Anita Hannig is a trained anthropologist, death educator, and freelance writer. In recent years, Anita has emerged as a leading voice on death literacy in America, speaking about her work in hospitals, medical schools, and art museums across the country. She is the author of The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America, a Diane Rehm-endorsed book and finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. Anita is a writer for the new PBS series Dead and Buried, and she’s written for Cognoscenti, The Conversation, Undark, and the Seattle Times, among other places. In 2024, she is coming out with a new death education tool, My Death Diary: A Guided Journal for Mortals.

Asunción Álvarez has a Master in Clinical Psychology and PhD in Bioethics. She is professor in the Faculty of Medicine, National University Autonomous of Mexico (UNAM). She is a tutor and professor in postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Medicine, of Philosophy, and of Psychology at UNAM. Her lines of research include: Death in Medical Practice; End-of-life decisions. She is author of Euthanasia. Practice and Ethics (2005); co-author of A Good-bye in Harmony (2015); and co-author of End-of Life Medical Decisions in Patients with Alzheimer Disease (2017) [Books in Spanish]. She is president of the Colegio de Bioética, (Academy of Bioethics), A.C.

(Mexico), Libertad para Morir (Freedom to die), A.C. and of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

Rupert “Ru” Callender was moved to become an undertaker through his experience of bereavement and its aftermath. He spent much of his childhood in the hospice where his mother worked, and the caring humanistic philosophy of the hospice movement is central to his work. He opened The Green Funeral Company with Claire in 2000 and the company is now among the country’s best-known eco-friendly funeral directors. In 2012, they won Joint Best Funeral Director at the first Good Funeral Awards and were described as ‘The best undertakers of all time, by a country mile’ by Good Funeral Guide author, Charles Cowling. Ru and Claire spoke at TEDx Totnes on death, grief, ritual and radical funerals. In 2021, Claire left the company and Ru continues with a new colleague.

Callender, Phillips, Cauty & Drummond: Undertakers to the Underworld was established as a partnership between The Green Funeral Company and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (KLF) in 2017.

Find out more at: www.thegreenfuneralcompany.co.uk and follow Ru on Twitter @wayswithweirds and RuCallender.com

Wilka Roig MA, MFA is a transpersonal psychologist, death doula and activist, grief counselor, dream worker, ordained minister, educator, facilitator, writer, Taoist Arts instructor, musician, photographer, performance artist, silversmith, baker, truth-teller. She is the founder and president of Fundación Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (EKR) México Centro, co-founder of Red Latinoamericana de Aocmpañamiento en la muerte y el duelo, deputy director of education of EKR Foundation Global, end-of-life doula educator and BIPOC/International advisor of the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA). Her interests include the neurobiology of trauma, loss, grief, and relationships, conscious living & dying, birds, stars, confectionery arts, and wine culture.

Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD, HEC-C, is a foremost expert on medical law and clinical ethics. He focuses on patient rights and healthcare decision making, especially at the end of life. A fellow of the Hastings Center and previously both a Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, and a visiting scholar at the Brocher Foundation in Switzerland; Pope is now a Professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. While Professor Pope serves in a range of consulting capacities, he has been particularly influential through extensive high-impact scholarship. Ranked among the Top 20 most cited health law scholars in the United States and the Top 50 in the world, Pope has over 250 law, medicine, and bioethics publications. Prior to joining academia, Professor Pope practiced at Arnold & Porter and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Pope earned a JD and PhD from Georgetown University.

Dr. Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH practices the unusual combination of Critical and Palliative Care medicine at Highland Hospital, the public hospital in Oakland, California. She uses storytelling to examine the overmedicalization of death in America. Her essays appear in her book, Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life, as well as The New York Times and other publications.  Over the past 5 years she has turned to filmmaking to draw audiences into this important conversation. Her films include the Oscar-nominated Extremis (Netflix) and Caregiver: A Love Story. She is at work on her third film, The Chaplain of Oakland, which examines the crisis of racial healthcare inequities at the end of life. In 2021, she founded a nonprofit organization, Reel Medicine Media, to maximize impact with her films through organizational partnerships, curriculum generation, and public speaking.  

Dr. Zitter attended Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University Medical School and earned her Masters in Public Health from University of California, Berkeley. Her medical training includes an Internal Medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a fellowship in Pulmonary/Critical Care at the University of California, San Francisco. She also is co-founder of Vital Decisions, a telephone-based counseling service for patients with life-limiting illness.

