Sarah Draugelis

Professional dancer

Ever have one of those uncomfortably humbling moments that knocks you in the gut? Totally blows the wind right out of you?

Carolyn S. Miles

President & CEO, Save the Children

Most American children who are running entered kindergarten at age five with little idea what a huge victory reaching age five truly is. I imagine some will celebrate breaking the world record, but I am thinking about the birthday parties for those 5-year-olds around the world who, without continued effort, would never have completed the race.

Gabrey Means

Co-founder & Creative Director, Grow Marketing

With everything else on an entrepreneur's to-do list, a plan for social good may seem like "nice to have" or just too complicated to add to the mix. But you don't have to commit to saving the entire world on day one.

Kathy Stevens

Founder and director, Catskill Animal Sanctuary

Paulie quickly learned the sound of my car, charged to my car door when he heard it, squawking and hopping up and down like a lunatic, wanting a car ride. Paulie loved sitting in my lap and driving around town!

Gilles Peress, Hamilton Fish and Stona Fitch

Research published in the journal Science recently shows that fiction readers have more evolved social skills. In short, fiction makes you more polite. We think it goes further than that.

Hannah Helsabeck

President and co-founder, Wild Mint

Often overlooked are the potential toxins that could be lurking in those cans, contaminating the food, and negatively affecting people's health. For the second year in a row, I'm hosting a "No-Can-Ber" challenge to help shed light on a healthier way to spend the month, hoping to inspire some to make a positive lifestyle change

Ellen Stumbo

Writer

My mother and this relationship we had. So tested, yet so strong. More than anyone else, I cared about what she thought. Maybe because I knew I was so much like her. Maybe because if I saw strength in her, I knew I could be strong too.

Jack Healey

Founder, Human Rights Action Center

Have not enough Americans of all ethnic, religious, and other differences felt like unwelcome outsiders enough? I too like the team that throws a pigskin for D.C., but "Redskin" is an unacceptable epithet.

Wendy N. Powell

Mgt Consultant; Professor; Career Expert; Author, Management Experience Acquired

Once more, we have we become so visibly intolerant of opinions, religions and cultural norms that we are unable to appreciate our differences. Instead, a few people destroy American celebrations that are steeped in tradition.

Kate Quarfordt

Educator, writer, theater director, artist and mother. www.katequarfordt.com

It's two weeks from opening night of Dead End, the first-ever production in Irondale's 30-year history that puts teenage actors from the group's Young Company in prominent roles alongside their professional adult counterparts.

Pamme Boutselis

Writer

By the time, he was a young teen he weighed in at around 300 lbs., learned his father had drank and drugged away his college fund and felt he had little prospect for any type of a real future. Cause and effect.

Khary Lazarre-White

Social entrepreneur, attorney, Executive Director of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol

Will we recognize that we cannot incarcerate children at a cost of $210,000 in facilities that display a recidivism rate nearing 90 percent, that we cannot continue to have the largest prison population in the world and that we cannot maintain a school to prison pipeline?

Nicole Seagriff

Board member, The Pink Agenda

When turning 27 years old, you expect some major life changes to take place. For some, it's a job promotion. For others, it's marriage or the birth of a child. For me, it was cancer. Just two weeks after my 27th birthday, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with breast cancer.

Emily Spitzer

Executive director, National Health Law Program

How fitting that this year Breast Cancer Awareness Month also coincides with the launch of the Affordable Care Act's Health Care Marketplaces.

Jared Bernstein

Fmr. Obama administration economist; CNBC and MSNBC contributor

Many of us have literally been working on health care reform for decades. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, advocates in particular and the nation in general scored a milestone victory.

Tavis Smiley

PBS talk show host, PRI radio host, NYT bestselling author

Tonight on PBS, I sit down with Dr. Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States.

Search for Common Ground

I was born 27 years ago in Goma, a town notorious for violent outbreaks. Instability exposed the darkest side of my beautiful Democratic Republic of Congo.