Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and its parent company Sound Portraits Productions. Over the past two decades his radio documentary work has won nearly every award in broadcasting, including five Peabody Awards, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow award, and two Livingston Awards for young journalists. Dave has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), a MacArthur Fellowship (2000), and a United States Artists Fellowship (2006). He is the author (or co-author) of four books based on Sound Portraits radio stories including: *Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago* (1997), *Flophouse* (2000), and the first-ever StoryCorps book, *Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project* (2007).

John Weatherford came to public broadcasting after working in commercial radio since 1966, commercial television since 1969 and running his own production companies (radio, TV, graphics and 3D animation) for 15 years. Much of the programming created in those 15 years ended up on public television; some of those series are still airing today. The majority of his more than 30 years in commercial broadcasting was spent in news and local programming. He has also served as vice president of the Georgia Radio Reading Service board for almost a decade.

Most recently a principal in the Atlanta office of the Boston Consulting Group, Shipman also has an extensive educational background in issues of race, ethnicity, and gender. His undergraduate and graduate studies include the relationship between economics and poverty, the history of American minority groups and religion, and the American civil rights movement.