Jay McTighe has a varied career in education. He served as director of the Maryland Assessment Consortium, a collaboration of school districts working to develop and share formative performance assessments and helped lead standards-based reforms at the Maryland State Department of Education. Prior to that, he helped lead Maryland’s standards-based reforms, including the development of performance-based statewide assessments.

Well known for his work with thinking skills, McTighe has coordinated statewide efforts to develop instructional strategies, curriculum models, and assessment procedures for improving the quality of student thinking. He has extensive experience as a classroom teacher, resource specialist, program coordinator, and in professional development, as a regular speaker at national, state, and district conferences and workshops.

McTighe is an accomplished author, having coauthored more than a dozen books, including the award-winning and best-selling Understanding by Design® series with Grant Wiggins. He has written more than 50 articles and book chapters and has been published in leading journals, including Educational Leadership (ASCD) and Education Week.

UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN® and UbD® are registered trademarks of Backward Design, LLC used under license.

Dr. Judy Willis is a leading authority in the neuroscience of learning, combining her 15 years as a practicing neurologist with 10 subsequent years as a classroom teacher.

Willis participates as an adjunct professor at Williams College. She also travels nationally and internationally to give presentations and workshops and consult about learning and the brain.

With her unique background, she has written 9 books and more than 200 articles about applying neuroscience research to classroom teaching strategies, including Learning to Love Math: Teaching Strategies that Change Student Attitudes and Get Results, Teaching the Brain to Read: Strategies for Improving Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension, and Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom.