Shepherd’s Centers of America is an interfaith network of community-based groups in 21 states caring for older adults. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, the organization was begun by the Rev. Elbert C. Cole, whose wife had dementia for 17 years before she died.

Calvin College psychology professor Glenn Weaver, whose mother died of Alzheimer’s dementia, has studied the spirituality of Alzheimer’s patients.

Dorothy E. Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Sandra Patton-Imani, an adoptee, is an associate professor of American studies in the Department for the Study of Culture and Society at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. She is the author of Birth Marks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, in which black and multiracial adoptees discuss their experiences.

Rachel Wegner is the president of Ethica, an adoption advocacy organization that works for ethical adoption practices internationally.

Trish Maskew teaches adoption law, policy and practice at American University Washington College of Law. She founded Ethica, an adoption advocacy organization that works for ethical adoption practices internationally. She wrote Our Own: Adopting and Parenting the Older Child.

Sarah-Vaughan Brakman is associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa., where she served as founding director of the Ethics Program from 1999-2004. She co-edited The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition: Moral Arguments, Economic Reality and Social Analysis.

The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys is a national association of approximately 340 attorneys who practice, or have otherwise distinguished themselves, in the field of adoption law. The Academy’s work includes promoting the reform of adoption laws and disseminating information on ethical adoption practices.

Curtis Hancock, philosophy professor at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., lectures about the problem of evil.