Dr. Melissa Mikel is an educator, scholar, and leader in Holocaust and genocide education with more than two decades of experience in curriculum development, teacher training, and educational leadership. Dr. Mikel recently completed her PhD in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College, where she explored a collection of writing - letters, diary entries, and short stories - all written by a fourteen year old girl who escaped Nazi-occupied Prague with 150 teens in October 1939. Her dissertation, Writing Home: From Denmark to Prague, Letters, Diary Entires and Short Stories by Annemarie Federerová, reconstructed Federerová's survival story while exploring her writing as a coping mechanism for survival.