Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is the Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education at Harvard and the chair of the board of the MacArthur Foundation. As a sociologist, she examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She is the author of eight books, including Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools, Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer and The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other.

Barbara Isenberg is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine and has written for such publications as Esquire, Talk and London's Sunday Times. She received a Distinguished Artist Award from the Los Angeles Music Center, has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute and is associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC. Her books include Making It Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical and State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work. Her new book, Conversations with Frank Gehry, will be published in Spring, 2009.