Nick Gillespie is editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com, which draws 2.5 million visits per month and features the staff weblog Hit & Run, named by Playboy, Washingtonian, and others as one of the best political blogs. In February 2010, The Daily Beast named him one of America's "Top 25 Journalists on the Right", saying "...the clear headed, brainy Gillespie is among the foremost libertarians in America. He is as often at odds with conservative mules as he is with liberals."

Gillespie served as Reason magazine's editor in chief from 2000 to 2008. Under his direction, Reason won the 2005 Western Publications Association "Maggie" Award for Best Political Magazine. Gillespie originally joined Reason's staff in 1993 as an assistant editor and ascended to the top slot in 2000. In 2004, Gillespie edited the book Choice: The Best of Reason, an anthology of the magazine's best articles.

Gillespie's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, Time.com, Marketplace, and numerous other publications. He was a regular contributor to the late, lamented satire site, Suck, where he wrote under the name Mr. Mxyzptlk.

He is a frequent commentator on radio and television networks such as National Public Radio, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC. He has also worked as a reporter for several New Jersey newspapers and as an editor at several Manhattan-based music, movie, and teen magazines. He is almost certainly the only journalist to have interviewed both Ozzy Osbourne and the 2002 Nobel laureate in economics, Vernon Smith.

Patri Friedman received a bachelor's degree in math from Harvey Mudd College, an MS in computer science from Stanford University, and an MBA from Cardean University. After four years at Google as a software engineer, he founded The Seasteading Institute in 2008. Patri has co-founded two intentional communities, served on the board of Humanity+, is a prolific writer on political theory and philosophy, and an active participant in festivals such as Burning Man and Pennsic (founded by his dad).

The Seasteading Institute (TSI), headquarted in Palo Alto, CA, is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission of furthering the establishment of permanent, autonomous ocean communities. In opening a new frontier, we will improve the human condition worldwide by enabling innovation with new political and social systems. We were recently covered in Wired and The Sunday Times, and in 2008 we received $500,000 of initial funding from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and early investor in companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
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Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason magazine.

From 2006 to 2007, Welch served as assistant editorial pages editor at the Los Angeles Times, shaping and writing editorials, and overseeing the section's web operations.

From 2002 to 2006, Welch worked at Reason as an associate editor and media columnist. From 2002 to 2004, he also wrote a regular "Letter from California" column for Canada's National Post newspaper and contributed to the Online Journalism Review; WorkingForChange.com (for whom he covered Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign); and the now-defunct Los Angeles tech/biz magazine Zone News.

Welch's work has appeared in The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Daily News, Orange County Register, LA Weekly, ESPN.com, Salon.com, Wired, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Daily Star of Beirut, and dozens of other publications.

Before 1998, Welch lived for eight years in Central Europe, where he co-founded the region's first post-communist English-language newspaper, Prognosis, worked as UPI's Slovakia correspondent and managed the Budapest Business Journal.

Ronald Bailey is the award-winning science correspondent for Reason magazine and Reason.com, where he writes a weekly science and technology column.

Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004.

In 2006, Bailey was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who have made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology in the last 10 years. From 1987 to 1990, Bailey was a staff writer for Forbes magazine, covering economic, scientific and business topics. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Commentary, The Public Interest, Smithsonian, Tech Central Station, National Review, Reader's Digest and many other publications.

Bailey won a 2004 Southern California Journalism Award for best magazine feature for his story, "The Battle For Your Brain," which delved into the ethical and political conflicts over new brain enhancement technologies. In 2005, Bailey won a first place Southern California Journalism Award for best online commentary for his series on creationism, "Creation Summer Camp." Bailey is the editor of several books, including Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death (Prima Publishing, 2002), Earth Report 2000: Revisiting The True State of The Planet (McGraw Hill, 1999), and The True State of the Planet (The Free Press, 1995). He is the author of ECOSCAM: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse (St. Martins Press, 1993).

Bailey has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the NBC Nightly News, PBS' Newshour, several National Public Radio programs, and various C-SPAN programs. He has lectured at Harvard University, Yale University, Morehouse University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, the University of Virginia, and many other places.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets.

Dalmia is a columnist at Forbes and writes regularly for Reason magazine. She is the co-winner of the first 2009 Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for her columns in Forbes and Reason. She is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications such as the Los Angeles Times, New York Post, The Weekly Standard, Business Week, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune. She is also a frequent guest on Fox Business and other media outlets.

From 1996 to 2004, Dalmia was as an award-winning editorial writer at the Detroit News, covering a variety of policy issues, including the environment, immigration, Social Security, welfare reform, health care and foreign policy. She also worked as a reporter for the Patriot, a national daily newspaper based in New Delhi, India, where she grew up and earned her B.S. degree in chemistry and biology from the University of Delhi.

Dalmia, who taught news writing courses at Michigan State University, earned a Master's degree in mass communication from Louisiana State University. She also holds a post graduate diploma in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communications.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. She was previously a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and a research fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Her research interests include the federal budget, homeland security, taxation, tax competition, and financial privacy issues.

She writes a column for Reason magazine and is a regular contributor to The American, AEI's online magazine. She also blogs at The Corner at National Review Online and at Big Government.

She is the editor of the Mercatus publication series Mercatus on Policy.

Ms. de Rugy is the coauthor of Action ou Taxation, published in Switzerland in 1996. She is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

Ms. de Rugy earned a MA in economics from the University of Paris IX-Dauphine and a PhD in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. She previously directed academic programs for the Institute for Humane Studies-Europe in France.

Ben Rast is the founder and senior partner of The Rast Group, a team of financial planning and asset allocation specialists in the Columbia office of Morgan Stanley. His team works with a limited number of individuals and institutions to develop appropriate investment and financial planning strategies.

Mr. Rast holds the title of Senior Vice President - Wealth Advisor, and is a Certified Financial Planner. He is also an Estate Planning Consultant, through the American College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. He completed executive education programs at the Stern School of Business, NYU; the University of Chicago; and Wharton.

For over thirteen years, Mr. Rast was a weekly guest on NBC affiliate WIS-TV, the leading television news organization in the state. He also hosted his own radio program, and was a regular business commentator on South Carolina Public Radio.

Mr. Rast has published numerous articles in local and national periodicals, including work for Barron's. Mr. Rast frequently speaks to professional, civic, and fraternal groups on the topics of business, economics, investments and financial planning.

Mr. Rast has been an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College, has taught courses for the Department of Continuing Education at the University of South Carolina, and has served as an adjunct professor in the USC School of Business. Mr. Rast also has participated in continuing education for the South Carolina BAR.

Mr. Rast is a member of the Partnership Board of the SC Honors College. He is a member of the Columbia Economics Club. He is the founder and treasurer of the SC Club for Growth and the founder and president of the Bastiat Society. In 2009, he was elected to membership of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international society of classical liberals.