Laila Al-Qatami (Interim President) has extensive experience in management and strategic communications for cultural organizations, non-profit associations, financial institutions, corporations, and governments. Currently, she is the Chief Communications Officer for Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait. Previously, she was the Managing Director for the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre (ASCC) in Kuwait, one of the largest cultural complexes in the world.

She also directed external relations and corporate social responsibility for Gulf Bank – Kuwait; directed communications and operations for the Executive Office in the Diwan of HH The Prime Minister of Kuwait; and headed marketing and outreach for the National Center for Documentation and Research of the UAE Ministry of Presidential Affairs.

When Laila was based in Washington, DC, she was the spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and a regular commentator for domestic and international media discussing Arabs and Muslims.

Laila is a founding board member of Soroptimist Kuwait, a licensed Kuwaiti NGO and chapter of a worldwide service organization for women and girls, most recently serving as its Vice President. She was a member of the National Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the largest civil rights organization in the US (2006–2012), and was a mentor for Georgetown University students in the Patrick Healy Fellows Program (2006–2009). She has a B.S. from the University of Colorado, an M.A. from Georgetown University, and is a certified Sustainability practitioner.

Wanis El Kabbaj (Interim Treasurer) is a globally-minded marketing professional with dual French-Moroccan citizenship. Having grown up in a family fond of literature and around books by Amin Maalouf, Taha Hussein, and Naguib Mahfouz, he developed a deep appreciation for powerful storytelling, which drove him to deliver two TED Talks on the future of urban transportation and the ambivalent relationship between nationalisms and globalization that garnered 6 million views worldwide. Wanis champions equitable environments, fostering collaboration and driving positive change.

Philip Grant is a Persian-English and French-English translator based in Los Angeles, translating among other things Javad Tabatabai’s Ibn Khaldun and the Social Sciences (Polity, 2024). He is also an anthropologist and historian, lecturer in anthropology at the University of La Verne, California, and an editorial board member on Encyclopedia Iranica.  Other publications include, as co-author, Chains of Finance (Oxford, 2017), on the sociology of investment management, and an article on the infrastructure of the Zanj Rebellion in Hannah-Lena Hagemann and Alisdair Grant (eds.), Between Rebels and Rulers in the Early Islamicate World (Edinburgh, 2024). He is currently working on a history of the Zanj Rebellion.

Terence Ward is a writer, producer, and cultural consultant who grew up in Arabia and Iran before attending the American University of Cairo and the University of California at Berkeley. Based in Athens for 10 years, he advised governments and industries across the Gulf with MEIRC.

His memoir Searching for Hassan: A Journey to the Heart of Iran was published in seven languages, including two Persian editions. His other books are: The Wahhabi Code: How the Saudis Spread Extremism Globally and The Guardian of Mercy: How an Extraordinary Painting by Caravaggio Changed an Ordinary Life.

He’s appeared on CNN with Christiane Amanpour, PBS, C-SPAN, BBC, RAI-TV, while his writing has been published by the LA Times, Huffington Post, CNN, The Ecologist, Il Manifesto, La Stampa, and Reset. His award-winning docs include: “Black Africa White Marble” and “Talk Radio Tehran.” Ward lives in Florence and serves as an ambassador for Religions for Peace, the world’s largest inter-faith organization.

Georgina Van Welie (Interim Vice President) is a theatre producer, writer, and dramaturge. She graduated from Cambridge University then joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she directed three shows for their Fringe Festival before going on to found her own company Inigo Productions. Co-founder of Sabab Theatre from 2002 – 2013 she produced bilingual Arabic/English theatre productions in collaboration with prestigious performing-arts organizations that include: The Kennedy Center, BAM New York, Arts Emerson (USA); The Royal Shakespeare Company, Riverside Studios, Gate Theatre, Shubbak Festival (UK); Le Comedie Française, Bouffes du Nord (France), The Holland Festival, Warsaw Festival, Attiki Festival Greece; The Tokyo International Arts Festival, Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Singapore Arts Festival, Sydney Festival; Dar al Athar Al Islamiyyah Kuwait, Al Ain Festival, Sharjah Biennale, Cairo International Theatre Festival, Le Tournesol Theatre Beirut. She is currently working on a new Shakespeare Trilogy. Georgina has also worked as story liner, script editor, and co-writer on a number of award-winning TV shows and films with Channel 4, Pearson Television (UK) and most recently with Linked Productions Whose Country (dir. Siam Mohammed).

