Steve has delivered hundreds of workshops for teachers, administrators, and parents. He has also addressed school boards, PTAs, and other organizations to discuss current challenges in education reform.

In 2001, Steve was asked by The Seattle Times to write The Effective Learning Series, a bi-weekly column on best practice teaching that won the Innovators in Education Award from the Newspaper Association of America. Over the years, he has contributed more than 200 columns to this program, most recently an 18-part series on life skills for high school students.

Steve holds a BA in English from Boston University. He lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Margot Carmichael Lester, and their dog, Ursa.

For more information on Steve, visit Teaching That Makes Sense.

Margot’s writing appears regularly in magazines and newspapers as well as on the web. Her business journalism has been featured in Money Magazine, Multifamily Executive Magazine, The Los Angeles Business Journal, The Los Angeles Downtown News, The Triangle Business Journal and the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. She is the author of Real Life Guide to Life After College and Real Life Guide to Starting Your Career. Her career advice appears monthly on Monster.com and in newspaper and magazine stories nationally.

Prior to founding The Word Factory, her writing and consulting business, Margot served as director of marketing for the nationally-ranked Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Margot began her writing career in high school as the school page columnist for her hometown paper, The Chapel Hill (N.C.) News.

Margot holds a BA in Journalism from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, with her husband, Steve Peha, and their dog, Ursa.

For more information on Margot, visit MargotLester.com