Susan Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976. She is the author and editor of several books, and her coverage of the insurrections in Central America and human rights abuses have been widely published throughout the world. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow.

Eugene Richards was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Following college, he joined AmeriCorps: VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and was assigned to eastern Arkansas, where he helped found a social service organization and community newspaper. After the publication of his first book, Few Comforts or Surprises: The Arkansas Delta (1973), he began working as a freelance photographer for such publications as LIFE and The New York Times Magazine. Richards’s subsequent books include Dorchester Days (1978), a portrait of the Boston neighborhood where he was born; Exploding Into Life (1986), which chronicles his first wife Dorothea’s struggle with breast cancer; Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue (1994), a study of the impact of hardcore drugs on American cities; Stepping Through the Ashes (2002), an elegy to those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001; and The Fat Baby (2004), a collection of 15 textual and photographic stories produced during the past dozen years. Among the numerous honors Richards has received are the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Overseas Press Club’s Olivier Rebbot Award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Journalism Award for coverage of the disadvantaged.

Eric Rosenthal is the founder of Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI), an advocacy organization dedicated to the international recognition and enforcement of the rights of people with mental disabilities. He has served as the organization's Executive Director since 1993.

Rosenthal has conducted monitoring and evaluation missions in psychiatric institutions, mental retardation facilities, prisons, jails, and orphanages in Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine and Uruguay. Rosenthal has trained disability rights activists in Central and Eastern Europe , the Middle East and Latin America . He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the UN Special Rapporteur on Disability, and the US National Council on Disability. In 2001, Rosenthal was elected to the Board of Directors of the United States International Council on Disability (USICD), the US affiliate of Rehabilitation International and Disabled Persons International (DPI).

Rosenthal serves on the International Watch Advisory Committee of the US National Council on Disability (NCD). On behalf of NCD, Rosenthal is the primary author of US Foreign Policy and Disability: Legislative Strategies and Civil Rights Protections to Ensure Inclusion of People with Disabilities (September 2003). As a result of Rosenthal's efforts, key recommendations of the NCD have been enacted into US law, requiring US foreign assistance programs to respond to the concerns of people with disabilities.

Rosenthal is the primary author of a series of country reports on international disability rights: Not on the Agenda: Human Rights of People with Mental Disabilities in Kosovo (2002); Human Rights & Mental Health: Mexico (2000); Children in Russia 's Institutions: Human Rights and Opportunities for Reform (1999); Human Rights and Mental Health: Hungary (1997); Human Rights and Mental Health: Uruguay (1995). He is co-author of Human Rights & Mental Health in Peru (2004). These reports have prompted governments to end numerous human rights violations against people with mental disabilities, to adopt legal protections and to close abusive psychiatric facilities. Through MDRI, Rosenthal has played an important role with governments and foreign assistance organizations in promoting the creation of a broad array of community-based services and support systems for people with mental disabilities.

Rosenthal received a BA with honors from the University of Chicago in 1985. He received his law degree cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1992. He was selected for the Public Interest Law Scholars program at Georgetown and currently serves as an advisor to students in the program. Eric Rosenthal was awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Public International Law (1991), an Echoing Green Public Service Fellowship (1993), and a Kornfeld Fellowship in Bioethics (2000). Rosenthal has also published numerous academic articles and book chapters on the international human rights of people with mental disabilities.