Elizabeth Peralta is a graduate from Port Chester Senior High School in Westchester New York. She is currently in her last year studying History and English at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.

Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts is the director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program and curator of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. Since joining the Smithsonian in 1985, Rick has dedicated his research to piecing together the record of Earth’s environmental change and human adaptation.  His ideas on how human evolution responded to environmental instability have stimulated wide attention and new research in several scientific fields.  Rick has developed international collaborations among scientists interested in the ecological aspects of human evolution.  He leads excavations at early human sites in the East African Rift Valley, including the famous handaxe site of Olorgesailie, Kenya, and Kanam near Lake Victoria, Kenya.  He also co-directs ongoing projects in southern and northern China that compare evidence of early human behavior and environments from eastern Africa to eastern Asia. 

Laurie Collins Quirk is the Chair of the English Department of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, D.C. Laurie Quirk has taught AP Literature and Composition since 2007.  She most happily describes herself as wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. 

Kimberly Shankman is the Dean of the College at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS.  She received her PhD in Political Science from Northern Illinois University.  Subsequently she taught in the Politics and Government Department at Ripon College from 1985-2001, when she left to take her current position at Benedictine College. 

Her research interests are American political thought and constitutional law.  She is the author of Compromise and the Constitution: The Political Thought of Henry Clay.  Additionally, she has published articles relating to the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th amendment and other aspects of constitutional law.  Her recent scholarship focuses on the relationship between reason and public life, including a paper on “Truth and Democracy” presented at the University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy and a talk on “Human Capital in Caritas in Veritate” at Columbia University in New York, “What the Catholic Church Demands of Those in Power” for the Crossroads Cultural Center in New York, and “Reason, Truth, and Democracy: Pope Benedict on Public Life” at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

Tim Shriver is a social leader, an educator, activist, film producer, and business entrepreneur. He is the Chairman of Special Olympics, and in that capacity he serves 4.4 million Special Olympics athletes and their families in 170 countries. He has helped transform Special Olympics into a movement that focuses on acceptance, inclusion, and respect for individuals with intellectual disabilities in all corners of the globe. 

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents, American evangelicalism, and culture. Smith received his MA and PhD from Harvard University in 1990 and his BA from Gordon College in 1983. Smith was a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 12 years before his move to Notre Dame.

Archibald Spencer, Associate Professor in the John H. Pickford Chair in Theology at Northwest Baptist Seminary, Canada. 

At Associated Canadian Theological Schools (ACTS), Dr. Spencer is actively engaged in teaching, presentations, and thesis supervision in the fields of Systematic, Philosophical, Historical and Ecumenical Theology. He also teaches in the undergraduate department of Religious Studies at Trinity Western University where he is an associate faculty member as Associate Professor of Theology.

Dr. Spencer has developed an international reputation as a scholar, speaker and theologian; including Catholic circles where he has developed an ecumenical dialogue with the lay movement, Communion and Liberation, and the Italian Theologian, Luigi Giussani. He has spoken on theological themes in the UK, Ireland, Italy and all over North America, including institutions such as Trinity College, Dublin, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Seattle Pacific University, McGill University and many other places of learning.

Dr. Brad Stuart is a general internist who attended Stanford University School of Medicine. He is currently chief medical officer of Sutter Care at Home, the largest home care and hospice provider in Northern California. He founded the Advanced Illness Management (AIM) program, which integrates hospitals, medical groups, and home- and community-based services to improve care and reduce costs for patients with late-stage chronic illness. Dr. Stuart was the primary author in 1996 of Medical Guidelines for Prognosis in Selected Non-Cancer Diseases, adopted as national Medicare hospice eligibility criteria. He has received the Heart of Hospice Award from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, as well as the California State Hospice Association’s Pierre Salmon Award. In 2007 he was voted "Physician of the Year" by the California Association for Health Services at Home.

Jean Vanier, Ph.D. is a philosopher, writer, religious and moral leader and the founder of two major international community-based organizations, L’Arche, and Faith & Light, that exist for people with intellectual disabilities. The 145 L’Arche communities in 40 countries and 1,500 Faith & Light communities in 80 countries are living laboratories of human transformation. In and outside of these organizations, he has spent more than four decades as a deeply radical advocate for the poor and the weak in our society. 

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, author, theologian, and New York Times Magazine contributor, is a physicist by training. He holds the degree in Space Science and Applied Physics as well as a Master’s Degree in Sacred Theology from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He holds a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome.