Giselle Martin-Kniep is a teacher educator, researcher, program evaluator, and writer. She is the president of Learner-Centered Initiatives, an educational consulting organization specializing in comprehensive regional and school-based curriculum and assessment work. She is also the founder and president of Communities for Learning: Leading Lasting Change^™, an organization committed to the development of lasting professional learning communities that learn and lead.

She has a strong background in organizational change and has graduate degrees in communication and development, social sciences in education, and educational evaluation from Stanford University. She has worked with hundreds of schools and districts nationally and internationally in the areas of curriculum and assessment, standards-based design, school improvement, and action research.

Dr. Martin-Kniep has written extensively. Her books include Becoming a Better Teacher: Eight Innovations That Work (ASCD, 2000); Why Am I Doing This? Purposeful Teaching Through Portfolio Assessment (Heinemann, 1998); Capturing the Wisdom of Practice: Professional Portfolios for Educators (ASCD, 1999); Developing Learning Communities Through Teacher Expertise (Corwin, 2004); and Communities That Learn, Lead and Last: Building and Sustaining Educational Expertise (Jossey-Bass, 2008).

Joanne Picone-Zocchia has worked in school, district, regional, and statewide programs, focusing on the design and implementation of teacher induction programs, portfolio assessment systems, and standards-based curriculum and assessment design. In addition, she is actively engaged in exploring connections between systems thinking skills and processes and issues of systemic educational reform. She assists schools, districts and educational organizations in the areas of strategic planning, visioning, restructuring, and organizational development. A teacher herself for 22 years, she has a background in elementary, secondary, and special education.

Joanne is the vice president of operations and organizational development of Communities for Learning. As such, she is involved in projects designed to help organizations and individuals explore, develop, and deepen their capacity and readiness to participate in or support professional learning communities.

She is a published curriculum designer, has coauthored the article "Using Curriculum and Gap Analysis Maps to Assess What Teachers Do," and has recently coauthored a book with Giselle Martin-Kniep titled Supporting Mathematical Learning: Effective Instruction, Assessment, and Student Activities, K–5 (Jossey-Bass, 2008).