USC Shoah Foundation Appoints New Senior Leadership Team

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.

SOURCE USC Shoah Foundation