GOOD TALK WITH KAREN A. FRENKEL AND MARCIA ROCK

Karen A. Frenkel, Producer

Karen A. Frenkel is a technology journalist, editor, author, and producer. In addition to producing FAMILY TREASURES LOST AND FOUND, Karen has written a tie-in memoir with the same title. Both include all her discoveries and riveting details about her quest, and her childhood as the daughter of Holocaust survivors who embraced life after the war. Her previous award-winning documentaries appeared on public television and cover the impact of technology on society. Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing examines why there are so few women engineers and computer scientists. Winner, Best Documentary in a Small Market, Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College, Best Documentary, Brooklyn Arts Council’s 30th Annual International Film and Video Festival, Best Television Series, Runner Up, Eleventh Annual Computer Press Award. Net.LEARNING, a two-hour documentary, explores the trade-offs students and faculty make in online classrooms. Winner, National Education Reporting First Prize, Television Documentary and Feature. Karen also blogs for The Times of Israel about fascism and her parents’ WWII experiences and parallels today. She co-authored with Isaac Asimov Robots: Machines in Man’s Image. Her articles have appeared in BloombergBusinessWeek, Bloomberg.com, Discover, Essence, FastCompany.com, Forbes, Personal Computing, Science Magazine, ScientificAmerican.com, Scientific American, Technology Review, The New York Times, and other national publications.

• Website: www.karenafrenkel.com
• The memoir, Family Treasures Lost and Found (Post Hill Press 2025), is available on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and BookShop.org in paperback, ebook, and Audible (soon).
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/karen.a.frenkel
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=5842621&trk=hp-identity-name
• Bluesky: @KarenAFrenkel.bsky.social

Expertise
I am a journalist, author, and film producer. I am also a child of Holocaust survivors. To make the film and write my memoir I researched my family history, filled gaps, and mastered WWII events in the cities relevant to my family--Krakow, Lwów (now Lviv) Tarnów and Vienna––as well as the general context of the rise of fascism and the Third Reich.

Speaking History
Museum of Jewish Heritage, Roosevelt Reading Festival, Hyde Park, NY, The Sousa Mendes Foundation, Dorot, St. Elizabeth University, Manhattan University. For a complete list of events please see the News page on our film's website: www.familytreasuresfilm.com.

Marcia Rock, Director

Marcia Rock’s documentaries cover international dilemmas, women’s issues as well as personal perspectives. She recently completed UnReined, the story of an Israeli equestrian champion, Nancy Zeitlin, who spends ten years in Jericho building the first Palestinian equestrian team. Rock produced three films on veterans: Soldiers Period is a humorous short debunking myths about PMS, Warriors Return focuses on Navajo veterans and the need for rural healthcare and SERVICE: When Women Come Marching Home about women transitioning from active duty to civilian life that won a NY Emmy. From the plight of salt harvesters in Ghana to the changing role of women in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, she has covered Irish American and Northern Irish history producing Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories (1997) describes how women held their communities together during the Troubles and won many awards including the AWRT Grand Documentary Award and aired on PBS stations. McSorley’s New York, tells the story of the NY Irish through the patrons of the bar and won a NY Emmy. She experimented with the personal documentary form in Dancing with My Father, exploring how adult love is shaped by what a child learns at home and Surrender Tango about how the tango can be a metaphor for relationships. She is the director of News and Documentary at the NYU Carter Journalism Institute and she co-authored with Marlene Sanders, Waiting for Primetime: The Women of Television News (University of Illinois Press 1988.

Expertise
I've been a professor for over 43 years and am experienced at conducting seminars. We have developed an extensive teacher's guide for the five part series and it is extremely helpful to talk the teachers through it and model the approach we think is most successful for engaging students with the material and outside research. Our prior seminars were very successful.

Speaking History
NJEA conference, Q&A for non-profits, synagogues, JCCs and more.