Donna Alvermann is a University of Georgia-appointed Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education. Formerly a classroom teacher in Austin, TX, and New York, her research focuses on adolescent literacy instruction and youth-initiated forms of engagement with all kinds of texts both in and out of school.

Reeda Betts is an Education Administrator with the Alabama Department of Education. She leads the Alabama Reading Initiative’s efforts for Grades 4-12, including the Alabama Reading Initiative Project for Adolescent Literacy (ARI-PAL).

Mary E. Curtis, Ph.D. is Professor of Education and founding director of the Center for Special Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Donald Deshler is the director of the Center for Research on Learning (CRL) and the Gene A. Budig Professor of Special Education at the University of Kansas. The work of the CRL focuses on the validation of academic strategies to enable adolescents to meet state assessment standards and to successfully graduate from college prepared to compete in the global economy.

Susan Frost is the president of Education Priorities, a progressive education policy consulting firm that focuses on helping organizations set policy priorities that support their mission and goals, develop education policy agendas that are grounded in research and best practice, and make recommendations to policymakers to take action at the federal, state and local levels.

Andrés Henríquez is a program officer in the education division of Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he leads the Corporation's Advancing Literacy initiative. Prior to joining the Corporation, Henríquez served as the Assistant Director for Strategic Planning, Center for Children and Technology (CCT) at the New York offices of the Education Development Center, Inc.

Nancy Hoffman is vice president of the Youth Transitions Cluster at Jobs for the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit based in Boston. The cluster includes the Early College High School Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a network of over 170 schools that combine high school with two years of college.

Michael L. Kamil is Professor of Education at Stanford University. He is a member of the Psychological Studies in Education Committee and is on the faculty of the Learning, Design, and Technology Program. Dr. Kamil serves as an advisor to the Early Childhood Educator Professional Development Program for the U.S. Department of Education.

Peggy McCardle is chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health. A former classroom teacher, Dr. McCardle has also served as faculty at various universities and worked as a speech language pathologist.

James McPartland is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) at Johns Hopkins University, which is the parent organization that houses CRESPAR. For the past four years he has been head of the team that is developing the Talent Development High School with Career Academies.

Lynne Newsome is an education consultant with Shaw University and the public school districts of Washington, DC, and Prince Georges County, MD. As a veteran educator with more than 30 years experience in reading education, Newsome works on a variety of projects to accelerate minority student achievement.

Dorothy Strickland is the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Professor of Education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. A former classroom teacher, reading consultant and learning disabilities specialist, Dr. Strickland is a past president of both the International Reading Association (IRA) and the Reading Hall of Fame. She has received numerous awards, including IRA’s Outstanding Teacher Educator of Reading Award, the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts, and the National-Louis University Ferguson Award for Outstanding Contributions to Early Childhood Education.