LAURIE KAHN-LEAVITT (Director/producer/writer) is interested in telling compelling, visually interesting stories that don’t normally find their way to the screen. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, where she is working out the structure of a new series of films exploring the history of women in America. This series will focus, in particular, on the lives of extraordinary, ordinary women in the past. It will include women from different time periods, regions, and cultural backgrounds.

Before making TUPPERWARE!, Laurie conceived of, wrote, and produced the film A Midwife’s Tale, based on the diary of 18th century midwife, Martha Ballard and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book (A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812). Laurie’s film was the opening show of the 10th season of the PBS series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE in 1998. It won numerous awards at film festivals, as well as a national Emmy for outstanding non-fiction as part of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s 10th season. The film is now used in classrooms internationally in courses on women’s history, medical history, early American history, obstetrics, and midwifery.

Laurie also conceived of and produced an ambitious and innovative website, DoHistory.org, that immerses its users in the process of piecing together the life of an “ordinary” person in the past. The website has won prizes for both its design and its content since its launch in 2000.