Co-founder and first president of CEP, Diane shared her wisdom on leadership through a service orientation, from every role in education. She is a well known leader in the education field and is the former Chief Planning Officer for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). She has a doctorate from Indiana University in Educational Leadership and Policy.

Her numerous appointments and honors in character education include having served as delegate to the Annual White House Conference on Character Building for a Democratic Civil Society and as co-chair of the Task Force on Empathy and Self-Discipline for the Communitarian Network’s White House Conferences. She received the Sanford N. McDonnell Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education in 2004.

An expert on the challenges teens face, Sean started regularly speaking to teens when he was the starting quarterback for Brigham Young University (BYU), At BYU he led his team to two bowl games and received numerous honors. His experiences sparked him to pen his first book, Fourth Down and Life to Go, while he was still in college.

“I felt compelled to write The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make, because I was alarmed at some of the bad decisions I saw teens making and the potential loss as a result,” says Sean, who graduated from BYU with a degree in English and later earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. “I never intended to be a writer for teens, but I’ve got something to say, and I know how to engage kids.”

Sean’s latest bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, is based on powerful principles that children ages 4-8 years of age can understand and implement in their daily lives. The powerful book includes a Parent’s Corner at the end of story which gives parents the tools to reinforce the story’s message in day-to-day life.

John M. Templeton, Jr. is President and Chairman of the John Templeton Foundation, and directs all Foundation activities in pursuit of its core mission to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions in science and philosophy. He works closely with the Foundation’s staff and international board of advisors of more than 50 leading scholars, scientists, researchers and theologians to develop substantive programs in these endeavors.

After receiving a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Dr. Templeton earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston. He completed his internship and residency in surgery at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and subsequently trained in pediatric surgery under Dr. C. Everett Koop at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, he returned to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 1977, where he served on the staff as pediatric surgeon and trauma program director.

He also served as professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published numerous papers in medical and professional journals, in addition to two books, A Searcher’s Life and Thrift and Generosity: The Joy of Giving.

He has contributed over 2,000 volunteer hours and in October 2008, the President of the United States presented Eric with the President’s Volunteer Service Award in recognition of his inspiring national leadership working with wounded and disabled veterans.

In addition to his work with veterans, Eric has trained Navy SEALs and the Baltimore Police Department in ethics, character, and leadership.

Eric’s book of award-winning photographs and essays, Strength and Compassion, grew from his humanitarian work. His doctoral thesis, Children First, investigated the ways in which international humanitarian organizations can best serve war-affected children. He has worked as a humanitarian volunteer, documentary photographer, and researcher in Rwanda, Cambodia, Albania, Mexico, India, the Gaza Strip, Croatia, and Bolivia.

Eric is also a United States Navy SEAL officer, and he has deployed four times during the Global War on Terrorism: to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia.

His personal military awards include the Joint Service Achievement Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, the Combat Action Ribbon, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star. In 2005, Eric was appointed by the President to serve as a White House Fellow. The White House Fellowship is a non-partisan, non-political appointment that is considered America’s most prestigious fellowship for leadership and public service.

Eric won a Draper Richards Fellowship, a seed money grant given for exceptional social entrepenuership; and he is recognized as the leading social entrepenuer on veterans issues in his generation.

He is a Senior Fellow at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, where he teaches on public service, ethics, and leadership.

Eric was born and raised in Missouri, where he was educated in the public schools. He was an Angier B. Duke Scholar at Duke University where he studied ethics, philosophy, and public policy.  Selected as a Rhodes and Truman Scholar, he attended the University of Oxford from 1996 through 2000. There he earned a master’s degree in development studies in 1998, and a Ph.D. in politics in 2000.