Maria Teresa Meloni is a Florentine portrait painter. Given her first set of oils at age seven, she began imitating what she saw in the Uffizi and the Academia, particularly images of the Madonna and Child. An exhibit in Milan at Palazzo Visconti in 2004 received such critical acclaim that Meloni is booked until 2013. Each painting takes roughly four months to complete and although Meloni does paint adults, she specializes in children. A soprano, Meloni has been known to belt out arias in order to loosen up her clients, who include: Matthew Mellon, Valesca Guerrand Hermes, the grand daughter of Princess Luciana Barberini and the late actor Heath Ledger. Educated in Genoa and Milan, Meloni has studios in New York and in her native city Florence.

Jacob Lief is the co founder of Ubuntu Education Fund, a nonprofit community-based organization that works with the people of Port Elizabeth to develop educational and health initiatives. Over the past eight years, Jacob has served as Ubuntu's President and has grown the non-profit from a small fund supplying basic educational materials to an international development organization employing over 55 people in the township of Zwide. Ubuntu now reaches over 40,000 orphaned and vulnerable children and 13,000 adults. Lief is also the recent recipient of the Crystal Eagle Award for outstanding service to humanity and the Douglass Dignitary Award for Exemplary Service to the Harlem Community.

Billy Parrish, 26, is Founder of the Climate Campaign, and Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Energy Action Coalition. His focus has been on coalition-building within the youth movement, designing collaborative campaigns and leadership training. Recently named a "Fellow" by Ashoka, the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs, Parrish was Mother Jones magazine's 2006 "Student Activist of the Year," Rolling Stone's "Climate Hero" in 2005, and a 2004 Brower Youth Award Winner. Born in New York City, he now lives in Flagstaff, AZ with his wife and daughter. Parrish dropped out of Yale in 2002 in order to pursue environmental activism full time.

A conceptual artist based in Miami, Bert Rodriguez explores the boundary between the obvious and the sublime. Rodriguez, 32, is one of 81 artists currently exhibiting their work at the 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. His installation In the Beginning is a performance piece - a large white minimalist box, into which he invites visitors for therapy sessions. Named The Miami Times News best local artist in 2006, Rodriguez showed his work for two consecutive years at Miami's Art Basel and received a $15,000 grant to complete a photo installation on the exterior of The Miami Herald building. Rodriguez graduated with a BFA from the University of Florida in 1998.

Dan Hoyle is the writer/star of a one-man hit show about the politics of oil in Nigeria, titled "Tings Dey Happen." Inspired by Mr. Hoyle's experiences as a Fulbright Scholar in Nigeria, the satirical drama opened last year to sold-out crowds in Hoyle's hometown of San Francisco, then travelled to New York City, for an extended run at The Culture Project. "Tings Dey Happen," which was recently honored by the prestigious Glickman Award, marked the third of Hoyle's nationally acclaimed solo productions, including the "Circumnavigator" in 2004 and "Florida 2004: The Big Bummer," the previous year. Hoyle, 27, graduated from Northwestern University with a double degree in Performance Studies and History.

Working at the intersection of high art and daily news, Andrew Kuo uses the ever-proliferating flow of data and metrics to create graphic meditations on contemporary anxiety. A series of Mr. Kuo's elaborate charts and diagrams dissecting his concert-going experiences have been a recurring feature over the past several months in The New York Times' music section. Mr. Kuo's most recent solo exhibition, "What Me Worry" was on display at the 33 Bond Gallery in Manhattan from October 2007 to January 2008. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1999, Mr. Kuo relocated to New York City, where his first solo exhibition opened to critical acclaim in 2001.

Alexis Sinduhije is a presidential candidate in Burundi's 2010 Elections. Before announcing his candidacy last month, Sinduhije was one of Burundi's pioneering radio journalists and civic leaders who was awarded the CPJ's 2004 International Press Freedom Award. He is a leading voice for the rule of law in the great lakes region and in Africa as a whole. Already Sinduhije's investigation of ethnic massacres and outspoken public criticisms of the government's hit squads have earned him death threats and two recent assassination attempts.

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is an MIT trained engineer who has spent the past ten years covering environmental and energy issues for The Economist Magazine. His first book, Power for the People, How the Coming Energy Revolution will Change our Lives, and maybe even Save the Planet was published in 2005. He has just co-authored his second book, ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, with Iain Carson.

The Dillinger Escape Plan is a heavy metal rock band known for intense instrumentation and pounding performances that incorporate light shows, fireworks, fire breathing, and other special effects. Also known as DEP, the band was founded in 1996 by Ben Weinman - lead guitarist, and Chris Pennie - drummer, and recorded their first album with Relapse Records the following year. The band broke through with their second album, Calculating Infinity, which was widely acclaimed by underground and mainstream press. Ireworks, their latest album was released in November.

Caroline Casey is a social entrepreneur who established the Aisling Foundation in 2000 as part of a unique initiative to promote and enhance a positive image of disability. Caroline herself is visually impaired to the extent that she is considered legally blind. The foundation?s mission is to promote the ability of people with disabilities, focusing on empowering business in the employment of people with disabilities. To this end, Caroline created The 02 Ability Awards in 2005 in Ireland, the first of their kind. In 2006, Casey was appointed a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and in 2007, she was chosen as Ireland?s Eisenhower Fellow.

Marié Digby is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and pianist. She is best known for her acoustic cover version of Rihanna's No. 1 hit "Umbrella", which was a huge hit on YouTube in 2007. Digby, who is of Irish and Japanese descent, began writing songs in high school in LA and after graduating, spent one year at Berkeley before leaving to concentrate full-time on her music. Marie is currently touring local venues across the country to promote her debut album which will be released in February

Anna Schuleit is a visual artist whose large-scale installations revolve around the archaeology and remembrance of public sites and modern ruins. Her recent work explores the social history and architectural decay of state mental hospitals. Old documents, stray narratives, and a love for abstraction inspire her work. A 2005 graduate of Dartmouth's Master of Arts and Liberal Studies Program, Schuleit was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2006.

Born in Lahore in 1972, Sughra Imam was elected in 2002 as an MPA (Member of Provincial Assembly) of the Provincial Assembly of the Punjab in Pakistan. She was appointed Minister for Social Welfare in 2003 and resigned in June 2004. Sughra graduated in 1994 from Harvard University and then worked at several US based organizations, prior to returning to Pakistan where she currently resides.

Kimberly Donaldson, is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Bottlenotes, a customized wine club service and retail website. Prior to this, she founded the Donaldson Design Group, a corporate branding, graphic design and marketing firm based in New York. She has worked as a consultant to Kobrand Corporation, creating marketing programs for various wineries including Cakebread Cellars. Kimberly received a B.A. from Yale and a Master of Fine Arts from Boston University School for the Arts.

Nell Freudenberger, 32, won the prestigious PEN/Malamud Award for her first book, a collection of short stories entitled Lucky Girls, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2003. Three years later, Ms. Freudenberger wrote her first novel, The Dissident, a story about a Chinese performance artist and political dissident living as an artist in residence in Los Angeles. In addition to writing books, Ms. Freudenberger regularly contributes reviews and non-fiction articles to publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, Travel + Leisure and The Telegraph Magazine, and The Nation. In 2007, Ms. Freudenberger was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga 34, is the founder and main author of Daily Kos, a weblog focusing on liberal, and Democratic Party politics. After a sixth six month interviewing process at the CIA, Moulitsas founded Daily Kos in May 2002, and the site quickly rose to prominence. It now has an average weekday traffic of about 600,000 visits, and has between 14 million and 24 million visits per month. Moulitsas currently resides in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.