About

Stephanie Bakal is an educator, writer and producer of documentary programming. 

In her stories she seeks to weave together her passions for the arts, culture and social justice.

Works in progress include a documentary film about COUNTRY FOR SYRIA, an Istanbul-based band that blends traditional Middle Eastern and American Country music. Musicians hail from the U.S., Syria, Turkey, the Czech Republic and France. The band contributes their earnings to aid Syrian refugees and helps raise awareness about people affected by conflict around the world. The film follows the band members’ struggle to reinvent themselves in the States and take their show on the road in the South.

She is also working on MY NEW FAMILY, a fiction book about international adoption told from the perspective of a young girl who leaves the orphanage where she’s lived since she was born for life in a new country.  The book is a collaboration with Paris-based illustrator, Philippe Caron.

Ms. Bakal produced a video for The Focus Forward Project, about the nonprofit organization’s work with men and women to help them navigate their lives as they await trial and sentencing for federal crimes.  She also interviewed Chelsea Clinton as part of a video for Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her work has been broadcast on the BBC, Channel Thirteen/WNET,  PBS and elsewhere around the world.  Ms. Bakal has produced work for the Emmy Award-winning arts show CITY ARTS.  She has a background in publishing, literary development, international subsidiary rights and film promotion.

Ms. Bakal‘s writing also includes essays based on her experience as an adoptive parent that were published in an anthology of essays edited by Jane Aronson, CARRIED IN OUR HEARTS.

A native New Yorker, Ms. Bakal attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, Hampshire College, the University of Paris and has a BA in French from Columbia University. She recently received a Master of Arts degree from Hunter College in Teaching English to adult Speakers of Other Languages. She lives in New York City where she works with immigrants, refugees and students from around the world, empowering them with the skills to tell their own stories in their own voices.