Lisa Carlson is executive director of the Funeral Ethics Organization in Hinesburg, Vt., and author of Caring For the Dead: Your Final Act of Love (Upper Access, 1998), a consumer guide to making funeral arrangements. She can discuss the influence baby boomers have had on the funeral industry.

Scott F. McClure is marketing and communications director for the International Order of the Golden Rule, an association of more than 1,000 independently owned funeral homes.

Charles Chafer is chief executive officer and co-founder of Space Services, a Houston-based company that offers “spaceflight memorials” – the launching of human cremains into orbit around the Earth.

Jessica Koth is public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association, an organization of mostly independent funeral home operators, based in Brookfield, Wis. She can discuss the influence that the needs of different ethnic and religious groups have had on funeral directors and their services.

Thomas G. Long is a professor of preaching at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He frequently speaks and writes about Christian funeral practices and wrote Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (2009) and, with Thomas Lynch,  The Good Funeral: Death, Grief and the Community of Care (2013).  He is also […]

Stephen Prothero is former professor of Religion in America in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of numerous books including Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions (W.W. Norton 2020), Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (HarperOne, 2016), God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010), and […]

Gary Laderman is associate professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta and author of Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America.

Barbara Taylor is a management consultant with the Institute for Management Excellence in Trabuco Canyon, Calif. She speaks on spirituality in the workplace.

Garrett Epps is a law professor at the University of Baltimore who specializes in constitutional law. He covers the Supreme Court for The Atlantic as a contributing writer and is the author of several books on the topic, including American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court.