Catherine Foster Alter is Dean and Professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. From 1986–1992, she served as Director of the Iowa University School of Social Work. Her practice background in urban planning and social service administration led to a continuing interest in building theory and knowledge about interorganizational networks and collaborations as a strategy for social change. Her book with Jerald Hage, Organizations Working Together (1993) is used today by doctoral students in many disciplines. Her recent research focuses on alleviating poverty by using strategies such as micro-enterprise and self-employment programs that enable low-income women to move toward self-sufficiency. Most recently she was co-principal investigator on the evaluation of Colorado's welfare reform program.

Teiahsha Bankhead is Assistant Professor at California State University, Sacramento, in the Division of Social Work. She is coauthor with Jewelle Taylor Gibbs of Preserving Privilege: California Politics, Propositions and People of Color. Her research interests include social policy analysis and issues related to race, ethnicity, and gender.

Stephanie C. Boddie is Assistant Professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. She has coauthored (with Ram Cnaan) The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership, and The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare. She has also published several book chapters and articles on faith-based social services.

Eleanor L. Brilliant is Professor at Rutgers University School of Social Work. Her past work experience includes serving as Associate Executive Director (Planning, Allocations and Evaluation) for United Way of Westchester. She has also been Vice President/Secretary of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, and national Treasurer for the National Association of Social Workers. Her books include The United Way: Dilemmas of Organized Charity and Private Charity and Public Inquiry: A History of the Filer and Peterson Commissions.

William E. Buffum is Professor and Director of the George Williams College School of Social Work at Aurora University, Aurora, Illinois. Previously, he was Associate Dean at Barry University's School of Social Work and also at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work. His social work practice and research interests are in the areas of poverty organizing, community partnerships, and community mental health. He is a member of ACOSA, CSWE, NASW, NADD, SSWR, and the National Network for Social Work Managers. His current work is in forensic mental health.

Steve Burghardt is Professor of Community Organizing and Planning at the CUNY-Hunter College School of Social Work where he specializes in community organizing, community building, the political economy of social service work and innovative models of management, training and service. Author of The Other Side of Organizing and The Welfare State Crisis and the Transformation of Social Services (with Michael Fabricant), he has just completed The Glass Is Always Full: Leadership Lessons From Everyday Folks for Lasting Executive Excellence (with Willie Tolliver).

Iris Carlton-LaNey is Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has coedited two books and is the editor of African American Leadership: An Empowerment Tradition in Social Welfare History. She writes extensively about rural social work with elderly women and has been honored for her scholarship on African American social welfare history.

Paul Castelloe is Co-Executive Director of the Center for Participatory Change, a nonprofit organization in western North Carolina. His work focuses on supporting grassroots groups by integrating methods from community organization, popular education, and international participatory development.

Julian Chun-Chung Chow is Associate Professor at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on urban poverty issues, neighborhood services, and community practice, particularly responsive service delivery to culturally diverse populations.

Terry L. Cross is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and has served as Executive Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association since 1983. He is the author of Heritage and Helping an eleven-manual curriculum for tribal child welfare workers, Positive Indian Parenting curriculum, and Cross-Cultural Skills in Indian Child Welfare. He coauthored Toward a Culturally Competent System of Care (with Karl W Dennis, Mareasa R. Isaacs, and Barbara J. Bazron). He is experienced in evaluation design and policy-related research, and he has organized culturally specific technical assistance programs for more than 15 years.

Kelsey Crowe is a doctoral student at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on community capacity building and organizational development in low-income, multiethnic communities.

Dennis Culhane is Professor of Social Welfare Policy at the School of Social Work and Codirector of the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. His research on homelessness and housing makes extensive use of administrative data.

David Dempsey is the Manager of Government Relations/Political Action at the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Previously, he served as Executive Director of the Washington State, Missouri, and Pennsylvania chapters. His publications include “Establishing ELAN (an Education, Legislation Action Network) in a State Chapter,” in Practical Politics, and he is coauthor of the 1996 article “Political Practica: Educating Social Work Students for Policymaking.” He has also presented at numerous social work education and social policy conferences on the subjects of politics and government.

Erin Drinnin is Adult Community Program Coordinator and Manager for The Homestead, an agency serving people with autism spectrum disorders in Des Moines, Iowa. She previously served as an intern for the North Carolina Commission for Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse.

John L. Erlich is Professor, Division of Social Work, California State University, Sacramento, and former Chair, Policy, Planning, and Administration. His coauthored publications include Community Organizing in a Diverse Society, Strategies of Community Intervention, Tactics and Techniques of Community Intervention, and Taking Action in Organizations and Communities. His scholarship focuses on grassroots organizing, diversity, and social action.

