Richard M. Lerner is the Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and the Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. A developmental psychologist, he has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. Lerner is the author or editor of 65 books and more than 450 scholarly articles and chapters.

Dr. Willis (Bill) F. Overton is the Thaddeus Lincoln Bolton Professor of Psychology at?Temple University?in?Philadelphia, PA. ?Dr. Overton has been Editor of Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development; Associate Editor of Developmental Psychology, and board member of many developmental and cognitive-developmental journals.

Michael E. Lamb is Professor of Psychology in the Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge and previously served as Head of the Section on Social and Emotional Development at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development near Washington DC. He He has written several hundred professional publications on social and emotional development, especially in infancy and early childhood.

Alexandra M. Freund is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich.?Together with Paul B. Baltes in?Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, she started and co-directed the project "Personal Goals in Lifespan Development" in 2002-2003. Her recent publications are primarily concerned with the development of motivational process in adulthood.