Steven Pressfield (September 1943— ) is an American author, of historical fiction and non-fiction, and screenplays.

He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1943, while his father was stationed there, in the Navy. He graduated from Duke University in 1965 and in 1966 joined the Marine Corps. In the years following, he worked as an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout, attendant in a mental hospital, fruit-picker in Washington state, and screenwriter. His struggles to make a living as an author, including the period when he was homeless and living out of the back of his car, are detailed in his book The War of Art (book).

His first book, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," was published in 1995, and made into a movie of the same name, starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, and Matt Damon, and directed by Robert Redford.

His second novel, "Gates of Fire," is about the Spartans and the battle at Thermopylae. It is taught at U.S. Military Academy and United States Naval Academy, and at the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico.

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, claiming to be raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Chris Brogan is an author, journalist, marketing consultant, and frequent speaker about social media marketing.

Chris’s book, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), written with Julien Smith, became a New York Times bestseller, and hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list (#8),^{[citation needed]} and the Amazon top 100 list (#30).^{[citation needed]} Chris’s second book, "Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online" (John Wiley & Sons) was also highly successful.^{[citation needed]}

Chris wrote for Entrepreneur magazine. His popular blog, chrisbrogan.com, is in the Top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150. Chris launched the PodCampunconference series (aimed at bringing together people interested in blogging, social media, social networking, podcasting, video on the net) with Christopher S. Penn. He Won the Mass High Tech All Stars award for 2008.

Chris Brogan is the president of Human Business Works and is the founder of Kitchen Table Companies. He serves on the board of advisors of HubSpot.