CAREER AND WORKPLACE

A much in-demand workplace expert, Peggy Klaus has spent more than a decade advising some of America’s top Fortune 500 executives, delivering programs on everything from management to mentoring and from women’s leadership to networking. Klaus & Associates is based in Berkeley, California.

PROJECT: BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It	PROJECT: The Hard Truth About Soft Skills—Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner

PROJECT: Growing Great Employees—Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers

Erika Andersen’s Growing Great Employees covers the entire cycle of employment from recruiting and hiring through career transitions. She has served as consultant and advisor to CEOs and top executives of a number of corporations, including MTV Networks.

PROJECT: Smart Women Take Risks—Six Steps for Conquering Your Fears and Making the Leap to Success

CEO, workplace consultant, and PBS television host Helene Lerner's book, Smart Women Take Risks, changes your perception about risk-taking. Her six-step process shows women how to determine whether a risk is a Best Bet, a Not Now, or a No Go.

PROJECT: Breaking The Bamboo Ceiling—Career Strategies for Asians

Author Jane Hyun is an executive coach and diversity strategist to Fortune 500 companies, universities, and non-profit organizations. Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling shatters myths and misconceptions about Asian Americans in the workplace.

PROJECT: QBQ The Question Behind the Question— Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and in Life

PROJECT: Flipping the Switch—Unleash the Power of Personal Accountability Using the QBQ!

With well over half a million of his books in print, author John G. Miller helps organizations and companies make personal accountability a core value.

FINANCIAL

PROJECT: PROGROUP

One of the nation’s first and most respected diversity training and consulting firms, Minneapolis-based ProGroup was founded in 1986 by diversity pioneers Karen Stinson and Myrna Marofsky.

PROJECT: Living Rich For Less—Create the Lifestyle You Want by Giving, Saving, and Spending Smart

Popular speaker, author of a dozen books, brand spokesperson, and mother of seven, Ellie Kay's message is geared to the 85 percent of Americans who earn between $40,000 and $100,000. In her newest book, Living Rich for Less, she sets forth her 10/10/80™ financial approach—give away 10 percent of your income, save 10 percent, and spend the last 80 percent wisely.

PROJECT: Sowing Seeds

PROJECT: Creating the Good Will —The Most Comprehensive Guide to Both the Financial and Emotional Sides of Passing on Your Legacy

Harvard Law-educated Elizabeth Arnold, founder of Sowing Seeds, has spent more than a decade coaching clients to consider the impact of their will decisions—both financial and emotional—on loved ones. She is the author of Creating the Good Will: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Both the Financial and Emotional Sides of Passing on Your Legacy.

PROJECT: Women, Take Charge of Your Money—A Biblical Path to Financial Security

PROJECT: Women, Get Answers about Your Money—Because There Are No Dumb Questions about Personal Finance

Co-host of the popular daytime show Living The Life, produced by Christian Broadcasting Network and aired on the ABC Family Channel, Virginia-based Carolyn Castleberry is the author of biblically-based financial empowerment books for women.

PROJECT: Business Risk Partners

Underwritten by Lloyd’s, Business Risk Partners specializes in providing professional liability insurance, combining expertise in Errors and Omissions (E&O) and Directors and Officers (D&O) with web based technology.

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

Strelmark assists professional service firms in all aspects of business development—from strategic planning to lead generation, oral presentation coaching to seminars on using golf as a business development tool. Based in Washington, DC, founder Hilary Bruggen Fordwich appears regularly on NewChannel8’s Capital Golf Weekly and Washington Post Radio, and is a columnist for Washington SmartCEO magazine.

PROJECT: Broderick & Company

Broderick & Company develops market strategies that focus and prioritize service offerings through an integration of market research, marketing, and business development that builds brand awareness, generates leads, creates a sales pipeline, and closes business.

TEENS

Alex and Brett Harris are leading the charge in a growing movement of young people rebelling against the low expectations of their culture by choosing to "do hard things" and lay claim to a brighter future while they are still in their teens. Authors of the best-selling Do Hard Things, the Harris twins wrote their book when they were eighteen.

PROJECT: BRAG! Connections Corporate Outreach

Fortune 500 workplace communication and leadership expert Peggy Klaus created BRAG! Connections as a corporate outreach program designed to educate the employees and consumers of the future. Based on her book, BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn, the workshop pairs professionals from individual companies with disadvantaged teens to teach networking and self-promotion skills.