Richard J. Estes is Professor of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of more than 100 articles and books on various aspects of international and comparative social welfare including The Social Progress of Nations; Trends in World Social Development; Health Care and the Social Services; Internationalizing Social Work Education; Toward a Development Strategy for the Asia and Pacific Region; Resources for Social and Economic Development; Medical, Social, and Legal Aspects of Child Sexual Exploitation: A Comprehensice Review of Child Pornography, Child Prostitution, and Internet Crimes Against children; Social Development in Hong Kong: The Unfinished Agenda; and At the Crossroad: Development Challenges at the Beginning of a New Century.

Michael Fabricant is the Executive Officer of the Doctoral Program in Social Welfare at the Graduate Center and Vice President for Senior Colleges of the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York. He is the author of five books and numerous articles. His most recent books include The Crisis of the Welfare State and Transformation of Social Service Work (with Steve Burghardt) and Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City (with Robert Fisher). A thread that runs through all of his work on homelessness, juvenile justice, and nonprofit community agencies is the extraction of praxis implications from both research findings and activist experience.

Walter C. Farrell, Jr., is Professor of Management and Community Practice in the Schools of Social Work, Public Health, and Public Policy, and Associate Director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center of the Kenan Institute in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published widely in the areas of urban social issues, minority economic development, social welfare policy, and workforce diversity.

Robert Fisher is Professor of Social Work and Director of Urban and Community Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of a variety of books, including Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America and, most recently, with Michael Fabricant, Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City. He is the recipient of two Fulbright fellowships and the Moses Distinguished Professorship at the Hunter College School of Social Work. He has been involved in community organizing and social justice efforts since the early 1970s.

Barbara J. Friesen is Director of the Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children's Mental Health, and Professor, Graduate School of Social [Page 703]Work, at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Her research areas include family participation in mental health and other settings, the development and testing of a peer-based training program for families in early childhood settings, and evaluations of community-based systems of care.

Denise Gour, LCSW, is an entrepreneurial social worker with a strong preference for evidence-based models. As a Program Director at Metropolitan Family Service in Portland, Oregon, she established several successful family- and community-strengthening models serving thousands of children and adults each year. With Volunteers of America Oregon, she is directing a pilot program aimed at decreasing the recidivism rates of young felony offenders.

Amy E. Hillier is Research Associate at the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory and a lecturer in the Urban Studies program and School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to social welfare, urban history, and public health.

Marie D. Hoff is a retired social work professor, with faculty service at Saint Louis University and Boise State University; she taught social policy and macro-practice methods. Her major research focus has been the relationships between environmental concerns and human social welfare. She has published articles and two edited books on these topics: The Global Environmental Crisis: Implications for Social Welfare and Social Work (with J. G. McNutt), and Sustainable Community Development: Studies in Economic, Environmental and Cultural Revitalization. She is currently developing a Catholic Charities social services organization for the state of Idaho.

Cheryl Hyde is Associate Professor at the School of Social Work, University of Maryland-Baltimore, where she is Cochair of the Management and Community Organization Concentration and Assistant Director for Community-Based Research at the Social Work Community Outreach Service. Her areas of interest include community capacity building, social movements, feminist praxis, multicultural organizational development, and diversity learning strategies. She is on a number of editorial boards, including those of the Journal of Community Practice and Administration in Social Work and is Chair of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration.

Bruce S. Jansson is the Driscoll/Clevenger Professor of Social Policy and Administration at the School of Social Work of the University of Southern California. He has written many articles and books including Becoming an Effective Policy Advocate: From Policy Practice to Social Justice (4th ed., 2003); The Sixteen-Trillion-Dollar Mistake: How the U.S. Bungled Its National Priorities From the New Deal to the Present (2001); and The Reluctant Welfare State, American Social Welfare Policies, Past, Present, and Future (5th ed., 2004).

James H. Johnson, Jr., is William Rand Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Management, Sociology, and Public Policy and Director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center of the Kenan Institute in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published widely in the areas of entrepreneurship and minority economic development, urban poverty, public policy, interethnic minority conflict in advanced societies, and welfare reform.

Armand Lauffer is Professor Emeritus of the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan. He now directs the MBA Program in Nonprofit Management and Jewish Communal Leadership at The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel. He initiated Michigan's Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) and its Continuing Education Program; Sage Publications' two Human Service series; and a process that led to establishment of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration, from which he received a career achievement award in 2001. His more than twenty books include Social Planning at the Community Level; Careers, Colleagues and Conflicts; Gramts, Etc.; Strategic Marketing The Practice of Continuing Education; Understanding Your Social Agency; Volunteers; and Getting the Resources You Need.

Edith A. Lewis is Associate Professor of Social Work and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. Her research and teaching interests include women and families of color, the lessons from parallel forms of social work practice in populations of color, international social welfare policy and services, and multicultural teaching.

Roger A. Lohmann is Professor of Social Work, Benedum Distinguished Scholar, and Director of the Nonprofit Management Certificate Program in the Division of Social Work, School of Applied Social Sciences, in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University. He created and operates nearly two dozen electronic discussion lists, including ARNOVA-L, which has been in continuous daily operation for the past 15 years, and the original ACOSA-L list. His current interest is in electronically enhanced communication.

Michelle Livermore is Assistant Professor of Social Work at The Ohio State University. She has published in the area of social development and edited The Handbook of Social Policy (with James Midgley and Martin Tracy). She continues to work in the areas of social capital, civic engagement, local capitalism, and employment.

Jacquelyn McCroskey is the John Milner Associate Professor of Child Welfare at the USC School of Social Work. She works actively with county, city, and school district policy makers in Los Angeles County, using data and scholarship to inform policy and guide improvements to service delivery systems for children and families. Her research includes analysis of service financing, organization and performance, and the impact of family-centered child welfare services.

John McNutt is Associate Professor of Social Work in the College of Social Work at the University of South Carolina. He initiated and continues to work with the Council on Social Work Education APM Technology Forum. He also created the original ACOSA Web site and operates the SWPolicy, NIRG, and other discussion lists. He has been a recognized national leader in advocating for the use of technology in community-level social work education. His principal interest is in electronic advocacy.

James Midgley is the Harry and Reva Specht Professor of Public Social Services and Dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published widely on issues of social development and international social welfare. His most recent books include The Handbook of Social Policy (with Martin [Page 705]Tracy and Michelle Livermore), Controversial Issues in Social Policy (with Howard Karger and Brene Brown), and Social Policy for Development (with Tony Hall).

Terry Mizrahi is Professor at Hunter School of Social Work CUNY, Director of the Education Center for Community Organizing, and Chair of the Community Organizing and Planning concentration. She is the author of numerous books and articles related to community organizing, health advocacy, health policy and patients' rights. She was one of the founders of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration and its publication the Journal of Community Practice. She is the coauthor of Strategic Partnerships: Building Effective Coalitions and Collaborations (ECCO) and coeditor of the book Community Organization and Social Administration, and she is engaged in other research, consultation, and training on coalition building. She is a national leader in the National Association of Social Workers and served as its President from 2001–2003.

Jacqueline Mondros is Professor and Associate Dean at University of Southern California School of Social Work. She has worked with social change organizations in Philadelphia, New York, and Miami, Florida, and has written extensively on community organizing and community work. Prior to her academic career, she was executive director of a settlement house. In Miami, she established the largest university-community partnership in the state, piloting community projects for children, families, and the elderly in Haitian and Latino communities.

Lynne Clemmons Morris is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Human Services at Eastern Washington University. Her current research interests are focused on impacts of destination resort development in rural western mountain communities and uses of information technology in the delivery and evaluation of rural human services.

John Morrison is Professor and former MSW Program Chair at Aurora University. He is a board member and past chair of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration. He serves on the board of the Illinois Chapter of NASW and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Community Practice. He is coeditor, with Terry Mizrahi, of Community Organization and Social Administration: Advances, Trends and Issues. His current academic interests include international social work, prevention, and social development.

Susan Murty is Associate Professor and MSW Program Coordinator at the School of Social Work at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on rural service delivery, rural community practice, network analysis, intergenerational service learning, and domestic violence. She is currently developing an end-of-life care curriculum in the MSW Program with support from a Social Work Leadership Development Award received from the Project on Death in America.

Biren (Ratnesh) A. Nagda is Associate Professor of Social Work and Director of the Intergroup Dialogue, Education and Action (IDEA) Training and Resource Institute at the University of Washington. His interests focus on cultural diversity, social justice, intergroup dialogue, and multicultural practice. He has done extensive research and published on intergroup dialogues in community settings, [Page 706]including a community-based research project examining practices in addressing race issues through small group dialogues.

Kristine E. Nelson is Professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University in Oregon. She is coauthor of Reinventing Human Services: Community- and Family-Centered Practice and has conducted six federally funded studies of family preservation services and child neglect.

Helzi Noponen is an economic development planner who has been engaged in funded research, professional practice and university teaching activities in the fields of microfinance, gender and development, and sustainable livelihoods programs. She is a regional specialist in South Asia where she has been involved in field research and technical assistance projects for the past 24 years. Most recently, she has been involved in consultation with PRADAN—Professional Assistance for Development Action in India. Currently she is an external consultant to three Ford Foundation-funded Microfinance and Livelihood NGOs in India.

Yolanda C. Padilla is Associate Professor at the School of Social Work and Research Associate at the Populations Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Her current projects examine health trajectories of Mexican American children from birth to age five, living conditions of children of immigrants, and the status of children along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Joan Pennell is Professor and Chair in the Department of Social Work at North Carolina State University. She is the principal investigator of the North Carolina Family-Centered Meetings Project and previously directed the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project. Previously she served as principal investigator for a Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) demonstration of family group conferencing in situations of child maltreatment and domestic violence. Her publications focus on empowerment approaches to community practice, program development, and research. She coauthored Community Research as Empowerment and Family Group Conferencing: Evaluation Guidelines.

Salome Raheim is Associate Professor and Director of the University of Iowa School of Social Work. Economic empowerment, community development and culturally competent practice are major areas of her research, teaching, and practice. She has published numerous articles related to women, welfare, microfinance, and economic opportunity.

Beth Glover Reed is Professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with a joint appointment in Social Work and Women's Studies. Her research focuses on how social systems of various sizes create and sustain patterns of inequity and how these patterns can be changed towards a more socially just society. She teaches several courses in community organizing and community and social systems.

Maria Roberts-DeGennaro is Professor of Social Work at San Diego State University. She was the first President of the National Association for Community Organization and Social Administration. Her scholarship focuses on policy and interorganizational behavior. She was granted a Silberman Fund Award for her research related to the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Her latest research interests have centered around [Page 707]Web-based education. She is the recipient of an award for outstanding faculty contributions in the College of Health and Human Services at SDSU.

Herbert J. Rubin is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Applied Social Research and (with Irene Rubin) three editions of Community Organizing and Development. He has written articles that explore rural development in Thailand, suburban land-use fights, cooperative housing, and economic and community development. Two of his publications, the monograph The Dynamics of Development in Rural Development and his book on community renewal in the United States, Renewing Hope Within Neighborhoods of Despair: The Community-based Development Model, explore issues of social change. He is currently studying national, Washington-based organizations that advocate for the poor.

Irene S. Rubin is Professor of Public Administration at Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Running in the Red: The Political Dynamics of Urban Fiscal Stress, Shrinking the Federal Government, Class Tax and Power: Municipal Budgeting in the United States, and Balancing the Federal Budget: Eating the Seed Corn or Trimming the Herds. She has written journal articles about citizen participation in local government in Thailand, how universities adapt when their budgets are cut, and fights between legislative staffers and elected and appointed officials about unworkable policy proposals. She is conducting an interviewing project on how local officials view and use contracts with the private sector and with other governmental units to provide public services.

Anna Scheyett is Assistant Clinical Professor of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches health and mental health policy and practice in mental health and in organizations and communities. She also conducts training in mental health system reform. She has extensive experience working with people with severe and persistent mental illnesses and is the author of Making the Transition to Managed Behavioral Healthcare: A Guide for Agencies and Practitioners.

Robert Schneider is Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work and National Chairperson of Influencing State Policy (http://wwwstatepolicy.org). He is coauthor with Lori Lester of Social Work Advocacy: A New Framework for Action and coeditor with Nancy P. Kropf and Anne Kisor of the journal Gerontological Social Work.

Michael Sherraden is the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and Director of the Center for Social Development at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, St. Louis. He is author of Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy and coeditor of Alternatives to Social Security: An International Inquiry.

Margaret Sherrard Sherraden is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and Research Professor at the Center for Social Development at Washington University, St. Louis. Her books include Community Economic Development and Social Work with William Ninacs and Kitchen Capitalism: Microenterprise in Low-Income Households with Cynthia K. Sanders and Michael Sherraden.

Nancy Shore is a doctoral student in social welfare at the University of Washington. Prior to returning to school, she worked at a Head Start program. In addition to her commitment to child welfare, her other research and teaching interests include community-based participatory research and ethics.

Laura Wernick is in the Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Political Science and the Women's Studies Certificate Program at the University of Michigan. Her interest areas include urban politics, civic engagement, organizational theory, and intersectionality and power. Her dissertation research examines factors constraining and enabling community stakeholder participation and engagement in human service system and policy change. She works with Professor Robin Ely of the Harvard Business School on issues of diversity, pedagogy, and power within the workplace.

Gaynor I. Yancey is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is the Associate Director of the FASTEN (Faith and Service Technical Education Network) national research project, a study of public and private sector collaboration in meeting the needs of the urban poor. She is coauthor with Ram Cnaan and Stephanie Boddie of the chapter “Bowling Alone But Serving Together: The Congregational Norm of Community Involvement” in Religion, Social Capital, and Democratic Life. Her research interest is in organizing and development through the work of faith-based organizations and congregations.