Staff

Stephen Smith, MBE, PhD, D. Law

Executive Director

Stephen D. Smith is Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.

Stephen founded the UK Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire, England and cofounded the Aegis Trust for the prevention of crimes against humanity and genocide. He was also the inaugural Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which runs the National Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom. In 2009, Holocaust Memorial Day included over five hundred public memorial events.

Stephen is involved in memorial projects around the world. He was the project director responsible for the creation of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda and provided consultation for the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, where he still serves as a trustee.

Stephen is a theologian by training with a particular interest in the impact of the Holocaust on religious and philosophical thought and practice. He wrote his dissertation on the “Trajectory of Memory,” examining how Holocaust survivor narrative — and in particular, visual history — has developed over time and shapes the way in which the implications of the Holocaust are understood.

Stephen is an international speaker, lecturing widely on issues relating to the history and collective response to the Holocaust, genocide, and crimes against humanity. His publications include Making Memory: Creating Britain’s First Holocaust Centre; Forgotten Places: The Holocaust and the Remnants of Destruction; and The Holocaust and the Christian World. He has taught extensively in Lithuania and has been a member of the International Task Force for Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research since its inception in 1998.

In recognition of his work, Stephen has become a Member of the Order of the British Empire and received the Interfaith Gold Medallion, the Andrew Cross Award for religious broadcasting, and Honorary Doctorate of Law from Leicester University.

Stephen is committed to making the testimony of survivors of the Holocaust and of other crimes against humanity a compelling voice for education and action. His leadership at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute will focus on finding strategies to optimize the effectiveness of the testimonies for education, research, and advocacy purposes.

Kim Simon

Managing Director

As the Managing Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Kim Simon is responsible for overseeing the Institute’s overall day-to-day work, including its educational programs, research and documentation activity, public outreach, and administration.

Simon has spent the last 15 years working in the field of Holocaust video documentation and education. She received her BA in history with honors from the Colorado College and moved to Central Europe in the early 1990s, working in film production in Prague, Czech Republic. She was hired in 1994 to coordinate the Shoah Foundation’s efforts to begin collecting interviews around the world with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. After the testimony collection phase, Simon established the Institute’s office of global partnerships and international programs, creating and developing its international educational agenda and overseeing its work in 17 countries. Simon also served as the executive in charge of production of two of the Institute’s documentary films, Volevo solo vivere (I Only Wanted To Live) and Nazvy Svoie Im’ia (Spell Your Name), produced in Italy and Ukraine respectively.

Prior to her post as Managing Director, Simon served as the Institute’s Interim Executive Director and Director of Programs from 2008-2009. Simon was charged with overseeing the implementation of the organization’s newly adopted strategic plan to drive scholarly and educational use of archive and increase and expand access worldwide, to partner with others to gather testimonies from other genocides and to preserve the archive’s testimonies in perpetuity. In addition, for the last five years Simon also guided its global communications and public outreach efforts, including the development of a new brand identity after the Institute’s move to USC.

Sam Gustman

Chief Technology Officer

Sam Gustman has been Chief Technology Officer of the Shoah Foundation since 1994 and was responsible for overseeing the 2006 move of the Foundation's archives to USC.

As CTO of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Gustman ensures the archive’s accessibility for academic and research communities at USC and around the world. He is responsible for the operation, preservation, and cataloging of the Institute’s 105,000 hours of video testimony, the 8 petabyte digital video preservation effort, and 135-terabyte digital library effort, one of the largest public video databases in the world. His office offers technical support for universities and organizations that subscribe to the Institute's Visual History Archive.

Gustman has sixteen years of leadership experience in information technology, and is the inventor of 11 patents on digital library technology for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. He has also been the primary investigator on National Science Foundation research projects with a cumulative funding total of more than $8 million. Gustman has a bachelor of science in engineering, with a focus in computer engineering, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Karen Jungblut

Director of Research and Documentation

Karen Jungblut, the Institute's Director of Research and Documentation, oversees scholarship and research activities, as well as a global  network of partner sites with access to the Institute’s testimonies, most notably the growing number of institutions worldwide with digital access to the entire archive of nearly 52,000 testimonies. Karen is also in charge of expanding the existing archive with video testimonies of survivors of other genocides, which will provide scholars and teachers with unprecedented research and teaching opportunities.

With the Institute since 1996, Karen has led an international and multilingual staff to successfully catalog and index the archive and has been instrumental in developing the indexing and cataloging methodology and software applications.

Karen received an MA in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin and a BA in History and International Affairs from Hunter College, New York.  While studying in New York, Karen worked at the United Nations Secretariat. She has been published in the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, ed. Dinah L. Shelton, 2005, and in NS-Gewaltherrschaft -Beiträge zur historischen Forschung und juristischen Aufarbeitung, ed. Gottwaldt, Kampe und Klein, 2005.

Steven Klappholz

Executive Director of Development

Steven Klappholz currently serves as Executive Director of Development for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.  In his position, he is responsible for planning, coordinating and implementing all of the fund raising activities on behalf of the Institute and to serve as a liaison to the USC College and University advancement teams.  “One of the strengths of the Institute is the support that we receive from the United States and around the world. My goal is to make certain that people continue to understand the significance of the testimonies and that this support will continue to grow and sustain us in our work for years to come,” explained Klappholz.

Klappholz received his BS in Urban Affairs and Political Science from the American University in Washington, D.C. and his MSW from Yeshiva University in New York City.  Prior to assuming his current role, he was Vice President of Development at the Shoah Foundation, Executive Director of Development at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation, Director of Development at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Campaign Director at the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.

Ari Zev

Director of Administration

Ari Zev currently serves as the Director of Administration of the USC Shoah
Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. He has held leadership positions with the Shoah Foundation Institute since its inception in 1994 when he was the Institute’s Director of Research and Training.

Zev spearheaded the Foundation’s outreach to communities in countries around the world so that Holocaust survivors and witnesses would have the opportunity to come forward to offer their testimonies. Working with leading scholars, historians, oral history projects, and Holocaust centers, Zev supervised the development of the Shoah Foundation’s interviewer methodology and its international series of training sessions in 18 countries for more than 2,000 interviewers.

In 1996, Zev became the Foundation’s Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for the organization’s day-to-day operations, staff, and volunteers; at the height of its production, the organization numbered over 150 employees at its Los Angeles headquarters, plus an international staff. Zev then served as Acting President and CEO from 1999-2000 as the Foundation prepared to transition from an international collection project to an educational institution.

Zev earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Jerusalem, Israel. Prior to joining the Shoah Foundation Institute in 1994, Zev was an educator at schools and synagogues in the Los Angeles area, including Sinai Temple, Sinai Akiba Academy Day School, and Stephen S. Wise Temple and managed a multitude of programs, working closely with hundreds of students and families throughout the community.