As a communications manager for McREL, Vicki Urquhart fulfills a variety of roles in writing, editing, and producing research-based publications and new products. An experienced presenter, she conducts workshops around the country. She has more than 20 years of experience as an educator, having taught at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Vicki coauthored Teaching Writing in the Content Areas, two booklets—Remove Limits to Learning With Systematic Vocabulary Instruction and Using Writing in Mathematics to Deepen Student Learning—and several articles for Phi Delta Kappan, Principal Leadership, and the Journal of Staff Development, among others. In 2007, she served on the planning committee that developed the 2011 NAEP Writing Framework.

As a principal consultant, Dana Frazee works in several areas of McREL's field services group: Success in Sight continuous school improvement, guaranteed and viable curriculum development, school audits, and teaching reading in the content areas. Dana has presented at numerous regional and national workshops on a variety of subjects, including teaching reading in the content areas, data-based decision making, writing in the content areas, formative assessment, continuous school improvement, effective instructional strategies, and afterschool teaching strategies. She is a coauthor of Math in Afterschool: An Instructor's Guide to the Afterschool Training Toolkit. Prior to joining McREL, Dana taught middle school and high school, served as the principal of a K–8 charter school, and worked as an educational consultant for the Coalition of Essential School and Expeditionary Learning Schools.