Paul Polak is founder of Colorado-based nonprofit International Development Enterprises and author of Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (2008). Contact through Carrie Barnes at ELISE Communications.

Operation Safety Net is a health care outreach program operated through the Pittsburgh Mercy Hospital System and Catholic Health East. It provides medical care to homeless people living on the streets of Pittsburgh and recognized as one of nation’s first, targeted, full-time street medicine programs. Dr. Jim Withers started the program in 1992.

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at The New York Times and the author of American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare.

Faithful America is an interfaith advocacy project of the National Council of Churches that is based in Washington, D.C. Contact through the website.

Jeffrey Sachs is one of the foremost experts on the economics of poverty. He is director of the Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002-06, Sachs was director of the U.N. Millennium Project and special […]

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the City University of New York, is an expert on U.S. poverty and welfare policy and the author of several books.

Stephen Pimpare is a professor of american politics and public policy for the politics & society program and social work department at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of A People’s History of Poverty in America (2008) and The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages. He is working on a book titled A Celluloid […]

Christopher Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of The Homeless and has written about poverty, welfare reform and changes in American family structure.

Lawrence M. Mead, a politics professor, teaches courses about welfare reform, politics and public policy at New York University. He co-authored Lifting Up the Poor: A Dialogue on Religion, Poverty & Welfare Reform.