Barbara Kellerman is the James McGregor Burns Lecturer in the Leadership at the Center for Public Leadership of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the author of Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters.

Dan Wakefield is a veteran writer and Unitarian in Boston whose newest book is The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate (Nation Books, 2006). Read an excerpt in the April 24, 2006, issue of The Nation.

The Progressive Interfaith Alliance formed in Delaware in 2009 to focus on finding ways to ease poverty in its area. It now works on a variety of social justice issues. Contact the Rev. Michael Smith of the Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware in Lewes.

Aviva Luz Argote is executive director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

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.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of America’s most popular historians and the best-selling author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

The Rev. Victoria Weinstein is pastor of First Parish Church of Norwell, Mass., a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In May 2006, she delivered a sermon on the spiritual value of animals.

The Rev. Nancy Taylor is senior pastor of the Old South Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in Boston. In May 2006, she preached a sermon on the blessings given and received by animals.

Theodora Capaldo is president/executive director of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society, which spearheads Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. Laboratories. Capaldo is a licensed psychologist, a trustee of the American Fund for Alternatives to Animal Research and past president of Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.