June Manning Thomas is Centennial Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bahá’í author. Her books include Planning Progress: Lessons From Shoghi Effendi.

Richard Thomas, with Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, co-edited Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’ís in North America, 1898-2000, which featured, among others, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. He is a retired professor of history at Michigan State University.

Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, with Richard Thomas, co-edited Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’ís in North America, 1898-2000, which featured, among others, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. She is a professor of English at Miami University in Ohio.

The West Coast Poverty Center is based at the University of Washington. Jennifer Romich is director as well as professor of social work and public affairs.

Greg Duncan is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. He has published extensively on welfare and poverty, including (as co-author) Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children and (as co-editor) For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families.

Angela Glover Blackwell is founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research institute in Oakland, Calif., that works for economic and social equity. She is a lawyer and well-known advocate on issues of poverty, race and the role of faith.

The Coalition for Compassion and Justice, based in Prescott, Ariz., helps meet the needs of people in poverty. Contact executive director Paul Mitchell.

Heidi Unruh is director of the Congregations, Community Outreach and Leadership Development Project and staff associate with Evangelicals for Social Action. She is co-editor of Hope for Children in Poverty: Profiles and Possibilities and co-author of Saving Souls, Serving Society: Understanding the Faith Factor in Church-Based Social Ministries. She lives in Hutchison, Kan.

Laura Lein is dean of the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Collegiate Professor of Social Work. She is an expert on poverty and the author of many studies of families in poverty, including Katrina evacuees and people living on the Texas-Mexico border. She co-authored Life After Welfare: Reform and the Persistence of Poverty (2007).