Catherine Marshall is the William Eaves Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After completing her PhD, she served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and at Vanderbilt University before settling as professor at North Carolina. The ongoing goal of her teaching and research has been to use an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the cultures of schools, state policy cultures, gender issues, and social justice issues. She has published extensively on the politics of education, qualitative methodology, women’s access to careers, and socialization, language, and values in educational administration. Marshall’s honors include the Campbell Award for Lifetime Intellectual Contributions to the Field, given by the Politics of Education Association (2009); the University Council for Educational Administration’s Campbell Award for Lifetime Achievement and Contributions to Educational Administration (2008); the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Willystine Goodsell Award for her scholarship, activism, and community building on behalf of women and education (2004); and a Ford Foundation grant for Social Justice Leadership (2002). In the American Educational Association, she was elected to head the Politics and Policy Division, and she also created an AERA Special Interest Group called Leadership for Social Justice. Marshall is the author or editor of numerous other books. These include Activist Educators: Breaking Past Limits; Culture and Education Policy in the American States; The Assistant Principal: Leadership Choices and Challenges; The New Politics of Gender and Race; and Feminist Critical Policy Analysis. This book’s origin came early in her scholarly career, while conducting qualitative research on policy and teaching literally hundreds of doctoral students how to adopt and adapt the qualitative approach into workable proposals. She recognized a need and began to develop this book. Richard Hooley is the Superintendent of the Valley Central Schools in the Hudson Valley of New York.  Although his advancement was fairly traditional, he was interested in those who reached high administrative posts by nontraditional routes.  In his research of this topic, the assistant principal was identified as an often pivotal position.  Having worked as an administrator in the southeast, the northeast and the southwest, his fascination continues even as the assistant principal role changes over time and in the large and small districts he has worked in across the country. Now as a superintendent, seeking to encourage and develop educational leaders in his district, the topic remains germane and only more complicated by the declining numbers of educators going into administration and the increasing demands set by state and federal accountability measures.  Richard taught high school English after earning his bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University.  He also earned a masters degree there in Gifted Education before attending Teachers College, Columbia University where he earned a second masters and a doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching.