The Hon. Bart Gordon (D-TN, 1985-2011) joined K&L Gates as partner in the Washington, D.C. office after 26 years representing the state of Tennessee in the United States House of Representatives. During his time in Congress, he served as Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology from 2007 to 2010. He was also a senior member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and served on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Rules, Transatlantic Parliamentary Dialogue, and NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Throughout his political career, Bart led the debate on a wide range of technology issues and formulated legislative initiatives on a number of other subjects, including health information technology, nuclear power, rare earth minerals, and synthetic biotechnology. Bart was also a leading proponent of America's space program, and of improving the nation's performance in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. He is also a “Distinguished Fellow” on the Council on Competitiveness and appointed by President Obama to the Blue Ribbon Panel of the Antarctica and Southern Oceans. He is a member of the Brookings Leadership Advisory Board and is a project member for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' New Models for U.S. Science and Technology Policy. He is a Board Member of the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress and the Middle Tennessee State University Foundation, and he is on the Board of Counselors for the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. Bart is a member of the Tennessee bar and the District of Columbia bar.

Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-AR, 1997-2003) is a former U.S. Senator from Arkansas, having served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and one term in the U.S. Senate. He spent nearly two decades in elective office, having started his career as an Arkansas state representative in 1985. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 and four years later became the first Republican ever popularly elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of Arkansas. In the Senate, Tim served on several committees, including the Agriculture Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He also served on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, taking a leading role in the passage of Education Savings Accounts, and helped shape the Leave No Child Behind legislation. While in the House of Representatives, Tim served on the Education and Labor Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. In both the House and the Senate, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee, chairing the House Subcommittee on Health. He was the original sponsor of child tax credit legislation and was a key figure in reauthorizing the 1996 welfare reform law. He was also deputy whip in the GOP leadership teams in both the House and the Senate. Tim currently serves on the Board of the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress.

Dina Smeltz has 25 years of experience designing and fielding international social and political surveys. She joined the Chicago Council on Global Affairs as senior fellow on public opinion and foreign policy in 2012. She oversees the Council's well-known annual survey of American attitudes toward foreign policy and has authored and co-authored many of the analyses based on that work. She also directs the Council's collaboration with Russian, Mexican, Canadian, Australian, and East Asian research organizations. Smeltz has published commentary on public opinion and international issues in The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, POLITICO, RealClearWorld, Foreign Policy, and the Council's survey blog (Running Numbers). As the director of research in the Middle East and South Asia division (2001-2007) and analyst/director of the European division (1992-2004) in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US State Department's Office of Research, Smeltz conducted over a hundred surveys in these regions and regularly briefed senior government officials on key research findings. Smeltz has an MA from the University of Michigan and a BS from Pennsylvania State University.

Leonard Steinhorn is a professor of communication and affiliate professor of history at American University and the former political analyst for CBS News Radio. He is the author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy and co-author of By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race, books that have generated widespread discussion and debate, and he is currently writing a book on America in the 1960s. Professor Steinhorn’s writings have been featured in several publications, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Politico, and Huffington Post, and he has served as an on-air historian for documentaries on CNN and The History Channel. Steinhorn is recognized as an expert in American politics and presidential elections; recent American history; race relations; and political and strategic communication. He has twice been named Faculty Member of the Year at American University.