About the Experts

We always begin with DR. KEN DYCHTWALD, the moving force behind the Boomer Century documentary, and the guru of all things Boomer. He is a psychologist and gerontologist and the author of several successful books on aging, including Age Power, Bodymind, Age Wave and The Power Years. He is widely viewed as North America’s leading visionary on the personal, social, and cultural implications of what he calls the “Age Wave.”

CATHLEEN BLACK is president of Hearst Magazines. She graduated from Trinity College in Washington, DC in 1966. She sold advertising for magazines such as Holiday and Travel & Leisure before joining New York magazine in 1970. She helped launch Ms. two years later, becoming associate publisher. Black returned to New York, and was named publisher in 1979. She was the first woman to publish a weekly consumer magazine. In 1983 she took over a new newspaper, USA Today, and by 1991 its circulation had risen to 1.8 million, second only to the Wall Street Journal. Black left USA Today to head the Newspaper Association of America. In 1995, she was hired to run Hearst Magazines, which publishes Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar among others. Black is also on the board of directors of IBM and Coca-Cola.

JULIAN BOND is Chairman of the NAACP, a civil rights activist and politician. In 1960, Bond was one of several hundred students who helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1965, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives but was barred from taking his seat due to his outspoken statements against the Vietnam War. He also is president emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bond is a distinguished scholar in residence at American University in Washington, D.C., and a faculty member in the History Department at the University of Virginia.

BISHOP JOHN CHANE is the Eighth Bishop of Washington where he serves 93 congregations and 45,000 members in the District of Columbia and Maryland. He is the president and CEO of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation and has served as interim dean of the Washington National Cathedral.

Bishop Chane is an active member of many boards and advisory committees. He was recently appointed to serve on a Global Anglican Task Force investigating human rights violations in the Kingdom of Swaziland, Africa, and his diocese has established a partnership with The Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa. Bishop Chane has served the Episcopal Church in various capacities all over the country including in San Diego, Calif.; Southborough, Mass.; Erie, Pa.; and Montvale, N.J. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School.

RICHARD CHAPMAN is a veteran screenwriter and producer in film and television with particular interest in the ways journalists report on war. He recently co-wrote the Golden Globe-nominated HBO Original Film Live From Baghdad, which told the behind-the-scenes story of CNN’s coverage of the early days of the first Persian Gulf War. He is currently producing Shooting the Messengers, a feature-length documentary about how war correspondents in Vietnam covered that conflict.

He also has credits in the “entertainment” side of the television industry which includes being producer of the hits series Simon & Simon.

Chapman serves as guest lecturer in screenwriting at Washington University in St. Louis.

EVE ENSLER’S Obie Award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, translated into over 35 languages and running in theaters all over the world, initiated V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. Her work grows out of her own personal experiences with violence. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ensler’s interviews with more than 200 women. The piece celebrates women’s sexuality and strength, and exposes the violations that women endure throughout the world.

V-Day originated out of Ms. Ensler’s conversations with women who approached her after early performances of The Vagina Monologues to tell her of their own experiences of violence. She began to use performances of the play to raise funds for organizations working to stop violence. Today, V-Day is a global movement that helps anti-violence organizations throughout the world.

MAYOR SHIRLEY FRANKLIN is the recipient of the 2005 Profile in Courage Award. She became Mayor of Atlanta in 2001, having never before run for public office. She inherited an $82 million budget deficit – about a fifth of the city’s total budget – and a crisis of confidence in the public management of the city. Atlanta’s sewer system needed immediate and massive repairs, and its homeless population was growing at an alarming rate. While many cities were struggling with budget deficits and other problems, Atlanta’s woes were known to be among the most daunting.

Instead of blaming her predecessor or glossing over the depth of the crisis, Franklin responded by leveling with Atlantans about the extent of the city’s problems, and asked everyone to bear the burden of solving them. She raised property taxes nearly 50%, slashed city services and eliminated 1,000 jobs from the city payroll, cut her own staff and salary, and imposed the strictest code of ethics for public employees anywhere in the state.

MARC FREEDMAN is founder and president of Civic Ventures, and founder of The Experience Corps, the United States’ largest national service program for Americans 50 and above. Formerly Vice President of Public/Private Ventures, Freedman is author of the book, Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America.

A frequent commentator in the national media, Freedman is a high honors graduate of Swarthmore College with an MBA from Yale University. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Ashoka Senior Fellowship for social entrepreneurship and the Maxwell A. Pollack Award of the Gerontological Society of America for innovation in bringing together research and practice.

DAVID GERGEN is a commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents. For 30 years Gergen has been an active participant in American national life. He served as director of communications for President Reagan and held positions in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford. In 1993, he put his country before politics when he agreed to first serve as counselor to President Clinton on both foreign policy and domestic affairs, then as special international adviser to the president and to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Gergen is a professor of public service and the director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report where he served as editor for two-and-a-half years. During that period, he also teamed up with Mark Shields for political commentary every Friday night for five years on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

A native of Durham, North Carolina, Mr. Gergen is an honors graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Law School. He is a member of the D.C. bar. In addition, Mr. Gergen is Chairman of the National Selection Committee for the Ford Foundation’s program on Innovations in American Government. He frequently lectures here in the United States and overseas and holds fifteen honorary degrees.

DR. DANIEL GOLEMAN is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a science journalist, Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages.

His most recent book is Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. “Social intelligence” is the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence, which, according to Goleman, can now be understood in terms of recent findings from neuroscience. This new science has many implications for altruism, parenting, love, health, learning and leadership.

ERICA JONG is the author of eight novels including Fear of Flying; Fanny, Being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones; Shylock’s Daughter; Inventing Memory, a story of mothers and daughters;, and Sappho’s Leap. Several of her novels have been worldwide bestsellers. Her other books include the nonfiction works Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir; The Devil at Large, a Study of Henry Miller; Witches; and What Do Women Want?, as well as six volumes of poetry. Her latest book is, Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life.

Fear of Flying, which was first published in 1973, will be re-issued this year in a trade-paperback edition. In print in 27 languages, this modern classic has sold eight million copies in the U.S. alone, with worldwide figures reaching approximately 18 million and is frequently referred to as the genesis of “the sexual revolution” of the Seventies.

DR. CYNTHIA KENYON has been internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work in the analysis of the molecular causes of aging and signaling of lifespan control. Dr. Kenyon, having studied under 2002 Nobel laureate Dr. Sidney Brenner, was one of the first scientists to adopt the small soil nematode, C. elegans, as a study system, and now uses it to study aging and longevity.

Dr. Kenyon’s lab discovered that an insulin-like pathway regulates lifespan in C. elegans in a way that may mirror lifespan control in mammals and may lead the way for human therapies. She is currently extending her studies of lifespan to mice. Dr. Kenyon’s studies connecting insulin-signaling and aging, highlights the intriguing connection between nutrition and lifespan.

SHELLY LAZARUS has been CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies since 1997. She graduated from Smith College in 1968 and earned an MBA from Columbia University in 1970, where she was one of four women in her class. She started working at Clairol, but within a year switched Ogilvy & Mather. In 1974, she moved to Dayton, Ohio, for two years while her husband was in the Air Force, and worked as a department store buyer. In 1976, Lazarus returned to New York and to Ogilvy & Mather as an account supervisor for Avon, Ralston Purina, and Campbell’s Soup. After a series of promotions, she was named president of North American operations in 1994. In the early 1990’s, Lazarus scored two major coups: she won the American Express account, and made Ogilvy the exclusive agency for IBM, whose advertising had been split between 40 agencies. She took over from Charlotte Beers as CEO in 1996.

DR. D. QUINN MILLS consults with major corporations and appears in the Harvard Business School’s classroom to teach about leadership, strategy, and human resources. Mills arrived at the Harvard Business School in 1976. He had taught at MIT’s Sloan School of Management between 1968 and 1975, and he supplemented his MIT teaching by spending several years in Washington, DC, helping control inflation during the Vietnam War. Mills has consulted for various government agencies and is a member of the Panel of Thought Leaders of the Peter Drucker Foundation. Mills earned his MA and Ph.D. from Harvard, both in economics.

Mills was one of the first to analyze the underlying causes of the accounting scandals of 2001-03 with Buy, Lie and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and The Internet Bubble (July 2002) followed by Wheel, Deal and Steal: Deceptive Accounting, Deceitful CEOs, and Ineffective Reforms (2003).

In the early 1980’s, he was among the first to examine the effects of demographics on management and consumption. He studied the Baby Boomers in his book Not Like Our Parents: How the Baby Boom Generation Is Changing.

DR. STEVEN NOCK is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Marriage Matters project at the University of Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1976. Before coming to the University of Virginia, he was on the faculty of Tulane University, and then at the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Nock is the author of books and articles about the causes and consequences of change in the American family. He has investigated issues of privacy, unmarried fatherhood, cohabitation, commitment, divorce, and marriage. His most recent book, Marriage in Men’s Lives won the William J. Good Book Award from the American Sociological Association for the most outstanding contribution to family scholarship in 1999.

He focuses on the intersection of social science and public policy concerning households and families in America.

BILL NOVELLI is CEO of AARP, a membership organization of over 35 million people age 50 and older, half of whom are actively employed. He joined AARP in January 2000 as Associate Executive Director, Public Affairs.

Prior to joining AARP, Mr. Novelli was President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, whose mandate is to change public policies and the social environment, limit tobacco companies’ marketing and sales practices to children and serve as a counterforce to the tobacco industry and its special interests. He now serves as chairman of the board.

Previously, he was Executive Vice President of CARE, the world’s largest private relief and development organization. He was responsible for all operations in the U.S. and abroad. CARE helps impoverished people in Africa, Asia and Latin America through programs in health, agriculture, environmental protection and small business support. CARE also provides emergency relief to people in need.

REV. CAROLE O’CONNELL is Minister Emerita of the largest New Thought church in the Southeast, Unity North Atlanta. Unity is a nondenominational church which “honors diversity” and subscribes to the principle that “There is one God, but many paths.” She is a spiritual life coach and highly sought-after motivational speaker.

O’Connell is the author of The Power of Choice; Ten Steps to a Joyous Life.

FAITH POPCORN is the bestselling author of The Popcorn Report and chairman of BrainReserve, Inc., the New York-based marketing consulting firm she founded in 1974. She is recognized as one of America’s foremost trend experts. Identifying such sweeping societal concepts as “Cocooning,” “Cashing Out,” “FemaleThink,” and “Pleasure Revenge,” she has developed a unique method of understanding consumer needs to prepare her clients for the future marketplace. She has been referred to as “the trend oracle” by The New York Times and the “Nostradamus of marketing” by Fortune.

DR. TOM PRICE is a conservative Republican Congressman from a suburban Atlanta district (Georgia’s 6^th). He is also an orthopedic surgeon -- and a Boomer.

ROB REINER is a motion picture producer and director. Fame came knocking for the younger Reiner when Norman Lear cast him as Mike ’Meathead’ Stivic, Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law (and straight man), on the classic 1970’s series All in the Family. The groundbreaking show gave humor to the divisive issues of the Seventies and put faces and names to “the generation gap.”

He wrote and directed a Boomer cult favorite, This Is Spinal Tap, a mock “rockumentary” that parodied the popular genre of the early Boomer Generation.

He also directed and/or produced Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. A Few Good Men, a film he coproduced, was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1992.

JEREMY SIEGEL is a regular columnist for Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, Yahoo! Finance and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and The Financial Times. Siegel is frequently called upon by CNN, CNBC and NPR to share his stock market expertise.

TONY SNOW is President George W. Bush’s Press Secretary. Prior to his current assignment, he was an outspoken conservative presenter for Fox News radio and television, and is the first Washington commentator to be appointed to the White House role. Having done a stint as chief speech writer for President George W. Bush’s father when he was president, he can claim to straddle both press and politics.

NEIL STEINBERG, in association with Dr. Ken Dychtwald, has produced over 20 hours of documentary television programming directly related to aging issues. He also has had a diverse career in motion picture and entertainment television production. He is the director and co-producer of The Boomer Century, 1946-2046 – the PBS documentary for which this book is the companion.

LEONARD STEINHORN is a professor of communication at American University, where he teaches politics, media, and culture. He is the author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy. He has written for major media, including The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, International Herald Tribune, Salon.com, the History News Network, and appears frequently on broadcast news shows. He is a former political speechwriter and is coauthor of By the Color of Our Skin, a critically acclaimed book on race relations.

