Abigail Arons
Abigail Arons, MPH is a public health researcher whose work focuses on health equity, structural racism, and access to care for marginalized communities. She believes that oral history is a critical tool for capturing the unprecedented times we are living in, and she is excited to contribute to this project.
Crystal Bauer
Crystal Bauer discovered her passion for oral histories as an archivist at the Center for the History of Family Medicine, which holds a large oral history collection. She is committed to preserving history and capturing individual voices through these stories. Currently, she works as a law librarian, providing legal research support and training. Through this project, she aims to help preserve the stories of federal employees and contractors and build an inclusive public service archive.
Eleanor Brosowsky
Eleanor Brosowsky is a senior at a public high school in Washington, D.C. Living in the nation’s capital her entire life has given her a unique appreciation for the public servants and federal workers she grew up around. She is honored to help preserve the experiences of those who make our country run and hopes that they inspire others as they have inspired her.
Jennifer Cortner
Jennifer has over 30 years of experience in marketing and communications. After leaving her last position in global marketing for a large hospitality brand, she began to follow her passion for history and storytelling by taking several oral history workshops and volunteering for the Oral History Office of Alexandria, Virginia. Jennifer believes that oral history makes history more complete. With the current, unprecedented shifts in our government, culture, and society, the FECOHP is a way for her to help give voice to the employees impacted by these shifts and preserve the memories and lived experiences of those working in the federal government.
Mehr Manzoor
Dr. Mehr Manzoor is the Program Design and Innovation Lead at BeyondParity LLC, where she develops programs and workshops on human–AI collaboration and leadership for emerging leaders and organizations in global health. She previously served as a Presidential Management Fellow and Health Specialist at the NIH. Mehr brings both her qualitative research expertise and her lived experience as a federal worker navigating recent workforce shifts to this project. She is committed to preserving the voices and experiences of federal and contractual workers impacted since January 2025, ensuring that their stories contribute to a deeper understanding of resilience, policy, and the human side of institutional change.
Natalie Milbrodt
Natalie Milbrodt serves as the inaugural University Archivist for the City University of New York (CUNY) where she is responsible for implementing strategies and systems to increase discovery and use of archival collections across the university’s 25 campuses. This includes the coordination and promotion of oral history initiatives exploring university history. Before joining CUNY, Milbrodt served as the founding director of the award-winning Queens Memory Project, a community-led archival program serving the borough of Queens in New York City.
Natalia Piland
Natalia Piland is an interdisciplinary scientist interested in how people work together to make their world a better place, particularly as it relates to the environment. She has worked in academia, nongovernmental conservation organizations, and the USDA Forest Service. She is volunteering with the FECOHP because she values the thousands of federal government employees and contractors’ public service.
Karen Reddington
Karen Reddington is a writer, journalist, personal historian and marketing communications professional. Her published work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Hartford Business Journal, and several regional magazines throughout New England. Karen believes in the power of firsthand accounts as the antidote to faceless news stories and is thrilled to be contributing to the critical work of the FECOHP.
Sara Shaffer-Henry
Sara is an independent historian with research focuses in Indigenous and public history. Her graduate degrees in public administration and history aim to study the intersection of public policy and historical research in the public sector. She is honored to help preserve the stories of America’s federal workforce and their dedicated service to the American people.
Sarah Jane Shoenfeld
Sarah Jane Shoenfeld is an independent scholar and public historian specializing in the history of Washington, D.C. Her work addresses D.C.’s racialized housing landscape and planning regime; historic preservation; and local organizing for civil rights and Black self-determination.
Elisa Slee
Elisa Slee, (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University), is a long-time educator with experience in both K–12 and higher education. She is deeply committed to advancing equity for all students and families. Currently, she trains elementary teachers to integrate engaging, inquiry-based STEM learning into their classrooms. For her dissertation, Elisa collected and analyzed oral history narratives of formerly incarcerated students pursuing STEM degrees, illuminating both the structural barriers they face and the pathways that foster educational opportunity.
David Suisman
David Suisman is professor of history at the University of Delaware specializing in cultural history, the history of music, sound studies, war and society, and the history of capitalism. His books include Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard University Press, 2009), and, as co-editor, Capitalism and the Senses (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) and Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). He lives in Philadelphia.
Emma Wiley
Emma Wiley is a public historian with a special interest in collaborating with communities to utilize their historical and cultural resources. She holds an M.A. in history (public history concentration) from American University and a B.A. in history from Vassar College, and most recently worked for CT Humanities. Dedicated to preserving the stories and experiences of others who have been affected by the federal funding and staffing cuts, Emma is excited to be volunteering with the FECOHP!
Joan Zenzen
Joan Zenzen is an independent public historian based in the Washington, D.C. area who mainly works under contract for the National Park Service, including writing book-length histories of national park sites. She also has completed several oral history contracts for NPS and other agencies. Joan has thus conducted oral history interviews with many different federal employees and contractors, and she looks forward to applying her background to the FECOHP’s important work.