Cynthia Lazaroff is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy.
She is author of Dawn of a New Armageddon, a personal account of the Hawaii missile scare published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Hiroshima Day.
Cynthia is engaged in Track II citizen diplomacy and mediation efforts with Russia and has founded groundbreaking U.S.-Russian exchange initiatives since the early 1980s. She is the Senior Creative Producer for U.S.-Russia Relations: Quest for Stability, a seven-part documentary series supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Executive Producer of Mourning Armageddon, a music video featuring Hawaii artist and activist Makana, filmed in a Cold War nuclear bomb shelter near the Kremlin. Cynthia also co-wrote the story for Showtime’s award-winning mini-series, Hiroshima, and co-produced the prize-winning The Challenge of the Caucasus, featuring the first joint ascent of Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest peak (18,481’), by Soviet and American youth whom she co-led to the summit.
Cynthia is dedicated to catalyzing efforts in U.S.-Russia relations to reduce the nuclear risk and to working with people in Russia and all countries to move towards a world without nuclear weapons. She is convening Bering Strait for Peace, a gathering of indigenous peoples from Russia and the U.S. in the Bering Strait, and Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy, an international online mentoring program to empower women to transform our nuclear legacy and build a global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.
Cynthia previously served as Director of Creative Affairs at Armand Hammer Productions where she supervised the development of feature film and television projects including Mother Russia, an eight-hour mini-series for HBO and The Cuban Missile Crisis, a four-hour mini-series for NBC. An adviser and consultant on numerous Russian-related film and television projects, Cynthia has extensive experience in negotiations and film production in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
In 1983, at the height of Cold War tensions, Cynthia co-founded and served as Executive Director of the US-USSR Youth Exchange Program where she pioneered exchanges in the fields of art, literature, theater, education, film, sports, wilderness adventures, urban leadership and environmental service. Cynthia is a magna cum laude graduate in Politics and Russian Studies from Princeton University.