John Gastil is associate professor of communication at the University of Washington. He has collaborated with members of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC), the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), AmericaSpeaks, and the Kettering Foundation's National Issues Forums. He is the author of Democracy in Small Groups and By Popular Demand.

Peter Levine is deputy director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and a research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, both housed in the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs. He is a cofounder of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and author of The New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy.