Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

Keisha Russell is Counsel with First Liberty Institute, concentrating on religious liberty matters and First Amendment rights.

Russell attended Emory University School of Law, where she was heavily involved in Emory’s prestigious Center for the Study of Law and Religion. She served on the Emory Journal of Law & Religion and two moot court teams. She was a law clerk for the Center’s Restoring Religious Freedom Project where she worked on religious liberty litigation. In her final year of law school, Russell worked as a law clerk for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on national and international matters affecting Israel.

Russell was also selected for a legal clinic with the Emory Barton Child Law and Policy Center. She trained with a political expert and advocated for children at the Georgia state capitol. Russell was selected by Emory University as a Graduating Woman of Excellence.

Prior to joining First Liberty, Russell earned a Bachelor’s in Communications from University of Central Florida and a Master’s in Teaching from the University of Southern California. She was a 2011 Teach For America corps member and taught elementary special education in Atlanta. Russell is most passionate about protecting religious freedom for children in America’s schools.

Bradley L. Sickler (PhD, Purdue University) is associate professor of philosophy and the program director for the master of arts in theological studies program at the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, Minnesota.

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