Peter Kareiva is the chief scientist and a vice president for The Nature Conservancy, the world's largest conservation organization, with over 500 scientists on staff. He also maintains an appointment at Santa Clara University. Before moving to The Nature Conservancy, Dr. Kareiva was the director of the Division of Conservation Biology at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center. He has served on the editorial board of over a dozen different journals, edited seven books, and been a faculty member at Brown University and the Universities of Washington and Virginia.

Michelle Marvier is a professor of environmental science at Santa Clara University, where she has taught undergraduate courses in conservation science since 2000. She has published more than 40 articles, is on the editorial board of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, and regularly publishes articles with her undergraduate students. Dr. Marvier has also worked for NOAA Fisheries on salmon conservation and has served as an adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and The Nature Conservancy on matters of statistics, monitoring, and risk analysis.