Dr. Leonard Sax is a family physician and a research psychologist in Maryland, where his practice includes about 2,000 children. He believes that there are gender differences in how children learn, and that those differences are neglected or minimized in American public schools. He speaks often on the subject and has written numerous publications, including the books, “Why Gender Matters: what parents and teachers need to know about the emerging science of sex differences” and “Boys Adrift: The five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys.”

Lise Eliot is an associate professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and the author of What's Going On In There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. Her most recent book is Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It. Dr. Eliot has published more than 40 works, including articles in peer-reviewed journals, popular magazines, and a monograph on brain development in children. She also won a Whiteley Scholarship from the University of Washington to work on a forthcoming book about sex differences in the developing brain, to be published by Houghton-Mifflin.

Michael Reist is a teacher with over 25 years’ experience in the classroom. He heads the English Department at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East. He and his wife homeschooled their four children through the elementary years. He is a frequent speaker to local parent groups and education conferences on everything from homeschooling, to how boys and girls learn differently, to bullying. Michael is the author of “The Dysfunctional School: Uncomfortable Truths and Awkward Insights on School, Learning and Teaching”. He writes extensively for publications and has traveled throughout Ontario for the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association presenting his workshop entitled “Replacing the Hard Drive: New Ways of Being a Teacher”. He is a founder of the famous democratic free school in Toronto called The Beach School. He lives in Caledon East with his family.