OLIVER STONE After a year at Yale, Stone dropped out and moved to Vietnam, where he taught English for a year. A year in Mexico followed, during which he wrote an unpublished novel and got arrested for marijuana possession. In 1967, Stone enlisted in the military and went to Vietnam, where he received both a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Upon his return from Vietnam, Stone enrolled at New York University, where he studied filmmaking under Martin Scorsese.

In 1978 he won his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Midnight Express. In 1986 Stone had his directorial breakthrough with his internationally acclaimed Platoon which won the Best Picture award in 1986. His other film directing credits read like a list on the “shared formative experiences” of the Boomer Generation: Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, and Wall Street to name a few. His most recent film is World Trade Center.

JEFF TAYLOR has reinvented the way job hunters seek employment. His “monster idea,” conceived at the dawn of the World Wide Web, quickly became one of the first dot-com companies (454th registered domain on the Web) and Monster.com has since become the world’s leading online career site. Today, the Monster global network consists of 22 local content and language sites in 20 countries and serves 20 million unique visitors monthly.

Taylor left Monster.com in August 2005 to pursue a new unprecedented venture targeting people 50+ and he now serves as Eons’ (eons.com) CEO and founder.

DR. LESTER THUROW has been a professor of management and economics at MIT for more than 30 years, beginning in 1968. He was dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1987 until 1993. His formal academic work focuses on globalization, economic instability and the distribution of income and wealth. Mr. Thurow writes for the general public in a number of American and international newspapers.

A prolific writer, Thurow is the author of several books. Among them are: Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America; The Future of Capitalis;, and Building Wealth, all of which became New York Times best sellers. In the past, Dr. Thurow has served on the Editorial Board of the New York Times, as a contributing editor for Newsweek, and as a member of TIME magazine’s Board of Economists.

DR. FERNANDO TORRES-GIL is associate dean of Academic Affairs at UCLA, where he also serves as Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy, and Director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging. Previously, he was a Professor of Gerontology and Public Administration at the University of Southern California and continues as an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC.

Professor Torres-Gil is an expert in the fields of health and long-term care, the politics of aging, social policy, ethnicity, and disability. He is the author of four books and more than 80 articles and book chapters, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. In recognition of his many academic accomplishments, he was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 1985 and the National Academy of Public Administration in 1995. He has served as President of the American Society on Aging and is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

His academic accomplishments parallel his extensive government and public policy experience. He served as the first-ever Assistant Secretary for Aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). As the Clinton Administration’s chief advocate on aging, Torres-Gil played a key role in promoting the importance of aging, long-term care, and disability issues, in consolidating federal programs for older persons, and in helping Baby Boomers redefine retirement in a post-pension era. He worked with HHS Secretary Donna Shalala in overseeing aging policy throughout the Federal government, managed the Administration on Aging and was responsible for organizing the 1995 White House Conference on Aging. He also served as a member of the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.

DR. ANDREW WEIL, MD is Director of the Program in Integrative Medicine of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona. He also holds appointments as Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine and Clinical Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine. He has a general practice in Tucson, focusing on natural and preventive medicine and diagnosis. Dr. Weil is also the founder of the Foundation for Integrative Medicine in Tucson and editor-in-chief of the journal Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Weil is the author of many scientific and popular articles and of seven books: The Natural Mind; The Marriage of the Sun and Moon; From Chocolate to Morphine (with Winifred Rosen); Health and Healing; Natural Health, Natural Medicine; Spontaneous Healing; and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health. Dr. Weil also publishes a monthly newsletter, Dr. Andrew Weil’s Self Healing, maintains a popular website, “Ask Dr. Weil,” on the Time-Warner pathfinder network (www.drweil.com), and appears in two videos featured on PBS: Spontaneous Healing and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health.

JOEL WESTBROOK is an Emmy-winning documentary producer (Lost Civilizations, Time-Life/NBC). As director of original programming at Turner Broadcasting, he oversaw the production of several seasons of National Geographic Explorer which included several seasons of Jacques Cousteau’s inspiring underwater adventures. Other documentary series produced by Westbrook have appeared on TLC.

Westbrook is the producer of the documentary for which this book is the “companion.”

DR. JOSHUA ZEITZ is a former editor at American Heritage magazine and teaches history at the University of Cambridge, in England. He is completing revisions on his first book, White Ethnic New York: Religion, Ethnicity and Political Culture in Post-War Gotham, 1945-1970. He is also the author of Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern.