In 1971, Marco was born in Miami to Cuban-born parents who came to America following Fidel Castro’s takeover. When he was eight years old, Rubio and his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada where his father worked as a bartender at the Sams Town Hotel and his mother as a housekeeper at the Imperial Palace Hotel.  In 1985, the family returned to Miami where his father continued working  as a bartender at the Mayfair House Hotel until 1997. Thereafter he worked as a school crossing guard until his retirement in 2005. His mother worked as a Kmart stock clerk until she retired in 1995.

Rubio attended South Miami Senior High School, graduating in 1989. He attended Tarkio College in Missouri for one year on a football scholarship before transferring to Santa Fe Community College and then graduating in 1993 with a bachelor of science from the University of Florida. He continued his studies at the University of Miami where he earned his juris doctor, cum laude, in 1996.

From 2000-2008, Rubio served in the Florida House of Representatives. During this period, he served as Majority Whip, Majority Leader and Speaker of the House, effectively promoting an agenda of lower taxes, better schools, a leaner and more efficient government and free market empowerment. Rubio also helped spearhead Florida’s congressional and legislative redistricting effort. He chaired the House Select Committee on Property Rights, which crafted national model legislation to protect private property rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision that opened the door for eminent domain abuse.

During the two years prior to assuming the speakership, Rubio traveled around the state hosting “Idearaisers” to solicit Floridians’ input on ways to strengthen Florida. The 100 best ideas were compiled into a book entitled “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future” which served as the basis for his term. All 100 ideas were passed by the Florida House. Fifty-seven of these ideas ultimately became law, including measures to crack down on gangs and sexual predators, promote energy efficient buildings, appliances and vehicles, and help small businesses obtain affordable health coverage. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich hailed the effort as “a work of genius.”

In addition to these ideas, Rubio championed a major overhaul of the Florida tax system that would have eliminated all property taxes on primary residences in favor of a flat consumption tax. The effort garnered national attention, with Grover Norquist, president of the fiscally conservative Americans for Tax Reform, praising Rubio as “the most pro-taxpayer legislative leader in the country.”

During his legislative career, Rubio also promoted efforts to develop a world-class public school curriculum, increase performance-based accountability, enhance school choice and target the socio-economic factors affecting chronic academic underperformance. He is also widely credited for blocking the expansion of gambling in Florida and shepherding the passage of historic energy legislation based on market incentives rather than government-imposed mandates.

Rubio and his wife, Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio, have been married since 1998. They are the parents of four children: Amanda, Daniella, Anthony, and Dominic. They currently live in the working class city of West Miami, just four blocks from the home his parents moved the family to in 1985.

J. Michael Pinson is the founder of Americans For Freedom.   Mr. Pinson is also the founder and Chairman of the Board of Pinson Communications, Inc. , a holding company of several divisions offering Business Print Management, Book Distribution Services, IT Products & Services and Office Supplies.

Mr. Pinson is also the founder and CEO of our non-profit charity organization The Pinson Foundation that supports charities in the Tampa Bay area, but also special case causes. In January 2010, The Pinson Foundation flew an 11 person Surgical Team to Haiti after the earthquake and distributed over $250,000 in food and medical supplies, supported the University of Miami mobile hospital, established Haitian clinics, and orphanages.

Americans For Freedom (AFF) is the national organization that helps support and network Tea Party, Veterans, and other Grass Roots Organizations through one central web site “HUB”.  AFF does not replace a Tea Party group. Instead, AFF acts as the Grass Roots network hub to pull all 4,000+ Grass Roots organizations together using patent pending internet technology. Americans for Freedom has the largest organized political, economic, grass roots and constitutional research library online today.   We offer both videos and articles.

Ned Ryun is the founder and President of American Majority, a national training organization committed to training liberty-minded leaders. In 2010, the organization trained over 9,000 activists and candidates.

Ned is a former presidential writer for George W. Bush and son of former U.S. Congressman Jim Ryun, and co-founder of the Generation Joshua program. Ned enjoys writing and recording historical podcast series’, and visiting historical landmarks. He lives in Virginia with his wife and 3 children.

Dr. McKalip is a private practice brain and spine surgeon in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is the Immediate Past President of the Florida Neurosurgical Society, serves on the Board of the Florida Medical Association (FMA) and has served on the Florida Delegation to the AMA’s key policy making body, the House of Delegates. He served as an officer of the Pinellas County Medical Association for three years and on the Board for eight years. He served as the Chairman of the Council on Medical Economics for the FMA and lead the effort to write a health system reform plan for the FMA that focuses on individual financial empowerment of patients.

Dr. McKalip founded Doctors for Patient Freedom and is working to ensure that individual savings, choice and competition create better and more affordable medical care for Americans. Dr. McKalip has written and spoken on the unintended consequences of expanded government and corporate control of health care financing and medical decision making including rationing, cookbook medicine, unsustainable economic models for government and unaffordable or unavailable private insurance products and financing options for patients.

Note: Dr. McKalip strongly disagrees with the AMA’s support of Obamacare. He along with others, are working within the AMA for positive changes in their policies.

Ralph Reed is chairman and CEO of Century Strategies, a public relations and public affairs firm with offices in Atlanta and Washington, DC. Century has provided strategic counsel to some of the world’s leading corporations, including Microsoft, Home Depot, Verizon, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Reed is founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a grassroots public policy organization with 400,000 members and activists operating in over 250 local chapters in all 50 states.

Reed served as a senior advisor to George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and chaired the Southeast Region for Bush-Cheney in 2004.

Under his leadership as party chairman in 2002, the Georgia Republican Party elected the first GOP governor in 134 years and a U.S. Senator. Reed was youth co-chairman of the Reagan campaign in 1984 and has worked on seven presidential campaigns and advised 88 campaigns for Governor, U.S. Senate, and Congress. The Wall Street Journal called him “perhaps the finest political operative of his generation.”

Reed has been named one of the top ten political newsmakers in the nation by Newsweek, one of the twenty most influential leaders of his generation by Life magazine, and one of the 50 future leaders of America by Time magazine.

As executive director of the Christian Coalition, he built one of nation's most effective grassroots public policy organizations, with over 2 million members.

He is the author or editor of five best-selling books and his columns have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Review.

Reed serves on the Board of Visitors for The University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs and on the Executive Board of the Northeast Georgia Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He is a member of the Advisory Council of SafeHouse, a faith-based organization helping the poor and needy.

Reed earned a B.A. from the University of Georgia and Ph.D. in history from Emory University. He and his wife Jo Anne have four children and reside in Duluth, Georgia.

Apryl Marie Fogel of Titusville has lived in Florida for most of her life; she attended Brevard County public schools before moving to Tallahassee to attend Florida State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences in addition to an Undergraduate Certificate in Aging Studies from the Claude Pepper Institute.

With a strong emphasis on field operations and media campaigns, Fogel has worked in the Florida Gubernatorial Office, the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a second amendment lobbying group, and, most recently, as an advocate for community mental health.

In late 2007, Fogel filed and ran in the Special Election for House District 32, an election held on the same day as the Presidential Primary election of 2008. With endorsements from the Orlando Sentinel, 13 members of the state legislature, Brevard Association of Realtors, and Orange County Medical Association, Fogel finished second of four in Brevard County for the primary and third overall receiving over 5,300 votes and raising over $42,000.

Fogel is currently working towards a Masters Degree in Public Administration with a concentration in non-profit management from Troy University. She joined AFP in May of 2010.

Amy Kremer considers herself a true Southern Belle. She was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and attended Auburn University. She is a former Delta Airlines flight attendant who has traveled all over the world.

Prior to the Fall of 2008, Amy had never been involved in politics. During the campaign season, she found she had a real interest in politics and began blogging. Amy became politically active early in 2009 through social media. She was one of the original founders of the Atlanta Tea Party and was also the nationwide event coordinator for the first round of tea parties that took place across the country on February 27th. After the February 27th tea parties, Amy worked very closely with the Don't Go Movement, Smart Girl Politics, and TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) as the Nationwide Event Coordinator for Tax Day Tea Party. She was instrumental in coordinating the efforts for Tax Day Tea Party 2009. During the first week of March 2009, after realizing through all of her hard work with activists across the country, there was a movement being born out of the tea parties, she founded the organization Tea Party Patriots.

In August of 2009, Amy joined the Tea Party Express bus tour and traveled across the country. After the first Tea Party Express tour, Amy was thrilled to be asked to be a part of the second Tea Party Express tour. Earlier this year, Amy joined the Tea Party Express PAC as the Director of Grassroots and Coalitions. In her position of Director, Grassroots and Coalitions, Amy is working with other organizations and individual activists across the country to build the grassroots movement.

Amy has spoken at many tea parties and rallies across the country. She was a speaker at the 9/12 March on D.C. and was a keynote speaker at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville. In the Fall of 2009, Amy also participated as a panelist at the Value Voters Summit in Washington, D.C. She has appeared on Fox News Channel, as well as CNN, NBC, and MSNBC and other media outlets as one of the original grassroots coordinators within the movement.

Ed Braddy served as a city commissioner in Gainesville, Florida, from 2002-2008 and was ‘an outsider on the inside’ who vigorously defended property rights, private enterprise, and limited government. Currently, Ed is the Executive Director of the American Dream Coalition, a non-profit public policy organization promoting freedom, mobility, and affordable homeownership through free market alternatives to the command-and-control status quo.

Local governments around the state and country are dramatically increasing tax and regulatory burdens, pushing coercive policies like Smart Growth, and pursuing wasteful fads like light rail transit at the expense of easing traffic congestion. With 80 percent of Americans living in urban areas, the American Dream Coalition is dedicated to connecting liberty-loving activists with the information and tools they need to put their cities back on the foundation of freedom that made our country great!

The ADC's 8th annual conference will be held in Orlando on June 10-12 and will provide ‘basic training’ for defending liberty at the local level by bringing together elected officials, expert scholars, and grassroots activists to discuss urban growth, transportation, property rights, and economic recovery. More information about the ADC can be found at AmericanDreamCoalition.org.

Ed co-hosts a radio talk show that addresses local, state, and federal issues from a free market and individual liberty perspective. The show, Talk of the Town, can be heard daily noon to 1:00pm on the internet at TheStar.fm. A native Floridian, Ed and his five children live in Gainesville where he has taught American history at the college level. He often speaks to groups on America's revolutionary heritage and its connection to today's current policies, especially as it relates to local governments and urban issues. Ed can be reached at ed@americandreamcoalition.org.