Heather Kirk-Davidoff, host of the Willing Spirit, has been an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ since 1994, having earned her Masters in Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. Formerly the Spiritual Director of the Interfaith Families Project of Greater Washington, Heather now serves as Minister of the Kittamaqundi Community, a church in Columbia, Maryland, in the tradition of Church of the Savior. She is married to Dan Kirk-Davidoff, a Professor of Meteorology at the University of Maryland, and mother to twin sons, Paul and Isaac, and a daughter, Rosa.

Howard Kohn, the host of a Second Look, is the author of three highly acclaimed books: His memoir, The Last Farmer, runner-up for a Pulitzer; Who Killed Karen Silkwood?, which led to the Meryl Streep movie; and We Had a Dream, a non-fiction story that examines the afterlife of the civil rights movement in Prince George's County (MD). Howard was a staff writer at Rolling Stone Magazine, and is still an occasional contributor. His work has also been published in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Esquire, Mother Jones and other periodicals. He served five years as bureau chief of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Howard is also Commissioner of the Takoma Park Neighborhood Youth Soccer league, and helped spearhead the construction of the new Montgomery Blair High School and the Takoma Park Community Center. He lives with his wife Diana; they have two children, Jennifer and Gregory.

Cathy Kristiansen, host of the consumer health and medicine segment, In Sickness & In Health, is the editor of "Endocrine News," a publication of The Endocrine Society. She's a former senior correspondent for Knight-Ridder Financial News. Cathy earned an MA equivalent in journalism at City University in London, and went on to work in financial journalism in London, Paris, and Chicago before coming to Washington, DC to cover the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the White House. Cathy is of European ancestry but grew up in Africa. Her husband, Mark Cohen, and she have two sons, Ross and Tate, and three chickens.

Welmoed Laanstra, host of the Artistic Eye, is an independent curator and historian based in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her recent projects include Face Time, a media installation about the 2004 presidential election with actor/satirist Harry Shearer; Civic Endurance, an installation about homeless youth in Seattle by artists Brad McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry; and Silence DC, a multi-media project about the Underground Railroad in Washington, DC in collaboration with the City Museum of Washington, DC. Welmoed is married to journalist David Corn and they have two daughters, Maaike and Amarins.

Liz Lerman, host of In Step, is a choreographer, performer, educator, writer, and frequent public speaker. She founded the Takoma Park-based Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976, and has cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance. In 2002 her work was recognized with a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, and she was recently designated for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Achievement Award and induction into the University of Maryland’s Alumni Hall of Fame. Liz’s work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival, Harvard Law School, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. With the Dance Exchange, she has conducted performances at unique sites such as the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Museum of the Chicago Historical Society. Liz holds a Masters Degree in dance from George Washington University. She is married to storyteller Jon Spelman. Their daughter, Anna Clare, was born in 1988.

E. Ethelbert Miller is the author of numerous essays, poetry collections and anthologies. His most recent book is How We Sleep on the Nights We Don't Make Love (Curbstone Press 2004). Ethelbert has been director of Howard University's African American Resource Center since 1974. He is also a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. Ethelbert is a current and founding member of the Humanities Council of Washington, DC, and Board chairman of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is also affiliated with the African American Review, Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture, Callaloo, Black Issues Book Review, and Poet Lore magazine. Ethelbert was awarded the 1995 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, and he recently was awarded a Fulbright to lecture in Israel. Ethelbert is married to Rev. Denise King-Miller, and has two children, Jasmine-Simone and Nyere-Gibran.

Jamie Raskin is a Democratic State Senator in Maryland representing District 20 (Silver Spring and Takoma Park) and serving on the Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee. He is also a professor of constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law and Director of its Program on Law and Government and its Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. The Washington Post has described Raskin as the Maryland Senate's “authority on constitutional issues”. The Silver Spring Voice called him the “whiz kid” of the General Assembly, and the Takoma Voice, in its “Best of the Best” readers choice issue, named him Montgomery County's 2007 “Most Responsive Elected Official.”

Author and filmmaker Mike Tidwell has been on the environmental beat for more than a decade. His five books include Amazon Stranger (detailing efforts to save the Ecuadorian rainforest) and Bayou Farewell (about the rapidly disappearing wetlands of coastal Louisiana). Mike is also a documentary filmmaker (“We Are All Smith Islanders”) and co-host of "EarthBeat," a weekly show on WPFW radio (89.3 FM) in Washington. Mike founded and directs the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to fighting global warming. His home is fueled almost entirely by wind, solar and corn power, and is regularly opened to the public as a community laboratory. In 2003, Mike received Audubon Naturalist Society's “Conservation Award.” Mike lives in Takoma Park, MD with his eight-year-old son Sasha and their two cats, Ulysses and Phinny.