Pamela Brown Lavitt has been director of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival - one of the largest in the US - since 2005, and has run a theatre that produces 45 global music, comedy and theatre shows and spoken word and culinary programs annually. She received two undergraduate degrees from Duke University and completed her Masters and PhD coursework in Performance Studies at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, where she served as Assistant Editor of "The Drama Review" under Professor Richard Schechner and taught in the English and Drama Departments. In addition to teaching at University of Washington, Pamela's public projects include serving as oral historian for the Jewish Women’s Archives and as a scholarly researcher and contributor to exhibits at The New York Jewish Museum and Seattle's Museum of History and Industry. Pamela has published numerous scholarly articles on the history of Jews in vaudeville and popular culture.