Bill Bishop, 49, is a writer on the special projects team at the Austin (TX) American-Statesman, where he has worked since November 1999. Before coming to Austin, Bill was associate editor and columnist for the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, where he worked for 11 years.

After graduating from Duke University, Bishop worked as a reporter at The Mountain Eagle, a weekly newspaper in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky, served in several political campaigns and spent five years as a free-lance writer specializing in the coal industry.

Bishop was Senior Journalist in Residence at Duke University's Sanford Institution for Public Policy in 1994, where he taught a course on rural development. In 1996, he was the Ford Foundation Writer in Residence at MDC, Inc., a rural development think tank in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing in 1989; he twice won the serious commentary award for southern journalists, the Green Eyeshade award given by the Atlanta Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists; he won the Gerald Loeb Award for commentary on business and economics in 1996 and was a finalist in 1998.

For more than 25 years, Richard C. D. (Dick) Fleming has been an active civic entrepreneur. He has engaged in private sector initiatives to revitalize center cities and metropolitan areas in Atlanta, Denver, and now St. Louis.

Fleming was recruited to St. Louis as President and Chief Executive Officer of the RCGA in August 1994. He also serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Greater St. Louis Economic Development Council. He oversees a staff of 50 and manages an annual operating budget of $7 million.

Under Fleming's direction, the St. Louis RCGA has achieved many accomplishments. After more than a decade of virtually no net job growth, the St. Louis region has added over 100,000 net new jobs since January 1995. As example of the St. Louis Chamber's excellence, in 1998, it was named as one of the 10 best economic development organizations in the nation by Site Selection Magazine. Before joining the St. Louis RCGA, Fleming served at the national level as a sub-cabinet officer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington where, as Deputy Assistant Secretary, he oversaw the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant Program and was a principal architect of the $1.2 billion Urban Development Action Grant Program (UDAG).

In the private sector, he was a developer with the Rouse Company in Baltimore. In that capacity, he was a planner and developer of the 15,000-acre Columbia New Town in suburban Baltimore and the Faneuil Hall downtown retail project in Boston.

In Colorado, he served as founding President of the Downtown Denver Partnership and then as President of the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce. As President of the Greater Denver Chamber, he was instrumental in the revitalization of Downtown Denver, the Colorado Convention Center, the new Denver International Airport, the recruitment of major league baseball to Denver, and the recruitment of over 240,000 jobs to the region.

Fleming received his undergraduate degree from Loyola College. He received his MBA from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and a concurrent Masters degree in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts, graduating magna cum laude in both classes.