Mitch Braff

Mitch is the founder and executive director of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF). He has become one of the leading experts on Jewish partisans through formal interviews with more than 40 partisans and his work at the JPEF since 2000. His background in film and new media has helped the JPEF create cutting-edge educational material.

Sara Cohan

The education director of the Genocide Education Project, a former history teacher, the recipient of fellowships from the United States Holocaust Museum and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a Fulbright-Hays Fellow, Sara has published articles and lesson plans for a broad range of academic and educational journals and organizations.

Mark Davis

Mark is program associate for “Facing History and Ourselves,” Museum Teacher Fellow with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a former English teacher. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Santa Clara University and his master’s degree at Stanford University, and he has also studied at Columbia University, the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, and the Yad Vashem International School in Jerusalem.

Taylor Epstein

Taylor is the Director of YouthFirst Programs at Jewish Family and Children’s Services, providing academic support, career exploration, and leadership programs for high school students around the Bay Area. Through JFCS, Taylor leads the Next Chapter Project, a Jewish Service learning program matching Bay Area teens with local Holocaust survivors. Taylor received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Evan Goldberg

Evan is Coordinator at the Alameda County Office of Education and Education Manager for the Korematsu Institute. Evan’s work focuses on service-learning, character education, violence reduction, and civil rights heroes such as Fred Korematsu, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nina Simone Grotch

Nina directs the educational programs of Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific Region. She has more than 20 years of experience in facilitating interactive workshops for children, youth, parents, and teachers. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature.

Karen Korematsu

Karen Korematsu, the daughter of the late Fred T. Korematsu, co-founded the Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco in 2009. Karen shares her father’s passion for social justice and education. She continues to advance his legacy by advising the institute with its programming, development, and outreach.

Martina Knee

Martina is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition, a 2009 Carl Wilkens Fellow of the Genocide Intervention Network, and a member of the advisory board of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. She was the Northern California director of the 2009 “Pledge to Protect,” creating citizen support for legislation implementing the Genocide Prevention Task Force Report of 2008.

Professor Volker M. Langbehn

Volker is Associate Professor of German at San Francisco State University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in German Language and Literatures. His interests include German colonialism, visual studies, Holocaust studies, and cultural criticism. His upcoming book on German colonialism shows how racism can develop in a modern society through subtle, everyday means.

Jim McGarry

Jim is in his 31st year of teaching religious studies at Catholic schools in San Francisco. A Museum Fellow with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he is completing training with the Shoah Foundation Institute. He is also the founder and director of the Helen and Joe Farkas Center for the Study of the Holocaust at Mercy High School, which brings survivors to classrooms and assemblies in the annual Courage and Spirit Survivors Speakers Series and related programs.

Robert Parker

A Bay Area native and Oakland resident, Bob received his bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco and California teaching credential from Notre Dame De Namur University and continued graduate work at the University of Nebraska, Kearney. Bob has taught many subjects at many schools, but history is his first love. He currently teaches Honors World History at Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward.

Lissa M. Schuman

Lissa is a Holocaust Education Specialist and high school history teacher. She earned a master’s degree in History, graduate certificate in Jewish Studies, and her California teaching credential in Social Science. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Special Education. Lissa is the former Director of Community Outreach and Speakers Bureau at the Holocaust Center of Northern California.

Bonnie Sussman

Bonnie teaches a course about the Holocaust at Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School. Selected as a Mandel Teacher Fellow by the United States Holocaust Museum in 1998, she has been a member of its Regional Education Corps since 2005. Each spring, she coordinates a Holocaust Study Program to Europe for students.

Jack Weinstein

After 20 years as a high school teacher, Jack established the Northern California office of Facing History and Ourselves in 1996. He oversees staff, designs and conducts workshops and seminars for educators, and develops curriculum on genocide and human rights.

Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan

Peretz is the senior educator at Lehrhaus Judaica. Since 1975, he has participated in learning with Bay Area children, teens, families, and adults: at camps, on tours, and in community and congregational life. In 2002, he was awarded the Covenant Award as “An Exceptional Jewish Educator who has had a significant impact on others, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the transmission of Jewish knowledge, values, and identity.”

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