Vivien Marcow-Speiser, Ph.D., ADTR, LMHC, NBCC, is a Core Professor in Dance Therapy at Lesley University and the Director of International and Collaborative Programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences. She has developed and implemented numerous arts based training programs throughout the U.S and Israel. As former founder and director of the Arts Institute Project in Israel, she has been influential in the development of Expressive Arts Therapy in that country . She has taught and lectured extensively throughout Scandinavia, Israel, South Africa and the United States. Her work has allowed her access to working with groups across the United States and internationally. She has used the arts as a way of communicating across borders and across cultures and believes in the power of the arts to create the conditions for personal and social change and transformation. Her interests are in cross-cultural conflict resolution through the arts and in the discipline of authentic movement; as well as the use of rites of passage rituals in expressive therapy practice.

Michael Franklin, ATR-BC (Ph.D. candidate, Lesley University), directed the art therapy program at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio from 1986 to 1997. After leaving BGSU he became the director of the Graduate Art Therapy Program at the Naropa University in Boulder Colorado. Since 1981 he has both practiced and taught art therapy in various academic and clinical settings. He has lectured nationally and internationally, offering a wide range of research contributions to the field in the areas of aesthetics, self esteem, AIDs iconography, interpretive strategies, contemplative approaches to art therapy and community based art therapy. His current work as an artist and researcher focuses on the relationship between art therapy, yoga philosophy, and meditation.