Dr. David Bartram is a sociologist at the University of Leicester. He is Editor-in-chief of Social Indicators Research and a Vice-President of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQOLS).  He has published two books: Key Concepts in Migration (SAGE, with Maritsa Poros and Pierre Monforte) and International Labor Migration: Foreign Workers and Public Policy (Palgrave).  He has held grants from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Economic & Social Research Council, the British Academy, Leverhulme, the Nuffield Foundation, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a BA from Kenyon College.

Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener is a wellbeing researcher and popular author. He holds a Master's degree in clinical psychology and a Doctorate from the University of Tromsø. His early research focused on collecting hard-to-get data from groups traditionally overlooked by researchers, including Amish farmers, Inuit hunters, Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, and people living in dire poverty, among other groups. Robert is a research generalist, focusing on a wide range of wellbeing topics: material sufficiency, social support, hospitality, pleasure, prosocial spending, psychological strengths, and friendship. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed articles and chapters with a cumulative citation count of more than 30 thousand. Robert is also the author or editor of 2 textbooks and 9 books. Among his books is the New York Times bestselling The Upside of Your Dark Side (2014), the Prose Award-winning, Happiness (2008), and the Thinkers50 nominated, Radical Listening (2025). Robert lives in Portland (USA) and enjoys rock climbing, drawing, and cats. 

Dr. Carol Graham is Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, College Park Professor at the University of Maryland, and a Gallup Senior Scientist. She served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on well-being metrics in 2012-13, received Pioneer Awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2017 and 2021, and a Lifetime Distinguished Scholar award from the International Society of Quality-of-Life Studies (2018), and is currently a member of a UN Commission developing progress indicators to complement GDP. She has twice served as a Vice President at Brookings, as Special Advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank, Visiting Fellow at the World Bank, and consultant to the IMF. Her most recent books (published in several languages) are: The Power of Hope: How Wellbeing Science Can Save us from Despair (Princeton, 2023); Happiness for All? Unequal Hopes and Lives in Pursuit of the American Dream (Princeton, 2017); The Pursuit of Happiness (Brookings, 2011); and Happiness around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (Oxford, 2010). She has published articles in journals including Science, Social Science and Medicine, the Journal of Population Economics, Perspectives on Psychological Science, World Bank Research Observer; Health Affairs, Health Economics; the Journal of Development Studies; the Journal of Human Development; and the Journal of Economic Literature; and her work has been reviewed in Science, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books, among others, and is senior editor at Behavioral Science and Policy. She has an A.B. from Princeton, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins, a D.Phil from Oxford, and three beautiful children.

Dr. Alexandria I. Huerta is a career USAID Foreign Service Officer currently serving as Deputy Mission Director in India, where she leads a 134-member team and oversees multimillion-dollar programs and operations. She has over 20 years of experience in international development, with postings in Afghanistan, Fiji, Barbados, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Laos. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, teaching national security economics and energy studies, and contributing to policy education and leadership initiatives. Before joining USAID, she worked with World Vision and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali and Mozambique. Dr. Huerta holds degrees from the University of Georgia, the University of Tennessee, and Purdue University, and was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil.