Do you have a story to tell? At the Narrative Trust we conduct extensively researched oral history interviews to preserve the histories and life stories of individuals, families and institutions. We safeguard their memories and reflections in books, documentary films and digital archives.
We manage oral history projects from concept to completion. The Narrative Trust is a full-service multimedia company, equipped to facilitate all phases of an oral history project to fit our clients’ needs.
Even before the first interview, we get to know our clients by deeply researching their past, mapping their place in a greater historical context and talking to key players who have institutional memory.
We work with our clients to understand goals, stories and audiences. We help determine what the scope of the project should be, how many interviews are necessary and the order in which they should be conducted.
We develop themes for the project, and refine a direction for each individual interview. Every interview is focused but fluid—an open-ended exploration guided by a well-informed interviewer.
We work with our clients to determine the most effective way to use their interviews to preserve their legacy.
Our oral history interviews are the foundation for our range of products, tailored to your unique needs.
Films: Broadcast quality documentary films enriched with photographs, memorabilia, historical footage and music
Commemorative Books: Beautifully bound commemorative books with photographs and historical annotations
Digital Platforms: Secure digital platforms for preserving your narrative histories
We work with private and public companies to strengthen their corporate culture.
We work with private and public companies to strengthen their corporate culture.
We work with private and public companies to strengthen their corporate culture.
We enhance the programmatic, public relations and fundraising efforts of foundations, universities, museums, arts institutions, professional associations and other nonprofits by enabling our clients to preserve and present the narrative history of their organizations.
We enhance the programmatic, public relations and fundraising efforts of foundations, universities, museums, arts institutions, professional associations and other nonprofits by enabling our clients to preserve and present the narrative history of their organizations.
We enhance the programmatic, public relations and fundraising efforts of foundations, universities, museums, arts institutions, professional associations and other nonprofits by enabling our clients to preserve and present the narrative history of their organizations.
We capture the essence of families and individuals through our filmed interviews and living memoirs. Celebrate and commemorate milestones with the gift of a personal oral history.
We capture the essence of families and individuals through our filmed interviews and living memoirs. Celebrate and commemorate milestones with the gift of a personal oral history.
We capture the essence of families and individuals through our filmed interviews and living memoirs. Celebrate and commemorate milestones with the gift of a personal oral history.
We produce video and multimedia projects that hold significant value for institutions and families, today and tomorrow. Here is a sample of some of the recent projects we’ve worked on.
We assemble a customized team for your project from our roster of professional producers, researchers, interviewers, videographers, transcribers, audit editors, video editors and designers.
Melanie Shorin has conducted hundreds of narrative history interviews over the last ten years. She has brought forth the stories of musicians, artists, educators and scientists, and chronicled the life experiences of leaders in the fields of government, business, law and philanthropy.
Melanie interviewed survivors of and witnesses to September 11 for Columbia University’s September 11th Oral History Narrative and Memory Project. Her work was published in the book After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 2001 and the Years that Followed. Melanie also served on the advisory committee for a Columbia University guidebook to the teaching of the principles of interviewing trauma survivors. She presented at the 2010 Oral History conference, “Times of Crisis, Times of Change,” and at the 2017 OHMAR Conference, “Oral History & the City.” Melanie began her career as a journalist, writer and producer.
Susan Mercandetti is a veteran television news producer and executive as well as book and magazine editor. She was an original producer of Nightline and Vice President at ABC News for Business Development & Partnerships. She was also Washington Editor of Vanity Fair, an editor at The New Yorker, senior editor at Talk Miramax Books, and Executive Editor and subsequently Editor-at-Large for Random House, where she published numerous non-fiction bestsellers. She began her career in the administration of President Gerald R. Ford, where she edited the White House News Summary and later served as press aide to former Sen. Edward Brooke (R-MA).
Jessica Wiederhorn is the former Associate Director of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University (now the Columbia Center for Oral History Research). Among the projects she supervised were the oral histories of Columbia Law School alumni, the Institute of Psychoanalytic Research and Training, as well as the September 11th Oral History Narrative and Memory Project, comprised of more than 600 interviews. During her tenure, she ran the Office’s world-renowned Summer Institute.
Previously, Ms. Wiederhorn was Manager of Academic Affairs at the Shoah Foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg to interview Holocaust survivors and witnesses. There, she conducted interviews and reviewed hundreds of Holocaust testimonies, providing guidance and coaching to interviewers worldwide.
Ms. Wiederhorn earned her MA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University, and has taught at Cal State LA and Northridge, as well as Santa Monica College. She has conducted interviewer-training workshops at universities, historical institutions, and for community groups. Ms. Wiederhorn speaks widely on oral history method and theory, and has presented academic papers throughout North America and Europe. She has co-chaired the Oral History Association’s annual meeting, and chaired its Nominating Committee and International Committee.
Her case study, “‘Above all, we need the witness’: The Oral History of Holocaust Survivors,” was anthologized in the recently published Oxford Handbook of Oral History.
Alexis Clark is an experienced interviewer and storyteller who has reported on historic moments and prominent influencers for the past 15 years. Her interviews have appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and on The History Channel, and she’s received numerous grants from the Ford Foundation for her research on African Americans in the military during World War II.
