Donald E. Messer is a co-author of Ending Hunger Now. A United Methodist theologian, he is now executive director of the Center for Church and Global AIDS, which is based in Centennial, Colo.

Jack R. Kloppenburg Jr. is a professor in the department of community and environmental sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches a course called Food, Culture and Society, which explores hunger issues.

James P. Ziliak is director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, where he also holds the Gatton Endowed Chair in Microeconomics. He was the lead researcher on a 2008 national study of hunger among the nation’s senior citizens.

Lili Garfinkel is with the PACER Center’s Juvenile Justice Program, which works with Minnesota’s juvenile offenders.

Luceia LeDoux is program director of public safety and governmental oversight grants for the Baptist Community Ministries of New Orleans. She oversees this Christian nonprofit’s community grants that benefit young offenders and at-risk youths in the New Orleans area.

Charles Staples is an evangelical Christian and an attorney in Virginia Beach, Va., who deals primarily in juvenile justice and juvenile advocacy cases.

Betty Gernert is a leader of Epiphany Ministry, a Christian ministry to incarcerated youths based in Danville, Ga.

Joe Benton is a special assistant for faith-base initiatives at the 7th District AME Church of South Carolina. In 2005, the church and the state’s department of juvenile justice signed an agreement to work together to benefit children in the state’s juvenile justice system or at risk of entering it.

Laurence Steinberg is a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. His specialties include the adolescent brain and juvenile justice. With Alex Piquero, Steinberg conducted a survey that showed the public is willing to spend more on rehabilitation than on incarceration for juvenile offenders.