Laura Lein is dean of the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Collegiate Professor of Social Work. She is an expert on poverty and the author of many studies of families in poverty, including Katrina evacuees and people living on the Texas-Mexico border. She co-authored Life After Welfare: Reform and the Persistence of Poverty (2007).

Craig Anderson is a psychology professor at Iowa State University in Ames and co-author of “Violent Evil and the General Aggression Model” in The Social Psychology of Good and Evil. 

Robert Haveman is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and co-author of Understanding Poverty.

Scott W. Allard is an associate professor in the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. He is the author of Out of Reach: Place, Poverty and the New American Welfare State. His research focuses on social welfare policy, poverty and nonprofit organizations in the United States.

Jack Glaser is a social psychologist and assistant professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley. He studies the social psychology of hate crimes and intergroup violence.

Ruby K. Payne is an author, educator and speaker with a focus on poverty and economic class differences. She is the author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty. She is founder and CEO of aha! Process in Highlands, Texas.

Jay F. Hein, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is Distinguished Senior Fellow and director of the Program for Faith and Service at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion in Waco, Texas. The Program for Faith and Service promotes cutting-edge approaches to social problems through faith-based organizations.

Elliot Aronson is emeritus professor of psychology at University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine. 

Fred Plumer, a retired minister, is head of The Center for Progressive Christianity, a web-based network of progressive faith communities. It is based in Gig Harbor, Wash.