Valerie Cotter holds a joint appointment at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Associate Director of the Adult Health and Gerontology Nurse Practitioner Programs at the School of Nursing and is also Nurse Practitioner in the Memory Disorders Clinic and Education Director at Penn's Alzheimer's Disease Center. She has over fifteen years experience as a Nurse Practitioner in gerontologic nursing and graduate nursing education and was received the University of Pennsylvania's Provost Award for Distinguished Teaching. Her book, Advanced Practice Nursing With Older Adults: Clinical Guidelines (co-authored with Neville Strumpf) has received a #1 ranking as an AJN "Book of the Year" for advanced nursing practice.

Mary de Vry received a combined BA in Economics and BSN at the University of Delaware in 2001. She moved to Philadelphia upon graduation and has worked in the University of Pennsylvania Health System for the past two years. After intitially working as an RN in geriatric psychiatry at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, she transferred to a Cardiology floor at Pennsylvania Hospital in April of 2002. Mary completed the Adult-Gerontology Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in December 2004. One of her long term goals was to incorporate mental health more centrally into the structuring, planning and implementation of health care for older adults.