Catherine E. Clark Named Senior Director of
Programs, Jenna Leventhal Senior Director of Administration
LOS
ANGELES, July 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The
USC Shoah Foundation has named two key
members to its senior leadership team, Senior Director of Programs
Catherine E. Clark and Director of
Administration Jenna Leventhal. The
appointments represent a pivotal restructuring under the leadership
of Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Robert
J. Williams as the organization marks its 30th anniversary
amid a global rise in antisemitism.
Clark brings a wealth of experience in digital humanities and
historical research from MIT, where she
served as Associate Professor of History and French Studies and
Faculty Director of MIT's Programs in
the Digital Humanities. In her new role, she will oversee research,
educational programs, partnerships and special projects, all areas
of growing emphasis as the USC Shoah
Foundation redoubles efforts to research and counter contemporary
antisemitism worldwide.
Leventhal was promoted to a new position overseeing operations,
finances, program management and infrastructure after serving 13
years across many teams at the organization, most recently as
Interim Director of Programs.
"I cannot think of anyone better than Catherine Clark and Jenna Leventhal to join our leadership team,
particularly as the USC Shoah
Foundation begins the next 30 years of groundbreaking work,"
Williams said. "Catherine is an experienced and respected historian
who thinks creatively about scholarship, education and technology
across multiple audiences and fields. This is so important as we
navigate growing threats to Holocaust memory and rising
antisemitism. Jenna's wealth of historical knowledge, strong
organizational skills and years of experience at the USC Shoah Foundation make her an invaluable leader
during this period of critical change."
Clark earned her Ph.D. in History and a Visual Studies Graduate
Certificate from USC. During more than
a decade at MIT, she helped computer
science students understand how to approach humanistic questions
using their data and coding skills. Her expertise in managing
research teams and using technology to tell human stories makes her
a natural fit for the USC Shoah
Foundation, whose Visual History Archive houses more than 56,000
audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust
and other historical events of genocide and crimes against
humanity.
"This role is the perfect reconfiguration of my past experiences
and studies, bringing together the digital and the humanistic, as
well as my interest in sources and historiography," Clark said.
"I'm honored to return to USC and join
an organization that understands the importance of teaching history
to solving the problems of today. As the guardians of testimonies
of Holocaust survivors, we can deploy those memories to educate
against rising denial, distortion and antisemitism."
Clark has deep-rooted knowledge of Holocaust history and wrote
her Columbia master's thesis,
"L'affaire du fichier juif," about a scandal over a census of
Jewish people created during the Nazi occupation that was
discovered in French archives in the 1990s. As a graduate student
at USC, she used USC Shoah Foundation testimonies to create teaching
videos. Her dissertation focused on uses of photographs as
historical documents, and her book based on that thesis,
Paris and the Cliché of History
(Oxford University Press, 2018), won
the prestigious Laurence Wylie Prize in French cultural studies.
She earned a B.A. in History with high honors from Swarthmore College.
Since 2011, Leventhal has served in multiple roles at the
USC Shoah Foundation across the
Education, Communications, Operations and Programs divisions. Her
leadership shaped the development of the IWitness website, a
platform providing educators with no-cost resources for teaching
about the Holocaust.
"I have gotten the chance to work with many different teams, and
I see new opportunities to help the organization fulfill our goals
with seamless processes and systems that support all the amazing
work of the research, collections and education teams," Leventhal
said.
Leventhal's appointment to the U.S. Delegation of the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and her book, The
Brandeis-Bardin Institute: A Living History, make her a trusted
leader in Jewish education and Holocaust remembrance. She earned a
B.A. in History from UC Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Public History
from the University of Houston, where
she specialized in Holocaust education and oral history.
With these new appointments, the Foundation reinforces its
commitment to preserving historical memory and educating future
generations about the consequences of antisemitism. A top priority
for Leventhal and Clark will be to forge even stronger ties across
all academic departments at USC, from
history to computer science and public policy.
About the USC Shoah
Foundation
The USC Shoah Foundation
preserves and amplifies the voices of the past to build a future
that remembers. The Visual History Archive is home to more than
56,000 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust,
contemporary antisemitism, the Armenian Genocide and other
historical events of genocide. It is the largest such collection in
the world. Established in 1994, the USC
Shoah Foundation found a permanent home at the University of Southern California in 2006. With
survivor testimony at the center, the USC Shoah Foundation's innovative programming,
global-impact strategies, and forward-looking research initiatives
help foster insights and practical solutions to preserve Holocaust
memory and history, confront antisemitism and strengthen democratic
values.
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SOURCE USC Shoah Foundation