurs, but was the first book to introduce proactive crisis management strategies designed to help businesses forecast and avert crises altogether.

A commanding speaker on very current crises, he typically addresses the crisis du jour, offering unique insight and valuable lessons into a company’s performance in a crisis.

His newest book, Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message, closely examines such topical crises as those that hobbled Penn State, BP, Toyota, Carnival Cruise Lines, Netflix, and many others. This cutting-edge book emphasizes the critical role social media should play in proactive and reactive crisis communications strategies.

During the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear crisis, the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident, he served on the crisis management team in the administration of then-Pennsylvania Governor (and former U.S. Attorney General) Dick Thornburgh. By its remarkably calm handling of that potentially devastating crisis, this team was widely credited with having averted a panic among the population of South Central Pennsylvania — and the rest of the nation.

Lexicon Communications Corp., the company he founded 30 years ago, was the first to specialize in crisis management and crisis communications. The firm has represented some of the world’s most prestigious companies in virtually all industry groups in both proactive crisis management training and reactive crisis management response, and he personally has consulted with various branches of government, foreign and domestic, on highly sensitive crisis issues, some involving matters of national security and international diplomacy.

He frequently is featured as an expert crisis management commentator on leading news outlets around the world, such as “Nightline,” The NBC Nightly News, The TODAY Show, CNN, ABC WorldNews Tonight, The CBS Evening News, The CBS Morning News, BBC World News, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX News, NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered”, as well as national news and business publications, including TIME, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press, and hundreds of others around the world.

Several years ago, he delivered the keynote commencement address to the graduating class at Penn State University.

Micheline Maynard is a business journalist, author and professor who is considered one of the country’s leading experts on all forms of transportation. She is the former Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times, where she covered the bankruptcies and rebirth of General Motors and Chrysler, as well as the restructuring of the airline industry. More recently, she has been a contributor to Forbes and Time Magazine, where she has written about the bankruptcy of the city of Detroit, and its urban revival.

 Maynard is the author of THE END OF DETROIT: How The Big Three Lost Their Grip On The American Car Market, which predicted the demise of the Detroit companies and prescribed steps the companies needed to take to win back consumers. She has written three other books. In 2013, she launched Curbing Cars: Rethinking How We Get Around, a journalism project looking at how Americans are driving less and turning to other forms of transportation, including public transit, bike sharing, car sharing, and walking. The Curbing Cars eBook was published by Forbes, and the project was the subject of a cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Maynard currently serves as Director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.Maynard is a visiting professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State. She also has taught at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Central Michigan University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Maynard is a regular guest on national and international television, such as PBS NewsHour, Charlie Rose, CNBC’s Squawk Box, ABC’s 20/20, The Today Show, and BBC World News. She appears frequently on NPR programs including Here and Now, All Things Considered, Morning Edition and on public radio’s Marketplace.

She is an experienced public speaker, including appearances at Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia, Michigan, Michigan State, The University of Nevada Reno, Wayne State and Indiana State. She has spoken to the non-profit and corporate groups including the Women In Restructuring Confederation, US-China Chamber of Commerce, Economic Club of Grand Rapids, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and the Ann Arbor City Club, as well as many civic organizations.

“Who’s the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum.” – Stephen King

Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym of a former actor, singer, author’s agent, teacher, copy writer, lumber salesman, soda jerk and short-order cook, and the author of thirty books to date – novels, novellas, story collections, essays, memoirs and poetry, mostly in the areas of horror and suspense. Of his fourteen novels, which have been translated into fifteen languages, five have been filmed – THE LOST, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, RED, OFFSPRING and THE WOMAN.

Ketchum has been a full-time writer since 1986. Just prior to that he was a literary agent for three years with Scott Meredith, Inc., representing such clients as Norman Mailer, Arthur C. Clark, Robert Bloch and Evan Hunter. He was Henry Miller’s last agent, and was responsible for bringing the author of TROPIC OF CANCER to his agency.

He is the four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association and was elected Grand Master at the 20011 World Horror Convention. His script for THE WOMAN, co-written with director Lucky Mckee, won Best Screenplay at the Sitges Festival in Germany. His book, THE CROSSINGS, was cited by Stephen King at the 2003 National Book Awards. He is a frequent reader at the KGB Bar Writer’s Series in New York City, has taught writing seminars at Pine Manor College, Borderlands Workshop and the Odyssey Writers’ Workshop in New Hampshire, and for three years has held an online writers’ class called TALKING SCARS at LitReactor.com.

In 2015 Ketchum was honored with the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association.

Susan Jaques is an art writer with a love for museums and a consuming interest in history and art collecting. Her new biography, THE EMPRESS OF ART: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia (Pegasus Books, April 2016) explores Catherine II’s bold, unprecedented use of art and architecture to legitimize her reign and transform Russia into a European superpower.

Susan Jaques has written articles, profiles, and art reviews for publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune and Toronto Globe and Mail and writes regularly about art for the Huffington Post’s Arts & Culture section. As a gallery docent at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, she shares highlights of the collection with hundreds of visitors each month, placing European paintings, sculptures and decorative art in historic and artistic context. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA.

