Mary Emery is the Director of the EDA-sponsored curriculum dissemination project and is the Associate Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. In this position she works on a variety of initiatives related to rural and community development including managing a project on coaching for community change, conducting listening sessions on entrepreneurship, and using the Community Capitals Framework in evaluation and program planning. She has taken an active role in the evaluation of the HomeTown Competitiveness and other community change initiatives. She also helps manage the Great Plains IDEA interdisciplinary inter-university distance Master’s degree in Community Development. Her experience in community development has focused on capacity building, leadership development, entrepreneurship, and community change initiatives connected with her work in Idaho with Lewis-Clark College, in Nebraska with the Heartland Center for Leadership Development, and now in Iowa with the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development.. Her work with Native Communities includes building a base of best practices that increase civic participation, educational access and equitable economic development at tribal and native-serving colleges. Her publications include recent articles on rural entrepreneurship and community capacity building in the Journal of the Community Development Society. She holds PhD in Sociology from Rutgers University.

Alan Barefield is the Associate Director of the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) and Extension Professor with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. His primary roles are to facilitate economic and community development educational programming efforts with the Extension Service and the Southern region. Specific areas addressed include business and entrepreneurship development in the areas of value-added agriculture, tourism, light manufacturing and retail; leadership; community economic and social analysis; and community infrastructure development and analysis.

Lionel (Bo) Beaulieu is Director of the Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) and Professor of Rural Sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Mississippi State University. Dr. Beaulieu's professional efforts have been devoted to human and social capital resource issues in the rural U.S. and South; the educational success of rural youth; and the expansion of rural civic engagement. His most recent work has been to help organize and develop a comprehensive set of socioeconomic measures available on all counties in the Southern region, a database that is being used to inform and guide the work of local governments, agencies, and community leaders in the South. He is the author of numerous publications, including edited book volumes, book chapters and articles that address rural development, education and labor force issues in rural America. One of his more recent works is a co-edited volume (along with Dr. Jeff Jordan) of the Journal of the Community Development Society titled, Connecting Community and Agriculture: Promoting Sustainable Community Innovations (Volume 38, Issue 2, 2007). Dr. Beaulieu received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from Purdue University. He completed his term as president of the Rural Sociological Society (RSS) in August 2004. He currently serves as Editor of Rural Realities, a policy and information series sponsored by the RSS.