John Graham is the author of "Stick Your Neck Out; A Street-smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond" (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005) and "Sit Down Young Stranger" (Langley: Packard Books, 2008). He is also President of the Giraffe Heroes Project www.giraffe.org [3] and a former U.S. diplomat.

Cricket White currently serves as the national director for training and program development for Initiatives of Change, USA. She has trained facilitators in cities across the United States and in several countries. Her work in the US has focused on designing and delivering curriculum and dialogue formats that enhance trust building and honest conversation between individuals and groups who are separated by ideology, religion, race, class and/or culture.

Mike Brown and his wife, Jean, both writers, have worked since their student days with Initiatives of Change - including 10 years in India and 9 in America. Mike began writing in the 1960s as editor of a youth tabloid in Los Angeles. He spent 8 years on the staff of ‘Himmat’ magazine, a conscience-based news weekly in India. In 2003 his first book was published, 'No Longer Down Under - Australians creating change'. For 20 years both Mike has been active in the Australian reconciliation movement between Aboriginal people and the wider population. In 2000 he received the 'Non-Indigenous Person of the Year' award in his State. Since 2001 he has been one of the coordinators of Action for Life, an inter-generational community of 40 people from 21 countries moving through Asia.

Mary Lean is a writer, editor and spiritual director, living in Oxford. She co-edited Initiative of Change's international magazine, For A Change, from 1987 to 2006. She is author of 'Bread, Bricks and Belief: communities in charge of their future', which examines the role of spiritual change as a catalyst for community development.

After studying Microbiology, Mike joined the staff of For A Change magazine in 1987. An interest in the peoples behind Europe's 'Iron curtain' took him to several of these countries before, during and after the 1989 collapse of communist regimes. With his wife, Karen, he taught English in Poland 1992-3 before returning to the UK where he joined the Foundations for Freedom program http://www.f-4-f.org [11] helping run training programmes for young leaders in former communist countries.

Rob Corcoran is the National Director of Initiatives of Change and founder of Hope in the Cities.