Leslie Wilson was a producer on “One Day in Auschwitz.”

As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Doris Lazarus has dedicated her career to Holocaust education and remembrance. She has been a Docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum for six years and is also a speaker on the Museum's Speaker's Bureau. Additionally, Doris was actively involved with the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Museum as well as the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. From 1994-1998 Doris interviewed Holocaust survivors for USC Shoah Foundation and their testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive. 

A social anthropologist, Sandra Gruner-Domic, PhD, is the research expert on the Guatemalan Testimony Collection at USC Shoah Foundation. She is an experienced lecturer in sociology and gender studies at California State Long Beach University and USC. Her research interests are migration and gender, violence, displacement and genocide. Additionally she has researched, taught and published works on migration, race and ethnic relations, process of representation and identity in transnational context, global citizenship u.a. 

Alex Biniaz-Harris is a recent USC graduate, with Bachelor degrees in business and music. Alex has worked for USC Shoah Foundation for three years, as a communications and social media marketing intern. His grandmother, Celina Biniaz, and her parents Phyllis and Irwin Karp are survivors of Schindler’s List. Both Celina and Phyllis’s testimonies are preserved in the Visual History Archive.

IWitness regional consultant, Brandon Barr has been a Language Arts teacher in Chicago Public School district for the last ten years. This year, he will be teaching 6th grade Language Arts at Mark Twain Elementary. In January 2015, he participated in the "Past is Present" commemoration that marked the 70th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz in Poland.

Corey Harbaugh is Director of Teaching & Learning at Fennville Public Schools, a community in rural Southwest Lower Michigan.

Jeannie Woods is a seventh and eighth grade language arts teacher at Fort Payne Middle School in Fort Payne, Alabama. Woods was one of the 25 educators who participated in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program in January 2015.

Robert Hadley taught high school for nearly 20 years before coming to the USC Shoah Foundation as a Regional Consultant earlier this year. He conducts teacher training on using IWitness in the classroom all around the country with a focus on the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.  He is also very involved in social justice issue locally in Portland, Oregon and teacher training internationally. 

USC Shoah Foundation archivist Sandra Aguilar interprets and formats information and details about the interviewees and the interviews to be brought into the database systems of the Visual History Archive. She is also a liaison between USC Shoah Foundation’s research specialists and database programmers to develop ways for the testimonies to be searched and experienced.

Muscologist Matt Lawson recently submitted his PhD thesis, focussing on the music used in German depictions of the Holocaust on screen. His early research has been disseminated at conferences across the UK, and also at international events in Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Germany and the USA. He completed his undergraduate honours degree in Music at Huddersfield in 2009, and his MA with distinction from the University of York (2012). He was also a postgraduate participant in a HEA collaborative project between Edge Hill University and the University of Roehampton.

USC Professor of History Wolf Gruner directs USC Dornsife Center for Advance Genocide Research and sets its research agenda. Gruner also holds the Shapell- Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies at the university. An internationally recognized expert on genocide, Gruner has published 10 books and numerous articles on the Holocaust in Europe as well as on mass violence against indigenous people in Latin America.        

Kátia Lerner worked as interviewer and Regional Assistant Coordinator for USC Shoah Foundation in Rio de Janeiro from 1996 to 1999. After that period, she continued her work as liaison until 2012. Katia received an MA in Social Communication and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, both at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her thesis analyzes the process of shaping the memory of the Holocaust taking as object of study the then called Survivors of the Holocaust Visual History Foundation (from 1994 to 2001).

Keith Stringfellow teaches American History, World History, and English at Charlotte Islamic Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina. Stringfellow has been teaching for nine years and was named Business and Finance High School's Teacher of the Year in 2010.

Thom Melcher, the managing director of the Glenmede Trust Company, co-chairs USC Shoah Foundation's Next Generation Council.

