Michael Parker (Ph.D./DSW, LCSW, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Retired [AMEDD]) is associate professor in the School of Social Work and at the Center for Mental Health Aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and adjunct associate professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine Palliative Care and Center for Aging, also at the University of Alabama.

James M. Houston (D.Phil., Oxford) is founding principal, former chancellor and emeritus professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of some forty books.