Bernard "Bud" Hammes was educated at the University of Notre Dame, receiving his BA in 1972 and his PhD in philosophy in 1978. He has taught at the University of Gonzaga in Spokane, Washington and at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Since 1984, he has served as the Director of Medical Humanities for the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation and the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In this position he provides educational programs for house staff, medical students, and physician assistants students. He also provides inservices and workshops for the medical staff, nursing staff, social workers, and the pastoral care department. Dr. Hammes chairs both the Institutional Review Board and Ethics Committee. For the Institutional Ethics Committee he serves the role of ethics consultant.

Dr. Hammes' work has been primarily focused on improving care at the end-of-life. To this end he has developed institutional policies and practices, staff education, and patient/community education with a special focus on advance care planning. This work has resulted in two nationally recognized programs on advance care planning: If I Only Knew... and Respecting  Choices®. He has authored or coauthored 34 articles and book chapters that are focused on clinical ethics, advance care planning, and end-of-life issues.

With 25 years of nursing experience as a critical care staff nurse, nurse manager, clinical nurse specialist, and educator, Linda Briggs joined the Gundersen Lutheran team of professionals dedicated to developing effective programs in improving end-of-life care. She provides education and consultation to individuals and organizations interested in implementing the nationally recognized advance care planning program, Respecting Choices, and provides ethics consultation locally.  Her research has been focused on the disease-specific planning needs of patients with life-limiting illnesses and their families.

Linda has also co-authored several Respecting Choices manuals and has published numerous articles about end-of-life issues.

Dr.Luce is a graduate of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Anesthesia at that institution. He is a member of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, former Associate Director of the Medical and Surgical Intensive Care Units, and former Chief Medical Officer at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Luce’s research interests have included the acute respiratory distress syndrome, pulmonary diseases related to HIV infection and AIDS, and end-of-life care in the ICU. Regarding end-of-life care, he published the first research documenting how life-sustaining therapy is withheld and withdrawn from, and how sedatives and analgesics are administered to, dying patients in ICUs in the United States. He also has written extensively on physician and family communication in the ICU, the economic and social impact of critical illness, and the allocation of medical resources. Dr. Luce lives in San Francisco with his wife, Judith, Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and Director of Oncology Services at San Francisco General Hospital.

Sue Grant has over 30 years of administrative and education experience in healthcare. Prior to becoming an independent educator for healthcare professionals and the Canadian representative for Respecting Choices®, Sue led the development of a comprehensive advance care planning initiative for Fraser Health in British Columbia. A popular speaker and writer, she consults across Canada and specializes in workshop and curriculum development for ACP.

Jane Seymour is a Professor of Palliative and End of Life Studies at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy, University of Nottingham, UK. Jane is a nurse and a social scientist, and has been involved in palliative care research and education since the early 1990s. Currently, Jane is head of a research and education unit at the University of Nottingham, the Sue Ryder Care Centre for Palliative and End of Life Studies, which is philanthropically funded for 10 years (2005-15). The Centre has a wide portfolio of funded research in palliative and end of life care, with grants from research councils, leading charities and other sources. Its work was a key contributor to the research quality assessment (the UK research assessment exercise) which saw the University of Nottingham ranked fifth for research in nursing in the UK. She currently co leads (with Dr Katherine Froggatt, Lancaster University) a program of research related to older people and end of life care within one of the UK’s national supportive and palliative care collaboratives: The Cancer Experiences Collaborative.  Her current research interests focus on advance care planning and other aspects of end of life decision-making, palliative care for those with diseases other than cancer, and public education in end of life care. She has acted as an advisor to the National End of Life Care Program about advance care planning in the UK and is a member of a national coalition for raising public awareness of issues relating to death, dying and bereavement

Professor Keri Thomas is National Clinical Lead of the Gold Standards Framework Centre which focuses on top quality care for all people nearing the end of life. As a practicing GP working in hospices for over 20 years, she was the originator of the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) for primary care in 2001 and in care homes in 2004. GSF is now used extensively in the majority of GP practices and almost 1000 care homes. She is Hon. Professor of End of Life Care at University of Birmingham, author of ‘Caring for the Dying at Home', National Clinical Lead for Palliative Care (Generalist) in the Department of Health's End of Life Care Program, and Clinical Champion in End of Life Care for the Royal College of General Practitioners. Her greatest achievement, however, is as wife and mother of five children.

Dr. Pablo Simón Lorda (Zaragoza –Spain, 1965), earned his Ph.D in Legal Medicine and Bioethics at University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). He obtained a Master degree on Bioethicsat the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain).  He is also a specialist in Family Medicine and has been a practising doctor for 7 years in Madrid (Spain). Now he is professor of Bioethics at the Andalusian School of Public Health in Granada (Spain), and Chief of the Department of “Citizenship and Ethics”. He is one of the 12 members of the National Committee of Bioethics of Spain.

