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Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist who splits his time between Chicago and Michigan. He is an assistant editor at In These Times magazine and has written a book on the Guatemalan adoption industry.

Bob Blaisdell is a professor of English at City University of New York's Kingsborough Community College. He received his undergraduate degree and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

McGill is a writer and artist. He taught high school language arts and journalism courses in Oregon. He is the author of the memoir Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me.

Bob is principal of Fox Road Magnet Elementary School, an IB World School in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has served in a variety of roles during his long career, including special education director and consulting roles. Most of his career has focused on working with culturally diverse, at-risk and high-poverty populations. Lewis holds great passion for the mission of building successful learners and works as a workshop leader for the International Baccalaureate organization; he has also served as a consultant for this organization.

Chris Avery is the director of programs of Steppingstone Scholars in Philadelphia, Penn., which helps underserved students achieve academic success. Formerly an eighth-grade world cultures teacher and director of community and diversity at The Haverford School, he also consults for TURNING STONEchoice, a nonprofit dedicated to helping students make self-empowering choices and publisher of his most recent work, ANGST: Overcoming Freshman Year of High School, a young adult novel. He is also a receipient of the 2014 Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Natalie Sturdevant is a Teach For America alum and taught eighth grade reading in a small Texas town on the border of Mexico. As a librarian, at Crazy Horse School on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Wanblee, S.D., since 2012, she’s created and executed a media class using current events as a lens for students to reflect on and develop their identities. Natalie seeks to help students develop a critical consciousness of their community and our world by wrestling with topics such as race, oppression, and socioeconomics.

Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is a lifelong activist, educator and student of life. A native of the Bronx, New York, Dena grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with her two sisters and immigrant mother. There, Dena learned and lived the violence of injustice and inequity and decided to dedicate her life to educating and empowering others. As the director of implementation at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, she works with schools to use the power of emotions to create a more effective and compassionate society. Prior to her work at the Center, Dena served as an educator, teacher educator

Joyce E. King is Associate Provost at Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York and Chairperson of the Commission on Research in Black Education, an initiative of the American Educational Research Association.

Margaret joined Teaching Tolerance as an intern and later became the Teaching Tolerance fellow. Sasser's work was integral to the development and maintenance of Perspectives for a Diverse America in her role as a research associate.

Sherry has been an educator for 39 years and currently serves as the student support leader at Iles School in Springfield, Illinois. Frachey became passionate about stress reduction and restorative justice practices in schools and now partners with the Memorial Medical Center Foundation and the Harvard School of Medicine’s Benson-Henry Mind/Body Institute to teach The Relaxation Response, a stress-reduction program that uses developmentally appropriate exercises for school-age children. Her work has been featured on Yoko Ono’s website IMAGINE PEACE, Everyone Matters and Free the Children.