Judy La Pietra

Judy LaPietra brings over three decades of passionate commitment to Holocaust education to her role as Director. Her expertise is shaped by participation in leading global programs, including the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (New York), the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher Program (Poland), and the Bearing Witness Advanced Program (Israel), among many others. She has also presented at Holocaust education seminars across the United States.

Her deep dedication to human rights has taken her far beyond the classroom. She has volunteered at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland, assisted at the Nea Kaval refugee camp in Greece, and traveled to the Ukrainian border at the outbreak of war to support those fleeing the conflict. LaPietra has been selected by premier Holocaust education institutions—such as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, and the USC Shoah Foundation—to lead teacher training and youth leadership programs.

From 2010 to 2022, LaPietra served as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), where she developed and taught courses in Genocide and Human Rights Studies. Her teaching career spans extensive classroom experience in both New York City and North Carolina.

She holds an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Gratz College, an M.S. in Secondary Education and History, and a B.A. in Political Science from Queens College, City University of New York. She is currently completing her dissertation focused on post-genocidal reconciliation.

"I do this work because I can’t not do it. The Holocaust was a blast to humanity.  Its enormity, the lives and communities destroyed, the human choices that made it possible, and the stories of those who lived through it still reverberate. I carry some of its shrapnel. And once you carry it, you cannot simply know the history; you are compelled to act."