Phil Noble, Jr. (born May 17, 1951, Greenville, South Carolina) is an American entrepreneur and speaker in technology and the civic sector.

Growing up in Anniston, Alabama, Noble’s father, J. Phillips Noble, a Presbyterian Minister, was involved in the civil rights movement during Gov. George Wallace’s tenure as Alabama governor. FBI files indicate Noble’s father was a top target of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.

After graduating from Tennessee Military Institute in 1969, Noble attended several colleges and universities, graduating from Birmingham-Southern College in 1974.

Since becoming involved in politics as a young child in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, Noble has started two businesses, Phil Noble and Associates and PoliticsOnline, working with over 350 public affairs, civic, corporate, and political clients in over 40 countries, helping to elect heads of state in 25 countries.

After retiring from campaign politics in the 1990s, Noble began focusing on developing major interactive civic engagement technology projects with clients such as the BBC, European Union, United Nations, Amnesty International, and The Aspen Institute. Noble also authored ‘Guide to Internet and Politics,’ thought to be the first guide of its kind in the industry.

George Benson (born March 22, 1943) is a ten time Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist.

Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s playing soul jazz with the likes of Jack McDuff. Benson then launched a successful solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, R&B singing, and scat singing. This one-time child prodigy topped the Billboard 200 in 1976 with the triple-platinum album, Breezin', He was also a major live attraction in the UK during the 1980s and continues to attract a large following today. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of gypsy jazz players such as Django Reinhardt.

Benson was born and raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the age of 7, Benson first played the ukulele in a corner drug store for which he was paid a few dollars; at the age of 8, he was playing guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights which was soon closed down by the police. At the age of 10, George recorded his first single record with RCA-Victor in New York, called 'She Makes Me Mad'.

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.

Jim Rex (born November 21, 1941 in Toledo, Ohio) was the 16th South Carolina Superintendent of Education. He ran for the position in 2006 as a Democrat, against Karen Floyd, a Republican. Rex defeated Floyd by only 455 votes, the closest margin of victory in a statewide election in South Carolina's history. He was sworn-in as Superintendent on January 10, 2007, replacing fellow Democrat Inez Tenenbaum.

As Superintendent, Rex championed reforms in accountability and pushed for advances in public school choice and innovation. In addition to replacing the unpopular Palmetto Achievement Test (PACT) with the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (PASS), he also worked with the General Assembly to reform the state’s system of annual school report cards, eliminate burdensome paperwork for teachers, change South Carolina’s student performance targets to bring them into alignment with other states, and create a mandate to review the state’s accountability system every five years.

Shortly after taking office, Rex created the Office of Public School Choice and Innovation within the South Carolina Department of Education, combining innovative approaches to education with technological advancement, both inside and outside the classroom, to help students learn. New and improved options include single-gender education, Montessori programs, charter schools and virtual learning. His bill for a comprehensive public school choice plan was passed by the General Assembly, but failed to become law after Governor Mark Sanford - under pressure from supporters of vouchers and tax credits - vetoed the legislation. Despite this setback, South Carolina has become a national leader in public school choice options during Rex's tenure.

Raymond Edwin "Ray" Mabus, Jr. (born October 11, 1948) is the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy. Mabus served as the 60th Governor of the U.S. state of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992 and as United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1996.

Mabus was born in Starkville and is a fourth-generation Mississippian; he grew up in Ackerman, the only child of the owner of the local hardware store. After attending public schools, he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, with a B.A. in English and political science. He earned an M.A. in political science from Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He also served two years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer from 1970 to 1972 aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock, and worked as a law clerk in the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mabus began his professional career working in Washington as legal counsel to the U.S. House Agriculture Committee. Following the election of Governor William Winter, he returned to Mississippi to work in the governor's office, where the youthful staff– which included Mabus, Dick Molpus, John Henegan and Andy Mullins– earned the nickname "Boys of Spring" from a rival state legislator.