Sharon Soneff is an artist and blogger and the co-author of Faith Books and Spiritual Journaling: Expressions of Faith Through Art. She lives in San Clemente, Calif.

Banafsheh Sayyad is a dancer and choreographer, performing contemporary mystical Persian dance. Sayyad has said that she approaches dance as prayer. She is based in San Diego.

Jacqueline Shea Murphy is an assistant professor of dance at the University of California, Riverside. In 2004, she helped mount a program at the university called “Red Rhythms” on American Indian spirituality through dance.

The Center for the Study of Urban Poverty is at the University of California, Los Angeles. The director is Abel Valenzuela Jr., professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, who has expertise in urban poverty and immigration issues.

The Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality is at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. Charles Varner is the associate director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Contact through the website.

The Center for Comparative Family Welfare and Poverty Research is at the University of California Berkeley. The director is Neil Gilbert, Milton and Gertrude Chernin Professor of Social Welfare and Social Services, who wrote Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility.

Shailaja Dixit is executive director of Narika, an organization that offers aid to South Asian victims of domestic violence and conducts outreach to local clergy in Sikh and Muslim worship centers.

Reshma Yunus is one of the co-founding directors of SEMAH, a Muslim-oriented organization that works to end domestic violence. It has held workshops with local faith leaders about their response to domestic violence. It is based in Newark, California.

Debbie Levenstein is development officer for Women’s Philanthropy of the Jewish Federation of Greater Metro­West, N.J. and worked for a time as the advocacy director of the Domestic Abuse Women’s Network in Tukwila, Wash. Among her specialties is dealing with Jewish women and domestic violence.