Maithri Sivaraman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She studies early language acquisition in neurotypical and neurodivergent children. Prior to her current position, she established the Tendrils Centre for Autism in India, offering support services for children with developmental disabilities. Tricia Striano Skoler, Ph.D., is a cognition, development, play, and design advisor, and the founder of HowBabiesLearn. She advises broadly in the field of social cognition research. She graduated from The College of the Holy Cross and obtained her Ph.D. in cognition and development from Emory University. She was the recipient of the '04 Sofja Kovalevskaja Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Sancte Crucis Award of the College of the Holy Cross, research grants from the German Research Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. She was also head of the Cultural Ontogeny Group at the Max Planck Institute for Cultural Ontogeny, Head of the Research Group on Neurocognition and Development at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and Center for Advanced Studies at the University Leipzig, Germany. She lives in New York City.