Robert L. Borosage is the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future. Previously, Borosage founded and directed the Campaign for New Priorities, a nonprofit organization calling for post-Cold War reinvestment in America. He is the author of The Next Agenda: Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement. Borosage’s work has appeared in a number of mainstream and progressive publications, and he is a frequent television and radio commentator. In 1988, he was senior issues advisor to the presidential campaign of Rev. Jesse Jackson. He has also served as an issues advisor to many progressive political campaigns, including those of Senators Carol Moseley Braun, Barbara Boxer, and Paul Wellstone.

Mike Konczal is a fellow with the Roosevelt Institute. He works on financial reform, the 21st century economy, unemployment, inequality, access to financial services and what it means to have a social contract in a financialized, post-industrial economy.

His research on financial reform, the deficit and the unemployment crisis has had extensive coverage, and his blog has been named one of the Top 25 Best Economic and Finance Blogs by Time Magazine. His work has appeared at The American Prospect, NPR’s Planet Money, Slate, Baseline Scenario, Atlantic Monthly’s Business Channel and The Nation.

Gerald L. Taylor is an experienced and highly successful organizer as a member of the National Staff of an international network of citizen organizers, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Gerald Taylor currently directs work in the Southeastern region of the IAF in the United States. He has worked for the IAF for 28 years. In the 1960’s, Gerald Taylor was a national youth leader in the American civil rights movement and served as the New York State President of the NAACP Youth and College Division. He also served on the National Board of Directors for the National Urban League where he worked with Whitney Young. As a Fellow in the Metropolitan Applied Research Center organized by Dr. Kenneth Clark, he worked on strategies and research for cutting edge civil rights issues. During the 1970’s, he taught at the Harlem Preparatory School, a national model for subsequent independent public schools. He is an internationally known community organizer, with a track record of overseeing a range of community campaigns and efforts, from school reform in Baltimore, Maryland, to housing, living wage legislation, and economic development in Memphis, Charlotte, Durham, and other areas. Taylor served as international auditor for the Lessons project’s roundtable on Building Citizen Capacity on 3 June 2004, and also returned for the roundtable on Land Reform on 12 August. After Hurricane Katrina, he began an organizing effort in the African-American communities along the Mississippi Gulf coast to rebuild historic African-American communities. He has been involved in the formation and development of policy to assist displaced households, churches and small businesses recover in the wake of the storm.

When “too-big-to-fail" financial service institutions collapsed the global economy, like most Americans, Mary was steamed. When financial reform legislation started winding its way through Congress, Wall Street wizardry put too many of the policy debates out of reach of average Americans. To engage the Netroots in the reform debate, Mary launched the BanksterUSA.org site where folks urged the FBI to “Book the Crooks” and Congress to “Repo the Dough” in the form of a financial transaction tax. Mary is also on the board of Americans for Financial Reform, the unprecedented coalition of 250 groups (including labor, consumer and housing groups) fighting to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, control Wall Street speculation and hold the big banks accountable. Learn more at Ourfinancialsecurity.org.

CMD is located in Madison, WI and attracted hundreds of thousands of new visitors to their PRwatch.org site with live reporting on the spontaneous uprising against Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to ban collective bargaining and his attempt to blame public workers – and not Wall Street banks -- for the state of the economy. CMD produced reams of original reporting on the Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and the other corporations and front groups backing this assault on American workers. Mary’s work on the Wisconsin uprising was carried by many sites including Common Dreams, the Huffington Post, Campaign for Americas Future, Talking Points Memo, Alternet and more.