Edwin Hui is Professor of Medical Ethics and Director of the Medical Ethics Unit in the LKS Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, and Consultant in Clinical Ethics, Hong Kong Hospital Authority. His interests include clinical ethics and cross-cultural ethics and lectures regularly in different universities in Mainland China.

Robert Pearlman, MD, MPH, is the Chief of Ethics Evaluation at the National Center for Ethics in Health Care (VHA). He is a Professor of Medicine, Health Services, and Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington. He is nationally known for empirically evaluating clinical and organizational ethics. Prior to joining the Center he conducted research on end-of-life preferences and decision making, advance care planning, and relief of patient suffering. In his Center role he oversees the development of evaluation tools to measure and help improve ethics quality as part of Integrated Ethics, an education and cultural change initiative aimed at improving ethics practices in health care. He is the author of two books and over 120 publications.

Christine Mitchell is Associate Director of Clinical Ethics in the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, runs an annual Harvard Bioethics Course, leads a monthly Harvard Ethics Consortium, teaches in the ethics fellowship program and co-chairs the Ethics Leadership Council for Harvard teaching hospitals.

Christine is also Director of the Office of Ethics at Children’s Hospital, co-chairs the hospital’s Ethics Advisory Committee, directs the ethics consultation service, a founding Board member of the Society for Bioethics Consultation and past President of the American Society for Law, Medicine and Ethics. She has made documentary films related to clinical ethics (one was nominated for an Academy Award in 1984, and a video which won a Freddie award in 2004). She has articles on ethics in the Am J Nursing, J of Clin Ethics, NEJM and Newsweek.

Dan Thompson is Professor of Surgery and Anesthesiology at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. He is an intesivist in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit and teaches at the Alden March Bioethics Institute on-line Masters Degree Program in Bioethics. He teaches courses on The End of Life, Research Ethics, and Mediation. Dr Thompson serves at the Chair of the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects (IRB) at the Medical College. He is the former Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a recipient of the Grenvik Family Award for Ethics of the SCCM.

Judith Luce, M.D., is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco and Director of Oncology Services at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr Luce received her Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from UC Santa Cruz and her medicine degree from UC San Francisco. She has trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado and in Hematology and Oncology at the University of Washington. After several years of research in the molecular biology of retroviruses causing cancer, she moved to full time clinical practice. She has served on the Pain Consultation Service and the oversight of the Palliative Care Service at San Francisco General Hospital. She has won awards for both teaching and community service. She has extensive experience in clinical research as the principal investigator at San Francisco General Hospital and is currently the PI for SFGH’s membership in the Clinical Trials Support Unit of the NCI. She has held a long interest in cancer control issues for underserved women, and has worked with the Breast and Cervical Cancer Services program of the Department of Public Health as its medical director. She was a co-investigator in the Breast and Cervical Cancer Intervention Study, an NCI funded community outreach intervention, a co-investigator for the CIS Cancer Outreach to the Underserved project, and with the Every Woman Counts breast cancer risk communication study headed by Dr Rena Pasick. She has an interest in the quality of life for women treated for cancer, and is a co-investigator for an evolving series of studies of breast cancer in women under 50 in the S. F. Bay Area, and an ongoing project to evaluate the impact of exercise following treatment for breast cancer in younger women. She has collaborated with investigators in the UCSF School of Nursing on projects involving chemotherapy-induced nausea and post operative pain. Dr Luce has been volunteer and board member for the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic, Circulo de Vida, the Northern California Cancer Center, and the American Cancer Society.

Dr Javier Júdez (Madrid, Spain, 1968) is a physician by training with a primary care background, Master in Bioethics at the Complutense University of Madrid (1994) and Master in Healthcare Services Management by the University Pompeu Fabra-Barcelona /Foundation Gaspar Casal-Madrid (2005). After 5 years working in Primary Care in Guadalajara (Spain), where he started his research in ACP in the early 90s, he worked as Head of Bioethics and
Medical Education Projects at the Foundation for Health Sciences in Madrid, Spain, for more than 8 years since the mid-90s, developing and running some of the most successful training the trainers programs (Bioethics 4x4) and expert task-forces in the bioethics field in Spain under the leadership of Prof. Diego Gracia, Spain’s bioethics Pioneer. He then moved in 2005 to Murcia (Southeast of Spain) to become the Regional Healthcare Research Manager of the Foundation for Healthcare Training and Research of the Region of Murcia. In this new location Dr Júdez is unfolding a new comprehensive ACP Program, named KAYRÓS, inspired in the LaCrosse Respecting Choices® experience (for which he is the Spanish representative), embedded in the public Regional Healthcare System. Member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Asociación de Bioética Fundamental y Clínica he’s been Chair of the 9th Spanish National Conference on Bioethics (Murcia, 22-24 October, 2009; http://abfyc.ffis.es - in Spanish)