Carl Milton Levin (born June 28, 1934) is the senior United States Senator from Michigan, serving since 1979. He is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

He has been Michigan's senior senator since 1995. He has served as a U.S. Senator longer than any Senator in Michigan history. He was elected to a sixth term in 2008, which will end in January 2015. He is the younger brother of U.S. Representative Sander M. Levin.

Levin was born in Detroit, the son of Jewish parents Bess (née Levinson) and Saul R. Levin. He attended Detroit public schools and graduated from Swarthmore College in 1956 and from Harvard Law School in 1959. Soon after earning his law degree, he was admitted to the Michigan bar and opened a practice in Detroit, where he still lives. He received honorary degrees from Michigan State University in 2004, Wayne State University in 2005, and Michigan Technological University in 2008.

He was state assistant police officer and general counsel for the Michigan civil rights commission from 1964 to 1967. He was special assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan and chief appellate defender for the city of Detroit from 1968 to 1969. He was a member of the Detroit City Council from 1969 to 1977, serving two four-year terms, the last four years as council president.

Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954) is an American business executive. He is currently the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He has been in this position since the May 31, 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush.

Blankfein was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to a Jewish family and reared in Brooklyn's Linden Houses, part of the New York City Housing Authority.^{[citation needed]} His father was a clerk with the U.S. Postal Service branch in the Manhattan borough of New York City and his mother was a receptionist. As a boy, he worked as a concession vendor at Yankee Stadium. He received primary and secondary education in the public schools of the New York City Department of Education, and was the valedictorian at Thomas Jefferson High School in 1971. He attended Harvard College, where he lived in Winthrop House, and earned his A.B. in 1975. In 1978, Blankfein received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

Blankfein worked as a corporate tax lawyer for the law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. In 1981, he joined Goldman's commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Co., as a precious metals salesman in its London office.

David Howell Petraeus (pronunciation: /pɨˈtreɪ.əs/; born November 7, 1952) is the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He was sworn in on September 6, 2011. Prior to his assuming the directorship of the CIA, Petraeus was a four-star general serving over 37 years in the United States Army. His last assignments in the Army were as commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from July 4, 2010 to July 18, 2011. His other four-star assignments include serving as the 10th Commander, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) from October 13, 2008, to June 30, 2010, and as Commanding General, Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) from February 10, 2007, to September 16, 2008. As commander of MNF-I, Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq.

Petraeus has a B.S. degree from the United States Military Academy from which he graduated in 1974 as a distinguished cadet (top 5% of his class). He was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College class of 1983. He subsequently earned an M.P.A. in 1985 and a Ph.D. degree in International Relations in 1987 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He later served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the United States Military Academy and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University.

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican presidential nominee in the 2008 United States election.

McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. In October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds left him with lifelong physical limitations.

He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms, and was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily four times, most recently in 2010. While generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a "maverick" for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. After being investigated and largely exonerated in a political influence scandal of the 1980s as a member of the Keating Five, he made campaign finance reform one of his signature concerns, which eventually led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002. He is also known for his work towards restoring diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, and for his belief that the war in Iraq should be fought to a successful conclusion. McCain has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, opposed spending that he considered to be pork barrel, and played a key role in alleviating a crisis over judicial nominations.

Eleanor Mary Josaitis (née Reed; December 17, 1931 – August 9, 2011) was the co-founder of Focus: HOPE. She was engaged in building the legacy of the civil rights organization. For many years, she was the Associate Director of Focus: HOPE. Upon Father Cunningham's death in 1997, she became the Executive Director, and later the CEO. In 2006, she turned over the day-to-day operation to a new leadership team in order to focus her efforts on fund raising. She died of peritoneal cancer on August 9, 2011 at Livonia, Michigan.

She provided leadership and advocacy for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program and made important contributions to public awareness of hunger and malnutrition. Working with co-founder Father William Cunningham, she helped develop Centers of Opportunity education and training programs to help primarily underrepresented minorities gain access to jobs and careers. She served on numerous board and committees, including The National Workforce Alliance Board, the Michigan Council for Labor and Economic Growth, and the Advisory Board for the Arab-American and Chaldean Council. In 2002 she was named one of the most influential women in Detroit by Crain's Detroit Business.