Lisa Sharon Harper is co-founder of New York Faith & Justice, a network of churches, organizations and individuals that work to end poverty and poverty-related violence in New York City.

Heather Larkin is an assistant professor in the school of social welfare at the State University of New York in Albany. She has done research on the impact that childhood neglect and abuse has had on homeless people in Albany and Petaluma, Calif.

Project ORE serves emergency kosher meals and provides counseling, case management and other supportive services to isolated, poor, homeless, mentally ill, elderly Jews (including Holocaust survivors) in New York City. It is a program of the Educational Alliance.

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.

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 […]

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.

Robert Kraynak is a political science professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. He is the author of Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World, which examines America’s civil religion and its government.