Farida Jalalzai is Associate Dean of Global Initiatives and Engagement in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. She is the author or co-author of Gender, Crisis, and Leadership: Possibilities and Perils for Women Leaders, Women's Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil: The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff (Temple), Shattered, Cracked, or Firmly Intact: Women and the Executive Glass Ceiling Worldwide, and Women Presidents of Latin America: Beyond Family Ties?, and the co-editor of Measuring Women's Political Empowerment Across the Globe: Strategies, Challenges and Future Research.

Meg Rincker is Professor of Political Science at Purdue University Northwest. She is the author of Empowered by Design: Decentralization and the Gender Policy Trifecta (Temple).