2007 Maud Dahme Award Recipient

Jill Cerqueira began her work in Holocaust education at the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College as an intern. She received her B.A. in History Education at the College of New Jersey. She has been a teacher of Social Science and Psychology at Holmdel High School in Holmdel, and serves as the district’s Holocaust Resource Teacher. She received her M.A. in Education from Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J., and her M.A. in Diplomacy and International Conflict Management from Norwich University, Northfield, Vt.

Since 1993, she has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Holocaust Studies at Brookdale Community College. There, she assists in programming, fund raising, and presents workshops. Each summer, Jill is an instructor at the Holocaust Center’s Summer Teacher Training Institute, working with teachers to deepen their understanding of the Holocaust as well as developing lesson plans for their use in their classrooms. She became a Mandel Fellow with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1996. In 2000, she attended the International Educators’ Seminar at Yad Vashem, Israel.

Jill has worked on humanitarian missions around the world, serving as an election observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, monitoring elections in Croatia, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgyzstan as they struggle to build democratic societies. Since 2000, in the aftermath of civil war in Serbia, she has done work with teenagers in Kosovo to reduce ethnic hatred and prejudice in the region. She is a fellow with the U.S. Institute of Peace and works with the Red Cross on the use of their Humanitarian Law curriculum.

Jill has two daughters, Diane and Patricia, and is engage to be married to Daniel S. McCracken in August 2007.