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Stephen D. Smith

Founder
Stephen D. Smith

Stephen D. Smith

Stephen D. Smith is an immersive storytelling memory entrepreneur.
Book to Speak

Stephen was Producer of the award winning VR experience, The Last Goodbye.

Stephen D. Smith is an empath in human storytelling and memory, a creative, a builder of institutions.  

Over his career Stephen has conceived, started, or helped to build a number of institutions of memory and public education, developing memory projects for over thirty years. He has worked on five continents developing memorial museums, working in public policy, education, and digital archives.

Stephen  served as UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education for six years, he was co-founder of the National Holocaust Centre in the UK and project director to the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. He is Patron to the South Africa Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, a founder member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the inaugural Chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.  He is an author, film producer and prolific international speaker. 

Stephen served for a dozen years as the Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, the archival institute founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg. There he was responsible for leading platform development projects to distribute the world’s largest audio-visual archive in 44 languages across over 100 territories, building strategic partnerships with Discovery Channel, ProQuest and Ancestry, for the distribution of aggregated content across multiple platforms. He was the developer of IWitness, a multi-media education platform.

His recent breakthroughs in content-led technologies include the interactive holographic biography project “Dimensions in Testimony” and the groundbreaking VR piece “The Last Goodbye”.

Stephen’s work focuses on the human story. As a trained theologian and oral historian he is particularly interested in how the story of violence within society can be transformed into a teachable experiences. He always puts the voice of the surviving victim first, respecting their dignity and humanity.

Publications include, The Trajectory of Holocaust Memory (2023), Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity and Genocide (2021), The Holocaust and the Christian World (2019), Never Again, Yet Again, (2009) and numerous contributions to edited volumes. Hi forthcoming book Holocaust XR is dues for publication in 2024.

He is a Member of the Order of the British Empire, hold two honorary doctorates and the Interfaith Gold Medallion.

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