Her critically-acclaimed, debut non-fiction book, Enemies in Love: A German POW, A Black Nurse and An Unlikely Romance, was featured on PBS Newshour, NPR, Bloomberg TV, Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, as well as in The New Yorker and Essence. Clark was previously a senior editor at Town & Country magazine, where she covered philanthropists and cultural events across the country. Clark is an alumna of Spelman College, and holds master’s degrees from the University of Virginia and Columbia Journalism School, where she’s currently an adjunct professor.
Elizabeth Dobell has been working with The Narrative Trust since 2016, conducting extensive online, paper and photo research in preparation for oral history interviews and related books and films. Her research has covered a broad range of topics, including education, finance, social history, and popular culture.
A former fact-checker for The New Yorker, she was the lead fact-checker on all of Jeffrey Toobin’s pieces about the O.J. Simpson murder case. These pieces became the basis of Toobin’s book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson (Random House, 1996). Elizabeth also worked as a lawyer for Hughes Hubbard & Reed and the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York. Elizabeth is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard-Radcliffe, where she majored in Classics.
Kate Williams has over 30 years of design and production experience with books, magazines, annual reports, marketing communications, exhibits, presentations, and branded systems.
Prior to joining The Narrative Trust, Kate managed design production for Landesberg Design in Pittsburgh, an award-winning firm specializing in communications design for national nonprofits (foundations, arts and culture, healthcare, community development, colleges and universities.) Kate’s work at Landesberg contributed significantly to the firm’s reputational strengths: perfection in the details, efficient processes, and excellent client communications.
Kate was co-owner of Full Circle Type, a typesetting and desktop production firm servicing Landesberg and most of Pittsburgh’s top-tier design firms, from 1996 to 2004.
Her love of design, books, and history coalesce in Kate’s work for The Narrative Trust. She has designed and produced keepsake-quality personal biographies for our clients since 2012.
Heather Donohue has over fifteen years of marketing, design, operations and logistics experience in diverse industries.
Most recently, she was part of a team of communication specialists in the Office of External Affairs at Teachers College, Columbia University. She oversaw design, marketing, and operations for the department as well as for College-wide initiatives, projects and events — notably including the College’s year-long 125th Anniversary and presidential inauguration. She also brought a high standard of excellence in organization, branding savvy and dedication to her additional role as Managing Editor of the twice-yearly TC Today magazine.
At The Narrative Trust, Heather administers all projects, interfacing with clients and managing all logistics. She combines her operational and design expertise with content creation, leveraging her background in communication and print and video production.
Heather holds a BA in Communication Arts from Marymount Manhattan College.
Katherine Snyder has been interviewing leaders in government, business and finance in the United States, Europe and Asia for almost two decades. She spent 17 years at Bloomberg News in Frankfurt, London and most recently in her native New York, where she helped capture the personal stories of Fortune 500 chief executive officers and heads of the largest financial institutions and corporations.
In addition to being a skilled and empathetic interviewer, Katherine is a writer and editor, eliciting and crafting the stories of a wide variety of storytellers. Among the biographical stories she edited was the memoir Hill of Beans, Coming of Age in the Last Days of the Old South. Katherine is a graduate of Bowdoin College and was a Fulbright scholar in Vienna, Austria.
Karen Stein has conducted hundreds of interviews as a journalist and as part of her work on oral histories, interviewing artists, cultural and business leaders, and a wide array of professionals.
Her writing has been published in books and several magazines, including The Wall Street Journal Magazine, New York Magazine, Architectural Record, and The World of Interiors. She was Editorial Director of Phaidon Press for nearly a decade. Currently, she is Executive Director of the George Nelson Foundation and a member of the faculty of the Design Criticism program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is on the board of The Architectural League of New York and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas and served on the jury of The Pritzker Architecture Prize from 2003 through 2012. A graduate of Princeton University, she was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Environmental Studies by Harvard University.
Sady Sullivan is an oral historian with over a decade of experience building community-engaging oral history projects and establishing digital strategies for oral history as an outreach tools for libraries, archives, museums, and movement building. Sady revitalized a dormant oral history program at Brooklyn Historical Society, and created Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an award-winning oral history project, racial justice dialogue series, and digital humanities site exploring mixed-heritage identity.
She teaches a workshop at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, called The Impact of Listening and Being Heard: Oral History, Archives, & Advocacy. Previously, she was Curator for the Columbia Center for Oral History Archives at Columbia University, 2014-2016; and Director of Oral History at Brooklyn Historical Society, 2006 – 2014. Sady holds a BA from Wellesley College and an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.
Cameron Vanderscoff is an oral historian and educator with a versatile project portfolio. He has worked and consulted widely in the U.S. and in countries across three continents, including his ongoing work on conflict resolution and capacity building with Okinawa Memory Initiative in Okinawa, Japan.
He has worked on oral histories for media icon Tina Brown, the University of California and on a range of projects with Columbia University, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the University of California, the Apollo Theater, and many other institutions. He has completed many personal and family memoir projects, community history projects, and other narrative ventures. He served as the director of the Summer Institute of the Columbia Center for Oral History, and as the co-chair of the 2017 Oral History & The City conference.
In addition to his field experience, Cameron holds an MA in oral history from Columbia University and two BAs from UC Santa Cruz.
Exceptional quality, trust and confidentiality are at the core of what we do. Whether we’re producing a personal biography or creating a book, we value and protect our clients’ privacy. Please contact us with any questions you may have or to learn more about our process.
Contact Us