USC Shoah Foundation’s liaison in Poland, Monika Koszyńska coordinates the Visual History Archive access sites in Poland; represents the Institute at conferences and seminars; organizes the Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century training program for Polish educators; and coordinates fundraising and other outreach efforts. She is also on the staff of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews’ education department, a Visual History Archive Access Site.

Sarah Griffitts is a social studies high school teacher at the Calgary Board of Education in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  She received a BA in History at Mount Royal College and an MA in History from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  Her master’s thesis focused on the establishment of Chelmno and Sobibor through the path of the Einsatzgruppen. 

Blog co-authors, Lauren Fenech and Steffanie Grotz both teach 8th grade Advanced English Language Arts at Inverness Middle School in Florida.  

Charlotte Masters is a junior at Sidwell Friends in Washington DC. In 2015 she traveled to Poland as a junior intern for the Auschwitz: Past is Present program. After the trip she created the Survivors Speakers Bureau, to bring survivor’s voices into schools in the greater DC area. Charlotte continues as a junior intern with USC Shoah Foundation mentoring the younger students.

Ruth Hernandez is a junior at Esperanza Academy Charter School, in Philadelphia, PA. Hernandez has been involved with USC Shoah Foundation since 2013, when her video Voices of Our Journey is the won 2013 IWitness Video Challenge.  In 2015 she traveled to Poland for the Auschwitz: Past is Present program as a junior intern. 

Tim Cole (Bristol University), Alberto Giordano (Texas State University), Paul Jaskot (DePaul University), and Anne Knowles (University of Maine) are members of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, a multi-institutional, collaborative research group that uses mapping and geography to examine spaces and places of the Holocaust. The group came together in 2007 at a workshop hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to discuss how geography, mapping and geo-visualization can shed new light on the history of the Holocaust.

Lesly Culp is the senior content specialist and trainer for IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s educational platform. Culp joined USC Shoah Foundation in 2014 after having worked with the Institute for years as an English teacher at Vista Murrieta High School.  

Tracy Sockalosky teaches 7th Grade Social Studies at Wilson Middle School in Natick, Mass. In January 2015, Sockalosky was one of the 25 educators who participated in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present professional development program in Poland.

Emily Kocontes is a junior at USC studying Popular Music Performance with a minor in Music Industry. Emily has been interning with USC Shoah Foundation for the communications department since September of 2015. 

Guest blogger Stacey Perlman is a Communications Writer at Facing History and Ourselves.

Freddie Kotek is the Senior Vice President of Investment Partnership Division at Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. Kotek is the son and son-in-law of four survivors of the Holocaust and currently sits on USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council. Kotek is actively involved at Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, where his three daughters graduated, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees. Through a fund set up in memory of his parents, SSDS Bergen is provided with funding for all aspects of Holocaust and genocide education.

Isabella Sayyah joined USC Shoah Foundation as a writing intern in January 2016. She graduated from USC, where she was editor-in-chief of the Daily Trojan, in December 2015 with a B.A. in International Relations and Print and Digital Journalism. She will begin attending Stanford Law School in September 2016.

Benjamin Biniaz is a sophomore at Yale University. During his 2016 summer break he is interning with USC Shoah Foundation’s communication department. His family has been involved with the Institute for many years since his grandmother Celina Biniaz and great- grandmother Phyllis Karp gave their testimonies to the Visual History Archive in 1996.  

Jenna Leventhal is the associate director of education - digital engagement and oversees IWitness. She received her master’s in public history from the University of Houston and in 2011 joined the staff of the USC Shoah Foundation to work on IWitness, while the educational website was still undergoing testing and development. Leventhal was first introduced to the USC Shoah Foundation as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, working on a project for a public history course.  

Luis Hernandez is currently a senior at the University of Southern California. He is pursuing a B.A. in communication, with minors in Film and News, Media and Society. Hernandez is also a communications intern for USC Shoah Foundation. After graduation in the spring Hernandez hopes to attend graduate school for documentary filmmaking.