Bishop Robert Barron is the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is also the host of CATHOLICISM, a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary about the Catholic Faith, which aired on public television.

John Allen Jr. is the editor of Crux, the leading Catholic news source, specializing in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. He has written eleven books on the Vatican and Catholic affairs and is a popular speaker on Catholicism, both in the United States and internationally. He is also a senior Vatican analyst for CNN.

Born and raised in a German-Catholic farming family in the Arkansas Delta, Fr. Gadberry joined the US Air Force in 2005-2008 where he served in the Iraq War in 2007. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and the Liberal Arts at St. Joseph Seminary College in St. Benedict, Louisiana; his Bachelors in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy; Bachelors in Sacred Theology; and he double specialized in Theology and Spirituality of Saint Augustine and the Theology and Spirituality of Joseph Ratzinger at the Pontifical Augustinian University in Rome, Italy. He has appeared on the hit television show "American Ninja Warrior" and is a serious Crossfit athlete.

Dr. Holly Ordway is Professor of English and faculty in the M.A. in Apologetics at Houston Baptist University; she holds a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Fr. Damian Ference is a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland. He graduated from Borromeo Seminary/John Carroll University in 1998, and after earning his MA and M.Div from Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology he was ordained for the diocese of Cleveland in 2003.

Stacy A. Trasancos earned a PhD in Chemistry from Penn State University and an MA in Dogmatic Theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary. Before becoming Catholic, she worked as a chemist for DuPont before leaving to raise children. Now she teaches chemistry and physics for Kolbe Academy and theology and science courses for Holy Apostles and Seton Hall University.  

After earning his BA in Theology and Philosophy at Notre Dame, Dr. Pagliarini taught high school in a Catholic mission parish in Belize. He then moved to Rome to study theology at the Angelicum and work as a guide in the Vatican Necropolis (the "Scavi"). He spent the following three years in Austria completing masters work at the International Theological Institute and then returned to Rome for further study at Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Dr. Frey is a wife and mother of six. She is currently an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of South Carolina. Prior to joining the philosophy faculty at UofSC, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. She earned her PhD in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He holds a PhD (1996) from the University of Notre Dame and did post-doctoral work in Germany at the Universität zu Köln.

Dr. Petrusek is the Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He earned his PhD in Religion ad Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School and his M.A. in Religious Ethics at Yale University. His interests and specializations include meta ethics, the intersection of philosophical and theological ethics, Christian ethics, ethics and political theory, natural law, virtue theory, distributive justice, and human dignity. He has published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Moral Philosophy, and Philosophy and Theology, and has served as an on-air analyst for Noticias Mundo Fox and CNN Español.

Tod Worner is a husband, father, Catholic convert & practicing internal medicine physician. He is the Managing Editor of the forthcoming Word on Fire Institute Journal, “Evangelization and Culture”. His blog, “Catholic Thinking”, is found at Aleteia.com. He also writes for Patheos (“A Catholic Thinker”) and the National Catholic Register. Follow him on Twitter @thinkercatholic.

Robert Mixa is the Educational Fellow at the Word on Fire Institute. He earned a BA in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and a Masters in Theological Studies at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. 

Jared Zimmerer is the Director of the Word on Fire Institute, and holds a Master’s Degree in Theology from Holy Apostles College and Seminary where he wrote his thesis entitled Thomas Merton's Perspective of Asceticism as an Evangelical Strategy. 

Dr. Matt Nelson is the Assistant Director of the Word on Fire Institute. He holds a Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto, and a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Regina. He is currently pursuing a M.A. in philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary.

Before becoming Catholic, Amber was very active in her faith at a non-denominational Bible church and was involved in various ministries during her time at Texas A&M University, where she received her bachelor’s degree. Leading to her conversion, she was influenced by the witness of faithful Catholics and religious, the beauty of the Catholic faith, and ultimately - the Eucharist. She was fully received into the Church in 2016 at St. Mary’s Catholic Center in College Station, TX.