Biography

Education

Dr. Steven D. Reece

Dr. ​Steven D. Reece is founder and President of The Matzevah Foundation, a nonprofit organization incorporated in Georgia in 2010. He leads members and volunteers of the Foundation to educate the public about the Shoah (the Holocaust) and to restore Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Its purpose is to remember and honor the Jewish heritage of Poland, to restore what was lost due to the Shoah, and to reconcile Jews and Gentiles through a common mitzvah, or good deed. 

Dr. Reece is an adviser for the European Jewish Cemeteries Advisory Network (EJCAN). EJCAN is a network "of more than 30 international experts representing a range of professional skills and expertise related to Jewish cemeteries who can be contacted for advice on a number of issues." He is also certified to teach about the Holocaust through Yad Vashem and Tel Aviv University. You may learn more about Dr. Reece's experience and credentials on his Linkedin profile. 

For ten years, Dr. Reece worked as a photojournalist before entering religious and charitable work. He is an ordained Baptist minister and is a graduate of Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Reece received his Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership at Andrews University in 2020.

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Dr. Reece and his beautiful wife, Deborah.

• 2020 - Doctor of Philosophy, Leadership, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI
• 1996 - Master of Divinity, Theology, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX 
• 1978 - Bachelor of Science, Biology, Baylor University, Waco, TX

Publications

• 2019 - The Third Space: The Meeting of Jew and Christian in the Act of Remembering, Restoring, and Reconciling—A Case Study of The Matzevah Foundation
• 2019 - Leading in the Third Space

Special Projects

• Since 2019, Dr. Reece and The Matzevah Foundation have been partnering with JewishGen.org and Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland in the JewishGen Future Scholars Fellowship. This fellowship is in an experiential learning project that allows Jewish participants to consider how Jewish cemeteries relate to contemporary life in preserving the memory and legacy of the former Jewish communities of Poland. The Fellowship will be renewed in 2022.
• Beginning in 2017, Dr. Reece and The Matzevah Foundation have been collaborating with Fundacja Zapomniane and the Rabbinical Commission for Matters of Cemeteries in what we call the Thirty Matzevot Project. The project's aim is to place wooden markers shaped like traditional matzevot (gravestones) at forgotten mass grave locations of Jewish victims murdered during the Shoah. To date, we have placed nearly 70 markers across Poland.
• Dr. Reece led The Matzevah Foundation to cooperate with Dr. Caroline Sturdy-Colls of Staffordshire University in a three-year (2016-2019), International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) grant-funded project to document Jewish cemeteries as spaces of cultural genocide and Holocaust killing sites: Recording Cultural Genocide and Killing Sites in Jewish Cemeteries.