Philip Hampson "Phil" Knight (born February 24, 1938) is an American business magnate. A native of Oregon, he is the co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc., and previously served as the chief executive officer of Nike. By 2011, Knight's stake in Nike gave him an estimated net worth of US$14.4 billion, making him the 47th richest person in the world and the 19th richest American.

A graduate of the University of Oregon and Stanford Graduate School of Business, he has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools; Knight gave the largest donation in history at the time to Stanford's business school in 2006. A native Oregonian, he ran track under coach Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon, with whom he would co-found Nike.

Phil Knight is the son of "a lawyer turned newspaper publisher", William W. Knight, and his wife Lota (Hatfield) Knight. Growing up in the Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland, he attended Cleveland High School in Portland. According to one source, "When his father refused to give him a summer job at his newspaper [the Oregon Journal], believing that his son should find work on his own, Buck went to the rival Oregonian, where he worked the night shift tabulating sports scores and every morning ran home the full seven miles."

Joseph Vincent "Joe" Paterno (pronounced /pəˈtɜrnoʊ/; December 21, 1926 – January 22, 2012), often referred to as "JoePa", was an American college football coach who was the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions for nearly 46 years, from 1966 through 2011. At the time of his death he held the record for the most victories by an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football coach with 409 and was the only FBS coach to reach 400 victories. He coached five undefeated teams that won major bowl games and, in 2007, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach. Despite his achievements as a coach, Paterno's career ended abruptly in 2011 after he was fired for his "failure of leadership" in the child sex abuse scandal surrounding his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

Paterno was born in Brooklyn, New York and attended Brown University, where he played football both as the quarterback and a cornerback. Originally planning to be a lawyer, he instead signed on as an assistant football coach at Penn State in 1950, persuaded by his college coach Rip Engle who had taken over as Penn State's head coach. Sixteen years later, in 1966, Paterno was named as Engle's successor. Before long, he had coached the team to two undefeated regular seasons in 1968 and 1969. He went on to win two national championships—in 1982 and again in 1986. In all, he led the Nittany Lions to 37 bowl appearances with 24 wins all while turning down offers to coach NFL teams, including the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots. Paterno became the winningest coach in Division I history on October 29, 2011.

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism in his written and cinematic works.

Moore was born in Flint, Michigan, and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Veronica (née Wall), a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

Laura Ries is an author of marketing books and co-founder of the consulting firm Ries & Ries with her father, Al Ries.

Ries attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she graduated “with highest distinction” from Northwestern’s School of Speech in 1993, finishing in the top 2% of her class.^{[citation needed]}

After graduation, Laura worked at TBWA Advertising in New York City as an account executive on the Woolite and Evian brands.^{[citation needed]}

In 1993, Laura partnered with her father to form Ries & Ries. Together they have consulted with many Fortune 500 companies.^{[citation needed]}

In 2002, Business 2.0 named Laura a “management guru” and issued trading cards with her picture and statistics on them.

Laura has appeared on CNN, Fox News, CNBC, CNN Headline, ABC World News Tonight and the CBS Early Show. She is a frequently quoted marketing expert in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Associated Press, Advertising Age and other publications.^{[citation needed]}

Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American journalist, author, and television personality. He is the primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories. As of September 2011, he also serves as host of his own eponymous syndicated daytime talk show, Anderson.

Anderson Hays Cooper was born on June 3, 1967, the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, and is a great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt of the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune. Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar. He is also a descendant, through his mother, of Brevet Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick who was with Union General William T. Sherman in his March through Georgia.

At the age of 3 Cooper was a guest on The Tonight Show on September 17, 1970, appearing with his mother. At the age of 9, he appeared on To Tell the Truth as an impostor. From age 10 to 13 Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.