Dr. Robert Brody is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and chief of the Pain Consultation Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. A former hospice director, he is a Compassion & Choices board member.

Barbara Coombs Lee is chief petitioner of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. She is the president of Compassion & Choices, formed when the Compassion in Dying Federation, based in Portland, merged with End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society.

Timothy Quill, a professor of medicine, psychiatry and palliative care at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, was the lead physician plaintiff in the 1977 New York state legal case challenging the prohibition of physician-assisted suicide. He is co-editor of Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice and author of Caring for Patients at […]

Margaret Downey is founder and president of The Freethought Society, based in Pocopson, Pa. She is also a secular celebrant, performing life-cycle ceremonies for nonbelievers.

Austin Dacey is a writer and human rights activist in New York City who serves as a representative to the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He is the author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life (2008).

David Niose is legal director of the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center. He previously served as the organization’s president. Niose has written about the growing significance of secular voters.

Sean Faircloth has served as an executive with both the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and The Secular Coalition for America, the leading policy advocacy group for secular Americans. Before that, he served 10 years in the Maine Legislature, including a term as majority whip. Faircloth, who lives near Washington, D.C., can discuss […]

Norm R. Allen Jr. isis a writer, proof-reader, and editor headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y. He was formerly an international outreach coordinator with the Institute for Science and Human Values and editor of a new journal, The Human Prospect: A Neo-Humanist Perspective. He formerly served as the founding executive director of African Americans for Humanism, a program of the […]

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science supports “the scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and human suffering.” The U.S. branch has headquarters in Washington, D.C., and is led by executive director R. Elisabeth Cornwell.