Masako Douglas, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita at California State University, Long Beach. Her research interest is on Japanese heritage language (JHL) development and education. She has been working on constructing and applying a theoretical framework to JHL curriculum design (grades K-8 and college courses) and has developed curricula and instructional videos for community-based JHL schools and JHL college courses. She has publications on JHL young learners' language background, JHL acquisition, JHL literacy, and JHL pedagogy. She conducted research with her colleagues on young JHL learners' language development in an immersion program and at a community-based JHL school. She is one of the founders and currently the Chair of the JHL SIG of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese. She is also one of the founders of an online refereed journal, JHL Journal: Working Papers of Japanese Heritage Language Education. She is a board member of the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools, and the Bilingual Multilingual Child Network in Japan. She is a recipient of the American Association of Teachers of Japanese 2012 Teacher Award.

Naohiro Koshiya, Ph.D., is the Board Director Emeritus at Washington Japanese Heritage Center (Keisho Center). He received his B.L.A. from International Christian University and Dr.Med.Sc. from University of Tsukuba. He co-founded Keisho Center in 2004 to serve the community by providing Japanese language and cultural education to children and families in the Washington, DC metropolitan area and beyond.

Dr. Koshiya served as Associate Professor at Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute through 2010, and is currently Senior Research Scientist for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health. He has published articles in academic journals such as Nature and PNAS, and has been an invited speaker at IBRO, IUPS, and other international symposia. He also serves the academic community as a publication referee-reviewer for several professional journals.

He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience; American Physiological Society; Japanese Society for Mother Tongue, Heritage Language, and Bilingual Education; and the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools.

Tomonori Nagano, Ph.D., is Professor of Japanese at LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York. He received a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Linguistics from the CUNY Graduate Center and an MA in TESOL from New York University. He has written several articles on heritage languages, including the demographics of heritage language speakers in the U.S. (Modern Language Journal) and the teaching and learning of heritage languages at community colleges (Foreign Language Annals and Heritage Language Journal). He is a certified ACTFL OPI tester (Japanese) and a current board member of the MLA's ADFL Executive Committee. For more information about his research and publications, visit https://t-nagano.com/publications/.