Lara Dunston
Travel writer Lara Dunston has authored, contributed to and updated some 50+ guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Dorling Kindersley, Footprint, AA Guides, Fodors, Insight, Thomas Cook and Hedonist's Guides, and published travel articles in magazines, newspapers and websites around the globe, from Wanderlust to Get Lost. A perpetual globetrotter, Dunston has experienced over 60 countries since she and her photographer husband started travelling together in the late 1980s. Based out of the Middle East since 1998, the couple have literally lived out of their suitcases since 2006. From 2010 to 2011, they circled the globe on a contemporary grand tour, a personal experiment in slow and sustainable travel, local travel, and experiential travel that they called Grantourismo. They chronicle about those adventures on their blog grantourismotravels.com.

Brian Gorg
Brian Gorg is the Executive Director of Families in Global Transition (FIGT), a non-profit organization focusing on cross cultural education and training to support the entire expat family. FIGT hosts an annual conference bringing together those involved with the unique world of global transition. This year, the conference will be held March 17-19 in Washington, DC. Gorg is also CEO of the Collie Gorg Group, a firm providing management solutions to associations, societies and other non-profit organizations.

Bernadette Hale
Bernadette Hale is currently the executive director of the Foreign Service Youth Foundation. She is a veteran of the diplomatic service in both the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the US Department of State (DOS). While at the FCO, she served as a management and consular affairs officer on substantive tours in Lisbon, Jakarta and Kinshasa. Additionally, she was assigned as a "Diplomatic Rover" for two years, deployed to support Embassies, High Commissions, and Consulates in countries spanning the globe, including Romania, Egypt, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guyana, the Dominican Republic and China. During periods assigned to the FCO in London, Hale worked on issues involving consular, management, administration and overseas family/children affairs.

More recently, Hale accompanied her husband to Indonesia, and served as an Eligible Family Member (EFM) in the U.S. Embassy Economic Section. During this assignment, Hale learned about the challenges faced by Foreign Service families and issues involving preschools, schools, community/family oriented activities, and children's organizations and opportunities. Hale's husband is currently serving in Afghanistan and her nine-year-old daughter Libby, who has attended three schools on three continents in the past five years, is currently thriving in Northern Virginia.

Alan Paul
Alan Paul is the author of Big in China, to be released by Harper Collins in March 2011. It is a memoir of living in China as a male accompanying spouse, raising three American children in Beijing and the unlikely success of his Chinese blues band, Woodie Alan. The book explores many issues of central concern and interest to expat families, including: raising Third Culture Kids; the challenges and joys of being an accompanying spouse; and the difficulties of being part of a very transitory community.

Paul wrote "The Expat Life" column for WSJ.com from 2005, when he moved to China, until June 2009, shortly after he moved back to the United States. Paul's columns normalized the expat experience and earned a wide following. The National Society of Newspaper Columnists named him 2008 Columnist of the Year. He also reported from Beijing for NBC, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. Paul has been a senior writer for Slam magazine since 1999 and for Guitar World magazine since 1991. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, People, ESPN.com, Rolling Stone.com, SI.com and many other publications and websites. He has contributed to The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Guide, The Insider's Guide to Beijing, and several other books. Alan, his wife Rebecca, and their three children reside in Maplewood, NJ.

You can learn more and hear Woodie Alan's music at alanpaul.net. Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlPaul