M.J. Ryan is a consultant and author whose books include Attitudes of Gratitude: How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your Life and A Grateful Heart.

Louise L. Hay wrote Gratitude: A Way of Life. She is the owner and founder of Hay House, an international mind-body-spirit publisher in Carlsbad, Calif.

Robert Emmons is a psychology professor at the University of California-Davis and director of the Emmons Lab. One of his primary interests is the psychology of gratitude and how gratitude relates to human flourishing. His books include Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity.

The Rev. Kathy Black, a United Methodist minister, is author of A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability and Signs of Solidarity: Ministry With Persons Who Are Deaf, Deafened and Hard of Hearing. She is Kennedy Professor of Homiletics & Liturgics at Claremont School of Theology in California.

W. Daniel Blair is assistant professor of American Sign Language and director of the Center for Deaf Education at California Baptist University in Riverside. His dissertation was about theological education and disability.

The Rev. Susan Gregg-Schroeder is a United Methodist minister in San Diego and coordinator of Mental Health Ministries, an effort that grew from her own experience of depression. She is the author of a paper, “Mental Illness and Families of Faith: How Churches Can Respond.”

Monica A. Coleman is associate professor of constructive theology and African-American religions at Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, Calif. Among her interests is disability theology.

Zen Buddhist teacher Joseph Bobrow founded the Coming Home Project in San Francisco to help veterans returning from combat.