Paula was born in Singapore in 1975. She and her family lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, before moving to Southern California. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997 and went on to receive a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University. She is currently working toward a PhD in social anthropology at Harvard University. When she isn't traveling for her projects, Paula divides her time between Boston and San Francisco.

Hafsat Abiola, associate editor of this book, is the founder and director of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), A human rights and democracy activist from Nigeria, she earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and has received many honors. Hafsat is a Fetzer Fellow and serves on the boards of Youth Employment Summit, Educate Girls Globally, Women's Learning Partnership, Hewlett-Packard's World e-Inclusion Project, and the Global Security Institute. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942 and raised in Chile, Bolivia, Europe, and the Middle East. She worked as a journalist in Chile until the 1973 military coup. Upon the rise of the Pinochet dictatorship she was exiled to Venezuela, where she wrote the bestselling novel The House of the Spirits. Since then she has authored fifteen other books, which have been translated into twenty-seven languages. Isabel was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004, and she resides in San Rafael, California.

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