Journalist Ron Berler has spent much of his career reporting on youth issues. For more than two years, he wrote a weekly column on the subject for the Chicago Tribune. His article in the New York Times Magazine about the growing epidemic of serious arm injuries among teenage baseball pitchers helped convince Little League Baseball to tighten its pitch-count rules. During his tenure as Editor-in-Chief of NBA Inside Stuff, a pro basketball magazine for teens, the magazine won a Parents’ Choice Gold Award seal of excellence. His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Wired, Men’s Journal and Outside, among other publications.

Berler’s latest book, RAISING THE CURVE: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000* Failing Public Schools (Berkley Books, a Penguin Random House imprint), tells the story of two fifth-grade girls – best friends but very different types of students – their teacher, the school’s literacy specialist and the principal, and the daily struggles each faces dealing with the pressures brought about by No Child Left Behind.  Education reform expert Diane Ravitch wrote of it, “It is popular treatments like Berler’s that will help the American public understand that public education is not ‘broken,’ but federal education policy is broken and should be completely scrapped and rewritten to address real problems.”

Berler addresses three main education issues in his speaking engagements:

• first, the frighteningly remedial level at which so many poor rural and urban students enter kindergarten, and the concurrent need for quality preschool education;
• second, a call for a national discussion on the necessity of increased parental involvement in our children’s education; and
• third, the damage that constant standardized testing does not just to students, but to the morale of teachers and administrators. It is, in fact, a key reason why educators sour on their profession.

He proposes not a silver bullet solution, but a complex, interwoven plan to repair our education crisis.

Journalist Dennis McDougal (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, TV Guide, etc.) is the bestselling author of twelve books, including most recently DYLAN: The Biography released by Turner Publishing in May of 2014. In a career dating to the 1970s, he has also authored hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and produced award-winning TV documentaries.

Before he began covering movies and media as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, McDougal reported for dailies in Riverside and Long Beach, California. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in journalism at UCLA and won a John S. Knight Fellowship in 1981, spending a year teaching and studying psychology and law at Stanford University. A producer for CNN during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson, McDougal has won more than fifty honors, including a George Foster Peabody Award. He is the award-winning biographer of Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, Universal Studios chieftain Lew Wasserman and the Los Angeles Times’ Otis Chandler. McDougal was featured in the 2009 PBS documentary that he co-produced about the late Los Angeles Times publisher, “Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times.” He has lectured in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, Stanford, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State Long Beach. He and his wife Sharon live near Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. Mahdi Obeidi was in charge of the experimental program of the French built Material Testing Reactor in Iraq. He later led the Uranium Centrifuge Enrichment program, which is the pinnacle in the ongoing attempts to covertly obtain nuclear weapons capability. His work tells the story about the quest for nuclear weapons. It is about the intimidation, paranoia, and impossible deadlines of a rogue regime. It also tells how easy it is to get a nuclear capability through illicit efforts, as exemplified by his actual experience of entering the United States with a different name, designing the centrifuge in New York, getting materials and know how through the diplomatic pouch, and setting up fictitious front companies, which culminated in realizing one of the fastest and most efficient covert centrifuge programs in history.

In 2003, when the United States was looking for a suspected centrifuge program, he had ethical concerns that the information at his possession would fall in the wrong hands, which prompted him to cooperate with the Americans. While in the United States, Dr. Obeidi authored a bestselling book, The Bomb in my Garden, the Secrets of Saddam’s Mastermind, which was optioned by Johnny Depp for film rights. He has been active in his quest to stop nuclear proliferation, with lecture circuit throughout the nation including universities, such as Harvard and his Alma mater, the Colorado School of Mines, most DOE laboratories, NSA, numerous lectures for the FBI, along with many lectures at libraries, and conferences. He conducted scenario based training for HLS, the army, the air force, and DOE.

Dr. Obeidi experience is an eye opener showing how a rogue state or a non-state actor can circumvent the rules and pose a nuclear or radiological threat on the American soil. It can show, for example, how an intelligence officer in an American embassy can assess the threat of someone asking to attend a scientific conference in the United States through understanding the true motivation, be it personal, national, or ideological. The interplay between these factors can be instrumental in securing the homeland. Dr. Obeidi obtained his masters from the Colorado School of Mines in Chemical Engineering, and obtained his PhD from the University of Swansea in the United Kingdom in materials science and engineering. He supervised numerous masters and doctoral thesis.

Doug Sundheim is a leadership and organizational consultant with over 20 years of experience. He works with leaders and teams of Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial firms to help them maximize their effectiveness. His clients include Morgan Stanley, Harvard Management Company, The Chubb Corporation, Citigroup, University of Chicago, and Procter & Gamble among others. Prior to his work in leadership and organizational consulting, Doug spent several years in the Internet strategy field and started a 100-person catering company. Doug holds a BS from Cornell University and an MA in Adult Learning & Leadership from Columbia University. He lives in Westchester, NY with his wife and three sons.

Doug is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and previously Fast Company.