Janus Adams (New York, NY): Emmy Award-winner, author/historian, publisher/producer, creator of BackPax children’s media, Janus Adams has been engaged by history and culture since childhood when she was one of four children selected to end de facto segregation in New York in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. A frequent lecturer and on-air guest, her column is now in its twelfth year and her commentaries are heard on NPR. As producer/host she has launched programming for CBS, News 12, NPR, Pacifica, PRI, and PBS.  She is also a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Advisory Board.

Joanne Cronrath Bamberger (Washington, DC): A former attorney, Bamberger is now a freelance writer who has written for a variety of regional and national publications and outlets including The Washington Post, a variety of American Lawyer Meda publications, Marketplace Radio, MSN and The Huffington Post. Joanne is also a contributing editor for BlogHer, a contributor to DC Metro Moms, MomsRising and MOMocrats blogs and writes at her personal/political blog, PunditMom. Before her freelancing career, Joanne was a litigation attorney in both private and government practice for 15 years, and was Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to attending law school, Joanne was a broadcast journalist. She is a mother by adoption and is at work on her first book about her experiences adopting her daughter from China.

Linda Basch (New York, NY): Linda Basch has led the National Council for Research on Women since 1996. Her areas of expertise include globalization; economic security; higher education; gender and diversity in academia; women in the corporate world; and women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and math. An anthropologist by training, she has examined issues of migration, race, ethnicity, and gender, conducting field research in the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and North America. She was a research director at the United Nations in the area of social and economic development and previously served as an academic dean.

Ellen Bravo (Milwaukee, WI): Bravo is a long-time activist for working women. The former director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, she now teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is a frequent speaker on women’s issues. Bravo also coordinates the Multi-State Working Families Consortium, a network of state coalitions working for policies that value families at work. She has written several books, most recently "Taking on the Big Boys, or Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business and the Nation." In addition to her own blog, www.ellenbravo.com, Bravo has written for Huffington Post and the Nation.

Melanie Campbell (Washington, DC): Campbell is the Executive Director and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. She has over 20 years of experience as a civic leader, and is a nationally recognized expert on black civic participation, election reform, voting rights and coalition building. In 2003, Campbell was a resident fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics at Harvard University, and is a contributing writer in the recently released 2006 Harvard University Journal on African Americans in Public Policy, “A Nation Exposed: Rebuilding African American Communities.”

Majora Carter (New York, NY): Born, raised, and continuing to live & work in the South Bronx, Carter travels the world in pursuit of resources to improve the quality of life in her environmentally challenged community. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 after writing a $1.25M Federal Transportation grant to design the South Bronx Greenway with 11 miles of bike and pedestrian paths connecting neighborhoods to the rivers and to each other - securing over $20M to begin construction in 2008. She has been named one of Newsweek’s “25 To Watch”, was named one of “50 most influential women in NYC” by the NY Post, and one of Essence Magazine’s “25 most Influential African Americans.”

Patricia DeGennaro (New York, NY): A professor, writer, analyst and consultant, DeGennaro’s extensive experience in international relations and economic development makes her a sought-after source on US foreign policy and national security topics. Her work recently brought her to Afghanistan with USAID; she will return soon to the country with the United Nations as a senior policy expert in the Office of the President of Afghanistan. Currently, DeGennaro serves as a Senior Research Fellow for the Center for the Study of Democracy at Queens University in Canada and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. She holds an MPA in International Security and Conflict Resolution from Harvard University and an MBA from George Washington University.

Margot Dorfman (Washington, DC): Dorfman is dedicated to dramatically advancing the economic and leadership opportunities for women. As a founder and CEO of the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce (www.uswcc.org), she lead the organization’s dramatic growth to over 500,000 individual and business members including dozens of national and regional associations; championed opportunities to increase women's business, career and leadership advancement; and launched the USWCC | New Deal initiative to establish a broad new economic platform to support the growth and influence of women in the American economy. 

Pramila Jayapal (Seattle, WA): Pramila is the founder and executive director of Hate Free Zone, a nonprofit organization that advances the fundamental principles of democracy and justice by building power in immigrant communities. She has been named as one of 12 Regional Leaders by the Seattle Times Editorial Board and one of 25 Women of Influence by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Pramila is the author of a book and several articles, columns and essays on various topics. She has more than 17 years of experience in international and domestic social justice issues, working across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Pramila was born in India and has lived in India, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand prior to coming to the United States for college.

Avis Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D. (Washington, DC): Jones-DeWeever is the director of the National Council of Negro Women’s Research, Public Policy, and Information Center. She is the author of numerous publications focused on policy-issues of particular importance to women of color, including Saving Ourselves: African American Women and the HIV/AIDS Crisis; Abandoned Before the Storms: The Glaring Disaster of Gender, Race, and Class Disparities in the Gulf; Resilient and Reaching for More: Challenges and Benefits of Higher Education for Welfare Participants; and the forthcoming, Black Girls in the City of New York: Quite Strength, Bold Resilience. In addition to her written contributions, Dr. Jones-DeWeever is a highly sought-after political commentator.

