Leora Kahn

Leora Kahn is the founder and Executive Director of PROOF: Media for Social Justice.  A photo editor for over 25 years, in 2006,  she and a group of internationally known photojournalists decided to combine their skills and experience to make an impact in the world.  PROOF was born six months later.

Leora was previously the director of photography at Workman Publishing and at Corbis.  She has also worked for Time, The New York Times magazine, Rolling Stone,  the New Yorker and US News and World Report as well as for the Ford and Annie E. Casey Foundations.  She has curated exhibitions for the Ford Foundation, ABC Television, Amnesty International, Women’s Refugee Commission and the Holocaust Museum in Houston.

As Executive Director of PROOF, Leora has been working on global projects with Amnesty International and Human Rights First as well as the United Nations. She holds a graduate degree from SIT in Conflict Transformation and Peace Building studies and a Masters Degree from the New School in International Affairs with a concentration on human rights.

Leora’s film credits include Rene and I, an award-winning documentary about the life an extraordinary woman who as a child was experimented on by Josef Mengele during the Holocaust. She also co-produced Original Intent; a documentary exploring the judicial philosophy promoted by Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Leora was previously a fellow at the Genocide Studies Center at Yale University where she conducted research on rescuers and rescuing behavior.  This year she was the Cathy Cohen Lasry Visiting Lecturer at Clark University’s Holocaust and Genocide Center. She is a recipient of The Adriane de Rothschild Fellowship
 for Social Entrepreneurship and recently received a Fulbright specialist grant.