May Bradford was born May 11, 1879 in Missouri. Her parents named her Cora May, but she almost always went by the name May. Growing up, she lived in mining camps in New Mexico, Colorado, and Oregon, where her father worked. She graduated from high school in Carthage, Missouri. She attended Stanford and studied art and mathematics, earning her degree in 1902. She then taught high school for one year in Seattle, Washington to earn the money to go to Paris and study art and was able to spend the next year in Paris.

Steven Parker grew up and went to school in Connecticut. His only sibling was finishing a post doctorate at Yale and had accepted a job at one of the California State schools when his life was tragically ended through suicide. Parker graduated from Assumption College in Massachusetts with a bachelor's in political science and got a scholarship to the State University of New York at Albany. About halfway through his Master of Public Administration degree, the dean encouraged him to go on for his doctorate.

Former Nevada State Senator Lori Lipman Brown works as a lawyer, educator, civil rights advocate, and secular activist in the United States. Born in New York on June 17, 1958, Brown graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), and then received her Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law in 1983. After working as an attorney, Brown returned to UNLV and took courses to get her teaching license and went to work as a high school teacher.