Pat Tomlinson's working life has been spent developing, delivering or teaching aspects of children's policy. Her decades of experience and learning  include school teaching in the 1970s, to play development work in the 1980s, as a university academic developing and delivering childhood studies graduate programmes through the 1990s to 2009 when she took up the position of head of the early years programme at the Children's Workforce Development Council. Her interest in early childhood policy continues through involvement as governor of a large college and membership of a number of early years fora.

Chelle Davison is Head of Department, Undergraduate ITE, in the Faculty of Education, Arts & Business at the University of Cumbria. The Department has over 450 trainees studying early years, primary, secondary and SEN initial teacher education. It is working towards Early Years Teacher Status for the 2015 cohorts and Chelle will be offering her own expertise both to the new applicants for 2014 and those from 2015 onwards through master classes and public lectures. In addition Chelle has made significant contribution to a range of policy documents and government reviews, and is a devoted supporter of the professionalisation of the Early Years workforce.

Susan Waltham is a Senior Lecturer teaching on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the School Of Education and Childhood at Leeds Metropolitan University. Her academic expertise is in child psychology and human development, diversity and equality. Her research is centred on identity construction in young children in multi-cultural, multi-linguistic settings. She also works as an independent consultant with organisations and early years settings in China, Pakistan and Malaysia. She was involved in developing a new school in Lahore, Pakistan that uses an emergent curriculum model for children of 3 to 12 years old. Currently she is working on introducing a play based curriculum to kindergartens (3 to 6 year-olds) in a number of cities in China. Susan has been a foster and adoptive parent for 31 years.