Dr. Kerwin is a leader and speaker for clinical ethics and medical humanities throughout New Jersey and nationally. She worked in acute care hospitals doing ethics consultations for over 30 years, and has served on multiple State and national committees addressing end-of-life care. She is a national consultant/educator on health care ethics and the development of institutional ethics committees. She is currently Co-Chair for the Ethics Consultation Service for the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, working with ethics consultants across the US. Dr. Kerwin holds Masters and Doctorate degrees in Medical Humanities from Drew University, a Certificate in Bioethics from Columbia University and is a Scholar in the Palliative Care Education and Practice program from Harvard Medical School.

Diana Barnard, M.D. ’90. Assistant Professor of Medicine, UVM Larner College of Medicine. Physician, Division of Palliative Medicine. University of Vermont Health Network – Porter Medical Center, Middlebury, VT

Diana Barnard, M.D. ’90 is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine and a palliative care attending physician at UVMHN- Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, VT. After running a private family health practice for 15 years, Dr. Barnard was recruited by the UVM Medical Center to join their Palliative Medicine Division, where she was named Interim Medical Director. She established and became lead physician for a new palliative medicine consultation service at Porter Medical Center, where she continues to practice. In 2019, she received Vermont’s Madison Deane Educational Initiative Award for Excellence in End of Life Care. In 2020 she received the Robert Larner College of Medicine’s Service To Community Award. In 2021, The Vermont Academy of Family Physicians named her the Family Medicine Physician of the year.

Dr. Barnard has played a vital role in improving end-of-life care in Vermont, propelling the state to the forefront of palliative care. For over a decade, she led the grassroots effort to pass Vermont’s Medical Aid in Dying law, which was passed in 2013. Since then, Dr. Barnard has consulted with hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and physicians on education, access, and implementation of that bill. In 2019, her work on the Medical Aid in Dying law led to her service as Expert Witness in legislative efforts to develop similar laws in Hawaii and New York. Her ongoing advocacy for patient-centered palliative care continues to inspire and teach physicians and medical students alike.

Jean Abbott is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician who has been a faculty member at the University of Colorado since the inception of Emergency Medicine at CU in 1985. She is currently retired from EM practice but remains a member of the University of Colorado Hospital Ethics Committee. For 20 years she was a lead ethics consultant at UCH. 

She has lectured regionally and nationally about ethics and professionalism issues in emergency medicine and other clinical practice settings through the Center for Bioethics and Humanities. For 6 years she wrote and led the ethics content for the CU Palliative Care Certificate and Master’s Program. She still teaches and facilitates Advance Care Planning conversations through community presentations.

During the pandemic, Jean has been a lead organizer of the Colorado Healthcare Ethics Resource group, leading in creating crisis standards for palliative care and hospice and publishing about those critical needs and advocating with a group of colleagues across the state. Jean’s Educational background include: 

• Undergraduate Education:  Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA
• Medical Education: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
• Internship/Residency:  San Joaquin General Hospital, Stockton, CA
• Master of Humanities:  University of Colorado, Denver, CO
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Jean’s interests include:

• Palliative care ethics
• Clinical ethics consultation in hospice and community hospitals
• Professionalism and moral distress
• Complex and “difficult” patients in the healthcare system
• The challenges of advance care planning and end-of life ethics

Jennifer Senior is a staff writer at The Atlantic and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer for Feature Writing. Prior to joining the Atlantic, she spent five years at The New York Times—first as one of its three daily book critics, then as a columnist for the Opinion page. Before that, she spent eighteen years as a staff writer for New York Magazine, writing profiles and cover stories about politics, social science, and mental health. Her first book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, spent eight weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and was named one of Slate’s Top 10 Books of 2014. In addition to the Pulitzer, Senior has won a variety of journalism prizes, including a National Magazine Award, a GLAAD award, two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, and the Erikson Prize in Mental Health Media. (She is also one of the only writers to have been nominated for the National Magazine Award for two years in a row.) Her work has been anthologized four times in THE BEST AMERICAN POLITICAL WRITING, and her profile of the psychologist Philip Brickman was selected for THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE WRITING OF 2021. All Joy and No Fun has been translated into twelve languages. Senior has been a frequent guest on NPR and numerous television programs, including The Chris Matthews Show, Morning Joe, Washington Journal with Brian Lamb, Anderson Cooper 360, Good Morning America, and Today. She has also been a speaker at TED’s annual conference and the Sydney Opera House. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her husband and son.

Thalia DeWolf, RN, is a hospice and palliative care nurse in Northern California, devoted to providing attentive care to terminally ill patients until their last breath, no matter how they die. She has supported many patients as they considered medical aid in dying, and been at the bedside of many who ultimately self-ingested the aid in dying medications and died. In addition to her fieldwork, she is the Director of Nursing Education at the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying.