What started as an innocent on-line baby book to chronicle Jill Smokler’s stay-at-home days with her children, (Lily, 9, Ben, 7 and Evan, 5) quickly transformed into a vibrant community of parents, brought together by a common theme: Parenting doesn’t have to be perfect. Jill’s honest take on parenting has appeared in numerous publications and on television programs, including The Today Show, The New York Times, Good Morning America, Nightline and CNN.

Dresden Shumaker blogs at Creating Motherhood, a site she created in 2005 to chronicle her path to single parenthood. She was honored as a BlogHer "Voices of the Year" keynote speaker in 2012. A former Hollywood insider, Dresden now spends her days working in PR and new media for a Philly tech startup and her evenings negotiating with her three year old son about the number of toys he may bring into the bathtub. Dresden is a single mom and lives in a multigenerational home in Philadelphia.  

Crystal Paine is a wife, homeschool mom to three, self-proclaimed minimalist, and wannabe runner. She's the author of the bestselling book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget and founder of MoneySavingMom.com, one of the top personal finance blogs on the web.

Michele Borba, EdD is a Today Show contributor and recipient of the National Educator Award. She is recognized for her practical, solution-based parenting strategies and is an expert of bullying. Michele is the author of 22 books including Building Moral Intelligence and No More Misbehavin’. She appears as an expert on shows such as Dr. Phil, The View, and CNN and is an advisory board member for Parentsmagazine. 

Danny Ruderman is a nationally recognized college counselor whose mission is to help as many families as possible navigate the admissions process.  

The Fontana High School and Stanford grad is the author of The Ultimate College Acceptance System and creator of college counseling programs used by school districts across the U.S. and Fortune 500 companies. He is known for his huge forehead and helping students get into schools that really match their interests. His newest book, Top 100 Answers to Your College Admissions Questions will be released in March 2013.

Danny graduated with Honors from Stanford University and holds a BA in Human Biology with an emphasis in Education. He was named a Merit Teacher for his work at Campbell Hall School in Los Angeles and worked as an educational therapist for K&M Associates in Los Angeles. He is also a member of the Western Association of College Admissions Counselors (WACAC). He has been featured on NPR’s Marketplace, Fox News, The Los Angeles Times, Between the Lines on PBS, College Bound Magazine, The Bill Handel Show, and Powernomics. Danny is also a regular contributor to Money 101 on KFWB in Los Angeles.

Dr. Jorge Partida is a Psychologist, Green Advocate and Indigenous Healer. He was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and immigrated to Chicago at nine years of age. Dr. Jorge has been a consultant on many national and international projects in the areas of education, health, diversity and spirituality.  Dr. Jorge has worked with local and national governments to coordinate services for those most impacted by poverty, war and displacement.  He has worked in Liberia Africa in the repatriation of boy soldiers and has worked to form “intentional communities” in poverty impacted countries of Latin-America.

Dr. Jorge is the author of The Promise of The Fifth Sun and A Week of Awakening.  His writing integrates psychology with native healing traditions to form an easy to use self-help approach.  Dr. Jorge has designed and facilitated healing workshops that incorporate ritual and practice. 

Dr. Jorge has served as Director of the PsyD program at John F. Kennedy University and as Deputy Director of Behavioral Health with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.  Today, Dr. Jorge is the Executive Director of the United States Green Building Council-Los Angeles (USGBC-LA).  He believes that the discussion of sustainability provides a platform to address today’s most complex issues. 

For more than twenty years, Dr. Jorge has presented mental health segments on television and radio. He has worked with many networks, including Univision, Telemundo, HITN-TV in Spanish and CBS, UPN, NBC and PBS in English. 

Rona Renner has been a Registered Nurse for 46 years with a wide range of experience in health care. In the last 20 years she has focused her attention on pediatrics, parent education and advocacy, ADHD and learning differences. In 1992, she was trained by Kaiser Permanente Medical Center as a temperament counselor to help parents understand their child's behavior, and she co-wrote the temperament based parenting class manual. In 2002, she founded Childhood Matters, a non-profit organization producing radio shows in English and Spanish. "Nurse Rona" hosted a weekly call-in radio show for over nine years, and has appeared on many television shows, including CNN and 20/20. Rona is the author of Is That Me Yelling, a book aimed to help parents learn how to effectively communicate with their kids by focusing on their child's unique temperament, and their own. She loves working with parents one-on-one, in groups, or in large workshops. Rona is happily married, has four adult children, and two grandsons.

Christine Neilson is from London, England and moved to the United States in 1991. She has a BA with honors in Business Studies with an emphasis in  Finance from South Bank University in London. Prior to moving to the United States, Christine worked in the computer industry for seven years as an operator and programmer before becoming a Surveyor specializing in commercial real estate appraisal, acquisition and development.  Having recently obtained her California and Washington real estate licenses Christine is merging her extensive financial advisory and real estate experience to provide unique expertise to clients.

Aaliyah Noble is the single mother of a six year-old son. Despite having her son when she was just a teenager, Aaliyah has had a successful career in the non-profit sector, helping to educate and empower teen parents, and also in production, spearheading a company that produces documentaries and short films. 

Dresden Shumaker blogs at Creating Motherhood, a site she created in 2005 to chronicle her path to single parenthood. She was honored as a BlogHer "Voices of the Year" keynote speaker in 2012. A former Hollywood insider, Dresden now spends her days working in PR and new media for a Philly tech startup and her evenings negotiating with her three year old son about the number of toys he may bring into the bathtub. Dresden is a single mom and lives in a multigenerational home in Philadelphia.  

Crystal Paine is a wife, homeschool mom to three, self-proclaimed minimalist, and wannabe runner. She's the author of the bestselling book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget and founder of MoneySavingMom.com, one of the top personal finance blogs on the web.

Harry Harrison is the New York Times best-selling author of some of the most well known parenting books in the world.  He has appeared on television shows across the country, been interviewed on over 50 national radio programs including NPR, and is a regular contributor to websites like Dr. Laura.com, Sheknows.com, parentingpink.com, storknet.com, and sharecare.com (a collaboration between Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil).

His books aren’t the normal narrative read, but concise, sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant chunks of inspiration and advice that parents read and reread over again. He has also written two eBooks directed towards college students to guide and motivate them to earn a college degree.  Mr. Harrison and his wife, Melissa, have raised two incredible sons.

In 1992, Ms. Panajotovic graduated from University of Colorado, Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration/Finance and with multiple honors as a scholar/athlete (tennis) and honored as Academic All Big Eight, and Scholar Athlete of the year. She earned her law degree from the Southwestern University School of Law and graduated Cum Laude, was an Associate Editor for the Law Review, and on the Dean’s List, and began her legal career as a law clerk for Magistrate Judge Margaret A. Nagle, United States District Court, Los Angeles, and as an associate at the prestigious law firm of Brobeck Phleger & Harrison LLP.

Sonja Panajotovic’s estate planning services include the preparation of documents ranging from simple wills to advanced health care directives, asset transfers and living trusts. She also counsels many of her clients on the various types of trusts such as the marital deduction trust, special needs trusts, Q-TIP trusts, and charitable remainder trusts and helps her clients coordinate their trusts with their overall estate planning needs.

 Her probate and estate practice is also designed to provide full legal services to personal representatives of decedent's estates, trustees, and guardians/conservators for minors or incapacitated adults, including all proceedings in the probate court. She aids her clients with estate and trust administration to efficiently transfer assets from decedent's trusts or estates to intended beneficiaries at death.

David Roberts has five children and lives in Southern California with his wife Cynthia, their dog Lucy, and cat named Cooper. Dave has always singled out being an involved parent as his most important life’s work while managing the job responsibilities of being managing partner of his CPA firm, RBZ, LLP in West Los Angeles.

George Monroy is the father of three sons and the owner of Smart Parts in East LA. His life changed dramatically when his son’s homemade arcade, Caine’s Arcade, was discovered and filmed, garnering over seven million views worldwide. 

Tsh Oxenreider is the full-time blogger behind Simple Mom and the founder and creative director of Simple Living Media, a blog network dedicated to helping people live intentionally (while throwing perfection out the window). She thinks a library card, a Netflix subscription, and a passport are some of the greatest parenting tools in the universe. She’s a wife to Kyle, mama to Tate, Reed, and Finn, and is the author of Organized Simplicity and One Bite at a Time: 52 Bites for Making Life Simpler. She is currently working on her next book. Tsh and her nomadic family currently live in Bend, Oregon, but several dots around the globe have also been called home (her 7-year-old has been on 60 airplanes and counting). Together, they love to travel, read books, go camping, and make homemade pizza for Friday Family Movie Night.

Tsh writes about living simply and intentionally at Simple Mom, which was named one of the Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2012. She was also number 2 in the top 50 Twitter Moms of 2011, was named one of the Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2011, her blog was nominated for Best New Blog of 2008, and has been mentioned on Apartment Therapy, HGTV, Better Homes and Gardens, Food Network, CNBC, CNN, NPR, Parents Magazine, and more. She speaks frequently about blogging, writing, living intentionally, and motherhood in between changing diapers and hitting the 'publish' button. She is also an advocate for Compassion International, serving as one of their bloggers, and is a regular contributor at (in)courage. Tsh also records a podcast with Homefries called The Simple Mom Podcast, which during one week ranked second under NPR’s This American Life in most listened-to podcasts.