Linda Lowen (Syracuse, NY): Linda Lowen covers Women's Issues for About.com, one of the top fifteen most-visited sites on the Internet and a New York Times Company-owned website. A former radio and television producer and talk show host, she's produced and hosted programming for NPR and PBS affiliate stations. Lowen is a two-time recipient of the Clarion Award for Best Women's Issues Programming sponsored by the national organization Women in Communications. Lowen is also a member of the National Cancer Survivors' Day Speaker's Bureau and, as a 14-year survivor of ovarian cancer, speaks across the country on cancer survivorship.

Latifa Lyles (Washington, DC): Lyles was elected Membership Vice President of the National Organization for Women in 2005 at the age of 29, making her the group's youngest-ever national officer. In addition to overseeing NOW's membership and fundraising departments, Lyles serves as a national spokesperson for the group on issues and campaigns ranging from economic justice and equity for women to Supreme Court nominations, from reproductive justice to securing Social Security.

Courtney E. Martin (New York, NY): Martin is the award-winning author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body, recently nominated for the Books for a Better Life Award. She is a columnist on politics and youth culture for The American Prospect Online and a regular blogger for Feministing and Crucial Minutiae. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, metro, Alternet, The Huffington Post, The Village Voice, BUST, Bitch Magazine, among others.

Sonia Ossorio (New York, NY): After a career in journalism, Sonia now serves as the face and voice of NOW in New York, as president of NOW-NYC. As president, Ossorio led NOW-NYC’s year-long campaign to repeal the statute of limitations on rape in New York state, and has served as a leader within the NY State Anti-Trafficking Coalition, serving a leadership role in getting New York State to pass its first ant-trafficking law.

Achola Pala Okeyo, Ph.D. (Kenya): A writer, researcher and speaker, Dr. Pala Okeyo began her professional partnership with Huairou while she was at the UN. Currently an independent scholar, she’s served as head of the UNDP Africa Bureau and as Senior Advisor on Governance to UNIFEM. She’s pioneered initiatives on building the capacity of women’s networks and has authored articles and books with a focus on women’s agency for political and economic change. Her work in Africa focuses on women’s property rights, food security, AIDS, and sustainable livelihoods. Dr. Pala Okeyo lives in both Kenya and the US.

Catherine Orenstein (New York, NY): As award-winning author and journalist, Orenstein is the founding director of The Op-Ed Project, an initiative to expand public debate.  She has written on culture and mythology, women and power, and human rights and Haiti for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine, and Ms. Magazine, among other places. Her opinion pieces have been nationally syndicated and appear in anthologies.  She has lectured at Harvard, Penn, and Columbia universities, and appeared on ABC TV World News Now, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC and NPR’s All Things Considered. She is the author of the acclaimed book Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale, and is a fellow at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.  

Deborah Siegel, Ph.D. (New York, NY): Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, co-editor of the literary anthology, Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo, and co-founder of the webjournal, The Scholar & Feminist Online. She has written about women, sex, feminism,contemporary families, and popular culture for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Huffington Post, TheAmerican Prospec, Psychology Today, The Progressive, The MothersMovement Online, and on her blog, Girl with Pen. She is currently a Fellow at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. 

Ruth Rosen, Ph.D. (Berkeley, CA): A pioneering historian of gender and society and an award-winning journalist, Rosen is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute and teaches history and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. As a journalist, she wrote hundreds of op-ed columns for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers between 1991-2000. Then in 2000, she joined the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board and wrote both editorials and twice-a-week columns on the op-ed page on a broad range of subjects, including foreign policy, homelessness; the politics of health care, space-based weapons and the missile defense system; the politics of parole and prisons, reproductive rights, and environmental health.

Patricia Williams (New York, NY): Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University, holds a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Harvard Law School. In addition to her monthly column for The Nation, Williams has written extensively on law, language, and diversity. Her numerous publications include Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave, On Being the Object of Property, The Electronic Transformation of Law and And We Are Not Married: A Journal of Musings on Legal Language and the Ideology of Style. In 1993, Harvard University Press published Williams's The Alchemy of Race & Rights to widespread critical acclaim.

Mable Yee (Berkeley, CA): Yee is the Founder & President of Engage Her Media, a New Media & advocacy organization focused on recruitment of minority women into leadership, educational and voting initiatives. She has had an impressive career in business and technology as CEO and Co-founder of multiple Internet and software start ups. Yee is an entrepreneur, activist, filmmaker and consultant in technology. Mable's great passion is to create solutions & teams to address major problems leveraging the newest technologies. Yee has sat on a wide range of boards and actively advises technology start ups, community and advocacy organizations like Momsrising.org., Asian Business League and The Latina Center.