Karl Blankenship has been writing about the Chesapeake Bay since 1990. He is the founding editor of the Bay Journal and served as its editor for 30 years. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the 2001 Excellence in Journalism Award from the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He is currently Editor-at-Large with the Bay Journal, focusing on producing in-depth reports on issues. Before the Bay Journal, he was a reporter at the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, and the Saginaw (MI) News. He is a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in journalism.

Sara Love was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in November 2018.  She serves on the Environment & Transportation Committee, and two of its subcommittees, Transportation & Motor Vehicles and Land Use & Ethics. For the last two years she has chaired the Montgomery County House Delegation Land Use, Transportation and Public Safety Committee. In 2019 Sara was appointed to the Chesapeake Bay Commission and in 2022 became the Vice Chair of the Maryland Delegation.

Prior to her election to the Maryland House, Sara was the Public Policy Director for the ACLU of Maryland, where she led their policy and legislative work. During that time, she worked on many issues including reproductive rights, racial justice, public funding for public schools, policing reform, criminal justice reform, saner drug policies, technology and privacy, the First Amendment, open government, and voting rights.

Before working for the ACLU, Sara served as the General Counsel and Legal Director of NARAL Pro-Choice America where she worked on federal reproductive rights policy and led a staff to support affiliates across the country working on state policy. She also spent several years out of the workforce, raising her two children.

Sara graduated from Princeton University and Northwestern University School of Law.

Jeremy Testa is an Associate Professor at the UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. Jeremy is a coastal systems ecologist whose research has an emphasis on the processes of eutrophication, nutrient cycling, and coastal hypoxia and acidification. Jeremy has been working in the Bay region for 15 years, applying a combination of experimental approaches, historical data analysis, and coupled biogeochemical-hydrodynamic modeling studies to address numerous water-quality-related topics. Jeremy has applied his research in numerous ways, including participation in the seasonal Bay hypoxia forecasts, the Maryland Ocean Acidification Action Plan, and supporting county- and state-level water-quality management with targeted research and monitoring.