PETS

PROJECT: Through a Dog's Ear Driving Edition—Music to Calm Your Dog in the Car

Psychoacoustic expert Joshua Leeds and veterinary neurologist Susan Wagner—in collaboration with Julliard graduate and worldwide concert pianist Lisa Spector—provide an indispensable source of cutting-edge research, heartwarming stories, and practical sound-based solutions to help dogs live happier, healthier lives. Their groundbreaking book, Through a Dog's Ear (which includes a 45-minute starter CD), and Driving Edition CD help to create an environment of sound that improves the well being of our canine companions.

PROJECT: The Dogs' Guide to New York City With Jack the City Dog

This is where it all began! In 1994—after a decade of managing accounts for advertising heavyweights J. Walter Thompson and Saatchi & Saatchi—Jane Rohman left the corporate world to write and self-publish The Dogs’ Guide To New York City With Jack The City Dog, the first canine guidebook of its kind. Serving as her own publicist, the book garnered remarkable national coverage in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and on NBC’s Today Show. Impressed with these results, others started calling her and asking for the name of her publicist. Upon learning Jane was “the publicist,” they hired her and the rest is history.

SOCIAL CHANGE

PROJECT: Hope’s Edge

PROJECT: Democracy’s Edge

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of fifteen books, including the 1971 three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. Lappé co-leads the Small Planet Institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

SPIRITUAL 

PROJECT: Iran—The Coming Crisis: Radical Islam, Oil, and the Nuclear Threat

PROJECT: The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad—The Revelation of Iran's Nuclear Prophet

PROJECT: The Late Great United States—What Bible Prophecy Reveals about America's Last Days

Former attorney and prolific author Mark Hitchcock, Ph.D., is an authority on the subject of bible prophecy. He has appeared on two History Channel programs and his eighteen books include Iran—The Coming Crisis, The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad, and The Late Great United States.

PROJECT: Stripped—Uncensored Grace on the Streets of Vegas

Las Vegas is one of the most visited cities in the world, ironically, second only to Mecca. But Sin City—synonymous with anything-goes behavior—is emerging as a place of spiritual renewal, according to Jud Wilhite, author of Stripped—Uncensored Grace on the Streets of Vegas. Wilhite is the 35-year-old senior pastor of Central Christian—the largest church in Las Vegas—which attracts over 12,000 people to its campuses each weekend and is one of the 50 fastest-growing churches in the nation.

PROJECT: Do I Know God? Finding Certainty in Life's Most Important Relationship

PROJECT: Unfashionable—Making a Difference in the World by Being Different

A grandson of Billy Graham, Tullian Tchividjian is the founding pastor of New City Church in Florida and a visiting professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. He is the author of Do I Know God? and Unfashionable (April 2009).

Two of Billy Graham's grandsons, Basyle and Aram Tchividjian, compiled Invitation, a coffee-table book of stories, pictures, and testimonies from people whose lives have been transformed by Graham’s ministry during the last half century.

HEALTH

Autism and comedy are unlikely bedfellows. But for Lynette Louise, creating and performing Thing To Thing To Thing, a one-woman play about raising eight children—four of whom were diagnosed on the autism spectrum—was the next logical step in an unconventional and courageous life. Through a composite of monologues, brain science, and music, she portrays the journey from fiercely determined mom to international autism expert while helping her special needs children develop into independent adults.

Author David Kirby has been a professional journalist for more than 15 years, including writing for The New York Times. In Evidence of Harm, a New York Times bestseller, he provides a serious, journalistic investigation of a controversial topic: the link between the mercury-containing vaccine preservative thimerosal and the epidemic of juvenile autism.

PROJECT: The National Autism Association

Co-founded by Laura Bono, the mission of the National Autism Association is to educate and empower families affected by autism and other neurological disorders, educate the society about autism and its causes, and provide advocacy on behalf of those who cannot fight for their own rights.

TECHNOLOGY

PROJECT: Primitive Logic

A boutique IT consultancy with big name clients, Primitive Logic specializes in network architecture, applications design and integration, web services, and security.

PROJECT: Sigma Design, eZmeeting

Led by architect Charlie White, Sigma Design specializes in collaboration software.