Michael E. Conroy is the former Program Director for Global Governance at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and an economist who taught Economics and Latin American Studies at the University of Texas from 1971 to 1996. Conroy has worked for 10 years at the Ford Foundation. From 2003 to 2006 he also had an appointment as a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Over the past 10 years Conroy has focused on developing certification systems to encourage and reward higher levels of corporate social and environmental accountability. He serves on several NGO boards of directors related to that work: TransFair USA, the sole certifier in the U.S. of Fair Trade products; FLO-Cert, the worldwide monitoring and auditing organization for Fair Trade; Earthworks, the mining advocacy organization developing mining certification; and the Forest Stewardship Council, the global sustainable forestry certification organization, as an appointed technical advisor.

Conroy’s latest publication, in press, is: Branded! How the ‘Certification Revolution’ Is Transforming Global Corporations, Vancouver: New Society Publishers (Spring 2007).
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Professor Davis joined the New York University School of Law faculty in September 1982, after having served for three years as a judge of the Family Court of the State of New York and having engaged, during the preceding ten years, in the practice and administration of law. Her scholarly work has been influential in the areas of child welfare, constitutional rights of family liberty, legal pedagogy, and interdisciplinary analysis of legal process.

Her 1997 book, Neglected Stories: The Constitution and Family Values, illuminated the importance of antislavery traditions as interpretive guides to the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a co-founder of the Lawyering Theory Colloquium, she has been among the pioneers in scholarly study of law “in use” by practitioners, judges, and claimants. In addition to her academic responsibilities, Professor Davis serves as director of a number of mutual funds managed by the Dreyfus Corporation.

Professor Davis’ areas of concentration, in terms of both courses taught and independent scholarship, include evidence, family law, constitutional theory, social sciences and the law, legal process, and professional methodology and training.
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John Dias is a theater producer, dramaturg, and educator who recently worked as the Associate Artistic Director at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater. He was also a producer and dramaturg on the Broadway production of Lisa Kron’s Well. He was, until 2003, Associate Producer and Literary Director at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater where he worked for nine years as a member of the artistic staff. As an associate producer he oversaw all aspects of play production on the six stages of the Public Theater and the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. As literary director he supervised all play development activities of the four-person literary department. As production dramaturg, he contributed to all workshops and productions of Shakespeare’s plays and other classics, working with directors George C. Wolfe, Mark Wing-Davey, Irene Lewis, Karin Coonrod, Mark Brokaw, Andrei Serban, Vanessa Redgrave, Jo Bonney, Brian Kulick, Doug Hughes, Joe Mantello and Mary Zimmerman among others. He has commissioned and/or developed the work of contemporary writers including Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, Han Ong, Steve Martin, Nilo Cruz, Martin McDonough, Diana Son, Adam Rapp, Suzan-Lori Parks, José Rivera, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Alice Tuan, Richard Greenberg, and Lisa Kron among many others. Before coming to New York, John was on the artistic staff at the Hartford Stage Company where, as dramaturg, he contributed to the development of new plays and collaborated with many directors on productions of Shakespeare and other classics.

He has consulted for New York University Tisch School of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Connecticut Commission for the Arts, the Hartford Arts Council, and the Drama League of New York; and taught playwrights, dramaturgs and actors at New York University, Yale University, Columbia University, and the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab. He holds bachelor degrees in biology and theater from the George Washington University in Washington, DC and a master of fine arts from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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Ian L. Kelley is a founding partner of the business law firm, Lee & Kelley, LLP and is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Municipal Arts Society. His practice concentrates in domestic and offshore private investment funds, real estate and corporate transactional matters. Prior to founding the firm in 2000, Mr. Kelley was an associate at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, LLP.

Mr. Kelley is active in the not-for-profit community. He serves as the President of the Board of two 501(c)(3) organizations, the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation, which is committed to the economic development of Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn and the National Center for Creative Aging, which is dedicated to fostering an understanding of the vital relationship between creative expression and the quality of life of older people. In addition, Mr. Kelley is a founding Board member of Green Ground Zero, an organization dedicated to finding innovative sustainable answers to urban needs.
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Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author and public speaker on food politics, sustainable agriculture, globalization, and social change. Named one of Time Magazine’s 2006 Eco-Who’s Who, Anna has been featured in The New York Times, Gourmet, O Magazine, Food & Wine, and Vibe, among other outlets.

With Frances Moore Lappé, Anna leads the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education, and the Small Planet Fund, which has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for democratic social movements worldwide since 2002.

Anna has appeared on FoxNews, NBC, PBS, and the CBC in Canada, as well as numerous nationally syndicated radio programs, including National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, Talk to America, and WYNC’s Leonard Lopate Show. She is a frequent lecturer, and regularly speaks at universities and colleges across the country, including Brown University, Columbia University, New York University, Boston College, and Yale University. She also serves as a consultant to foundations, media projects, and non-profit organizations and is an active board member of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Anna’s first book Hope’s Edge (Tarcher/Penguin 2002), co-written with her mother Frances Moore Lappé, chronicles courageous social movements around the world addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty, including Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement. Winner of the Nautilus Award for Social Change, Hope’s Edge has been published in several languages and is used in classrooms across the country. Her second book is Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), with chef Bryant Terry and a foreword by Eric Schlosser. Called “ingenious” by The New York Times, Grub offers an exposé on industrial food and chemical agriculture along with hands-on tools and menus to create healthier lives for ourselves and our communities.

Anna’s writing has been widely published in The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, and Canada’s Globe and Mail. She is a contributing author to a number of books, including Take Back Your Time (Berrett-Koehler 2003) and Feeding the Future: How the Battle Over Food Will Change Your Life (Realize Media 2004).

Anna holds an M.A. in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and graduated with honors from Brown University. She is currently a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. Anna has worked in South Africa, England, and France. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York where she visits her local farmers market whenever she gets a chance.
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Terry Scott is an independent producer & media consultant for independent filmmakers and non-profit arts organizations with more than 10 years of working knowledge in commercial and non-profit management, marketing, and outreach. Also, he is currently Senior Coordinator of Storycorps.

His clients have included the www.ActiveCitizenProject.com and America Online BlackVoices.com where he worked on strategic planning for the AOL/BlackVoices film platform, developing AOL/BV’s online film festival, weekly online film series and creating new content streams in the division of Black filmmaking, new media and African Americans in the film industry in general.

From 2001-2005 he was the Director of Producer Services & Technology for National Black Programming Consortium, a funding resource organization for black programming on public television. While at NBPC he served in the role of associate producer for many NBPC funded films broadcast on PBS, working closely with documentary producers to assist in bringing their projects to fruition. Terry was chief strategist for NBPC outreach and marketing projects for nationally broadcast PBS films & founded & edited NBPC’s e-newsletter “DigitalDrum”.

In addition to producing training workshops for NBPC producers with partners such as the Writers Guild, WNET Terry also Co- produced fist NBPC film festival in New York and over the years developed extensive community partnerships with numerous NY and national organizations.

Terry has served as a panelist for numerous arts organization including NYSCA and is a journalism graduate of California State University at Long Beach and Columbia University Graduate School of Business, Institute for Non-profit Management program.
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