Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Renita Thomas Franklin earned a B.S. in communication and theater from Jackson State University. She moved to Los Angeles where she continued her education at The Fashion Institute of Design And Merchandising, earning her A.A. in Visual Merchandising and Marketing Communications. She is member of the SAG and enjoys performing on stage and in film whenever opportunities and time permits.

Zovaira Rodriguez graduated from CSULA with a B.S. in criminal justice and a minor in anthropology. She has been a member of the American Cancer Society for 10 years. She believes that her work at the Institute will cause a ripple effect that will make the world a better place.

Christopher Records is Assistant Director of Stewardship for USC Shoah Foundation and USC Dornsife.

Christopher came to USC from K-12 education, after five years of teaching high school special education in LAUSD and managing college readiness programs and school design initiatives for a large charter management organization.

He holds a BA in History from UC-Riverside, an MA in Special Education from Loyola Marymount, and an MA in Public Policy from USC.

Outside of USC, Christopher works on refugee relief and education for the non-profit Books Not Bombs campaign.

Crispin Brooks is the curator of the USC Shoah Foundation’s visual history archive. Educated in Russian studies at the University of Manchester and University College London’s School of Slavonic & East European Studies and an accredited translator of the British Institute of Linguists, he has published a book and articles on Russian avant-garde poetry and the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Kia Hays is the Project Manager of New Dimensions in Testimony in the Collections Department. Kia joined USC Shoah Foundation shortly after graduating with her master’s in Public Diplomacy from the USC Annenberg School of Communications in 2013.

Josh Grossberg joined the USC Shoah Foundation as public communications manager in August 2013. Prior to that, Josh was an editor and reporter for several newspapers. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a focus on ethnomusicology.

Sedda Antekelian is the Education and Outreach Specialist on the USC Shoah Foundation’s Education team. She develops educational content, programming and community partnerships utilizing Armenian Genocide testimony collections. Sedda holds her B.A. in History and Humanities from Loyola Marymount University and her Master’s in Teaching from UC Irvine, along with her Single-Subject teaching credential in Social-Science and Art History. She has well-rounded experience working within diverse educational formats, including the traditional classroom, museum education, online curriculum development and project -based learning. Sedda is also a dedicated volunteer within the Los Angeles Armenian community.

Dr. Sara E. Brown was the Stern Family Fellow and the first comparative genocide Ph.D. at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Prior to her Ph.D., Brown researched globalization and conflict at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, worked in refugee resettlement in the Dallas Metroplex, and served as a project coordinator in refugee camps in western Tanzania.

Brown has worked and conducted research in Rwanda since 2004. Her forthcoming book, Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and Perpetrators, explores women who exercised agency during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi.

Lesly Culp is an ELA National Board Certified teacher who holds both her B.A. in English, Language and Literature and her Master’s in Education, Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Southern California. She has been a high school English teacher for 18 years and has had an active role in designing curriculum and teacher professional development.  In September of 2014 Lesly Culp joined USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education team as Senior Content Specialist/Trainer.  In this role, Lesly delivers professional development and creates multimedia content for IWitness and other testimony-based educational resources, works closely with Echoes & Reflections partners, Facing History and Ourselves partners, U.S. Regional Consultants, and the Junior Intern Program – among other projects. 

Greg became the Institute’s Education Media Specialist in May 2014—but his journey with the Institute began years before, while he was pursuing his USC degree in International Relations and Screenwriting. His four years at USC saw him interning with the Education department, conducting research in Rwanda, winning the Institute’s Student Voices Film Contest, and leading its USC student organization. Today, he produces video, design, and written assets for IWitness.

Martin Šmok is the Senior International Program Consultant and Regional Consultant in the Czech Republic. He has worked for the organization since 1995. Šmok authored several groundbreaking documentary films and permanent exhibitions focusing on modern history of Central Europe and its Jews. He also is the chairman of OpenEye, a Czech NGO devoted to confronting propagandistic manipulations of totalitarian regimes.

Michael Russell is a lead web developer at USC Shoah foundation. He received a BA in French from University College London, England, and has been a software engineer in the Los Angeles area since 1983.