Professor Mehnaz M. Afridi is the Director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College in the Bronx, where she teaches contemporary Islam and the Holocaust.

She is the author of the 2017 title Shoah Through Muslim Eyes, and previously taught Judaism and Islam at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Originally from Pakistan and raised in Europe and the Middle East, she brings a multicultural perspective to Islam.

Her deep interest in Judaism and the modern Jewish diaspora has led her to numerous interfaith conferences and invitations by non-Muslims to expound on the intellectual and theological similarities between Jews and Muslims.

Her recent research projects are focused in Italy, exploring Muslims and Jews in Italian culture. She taught in Rome and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to attend a seminar in Venice, Italy.

Read an article about Mehnaz’s “Ask a Muslim” lecture series. She once presented her talk, *An Illuminated History of Jewish-Muslim Relations,” at Levantine Cultural Center.

Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a contributing editor at the Daily Beast. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors for both the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, Abraham’s Vision, an interfaith peace organization, and PEN USA, as well as The Markaz/Levantine Cultural Center’s national advisory board.

Aslan’s first book is the New York Times bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award in the UK, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction. His most recent book is How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, followed by an edited anthology, Words Without Borders: Writings from the Middle East, which will be published by Norton in 2010. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Nation, and others, and has appeared on Meet The Press, Hardball, The Daily Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Report, and Nightline.

Aslan is Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of BoomGen Studios, the first ever motion picture company focused entirely on entertainment about the Greater Middle East and its Diaspora communities, as well as Editorial Executive of Mecca.com. Born in Iran, Reza Aslan has been a frequent guest on The Daily Show and many other cable news stations. His many books and edited anthologies are important contributions to the dialogue about Islam and the West, and US–Iran relations. He is now the Wallerstein Professor at Drew University’s Center on Religion, Culture, and Conflict in New Jersey.

Peter Cole is the winner of a 2007 MacArthur Award. He is a translator, publisher, and poet who brings the often overlooked works of medieval Spain and the modern Middle East to English-speaking audiences. His highly regarded translations of the poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Shmuel HaNagid, two of the great Hebrew poets of the Andalusian “Golden Age,” offer readers a lyrical illustration of the extraordinary Arab-Jewish cultural partnership that flourished in tenth- through twelfth-century Spain.

A poet himself, Cole’s translations infuse medieval verse with contemporary meaning while remaining faithful to the original text. His renderings of HaNagid’s poems in particular, long regarded as “untranslatable,” retain the subtleties, complexities, and formal elegance of the original verse. Underlying Cole’s translations is an implicit message of cultural and historical cross-fertilization that is also evident in his work as a poet and a publisher. His Ibis Editions publishes little-known works translated from Arabic, Hebrew, German, French, and Ladino, enlightening English-speaking audiences to the thriving literary tradition of the Levant. By fostering literary dialogue in and about the Middle East, Ibis provides an occasion for intellectual and cultural collaboration. In a region mired in conflict, Cole’s dedication to the literature of the Levant offers a unique and inspiring vision of the cultural, religious, and linguistic interactions that were and are possible among the peoples of the Middle East.

Among Cole’s translations from contemporary Hebrew and Arabic poetry and fiction are also Love & Selected Poems of Aharon Shabtai (Sheep Meadow), J’Accuse, by Aharon Shabtai (New Directions), So What: New & Selected Poems, 1971–2005 by Taha Muhammad Ali (Copper Canyon Press), The Collected Poems of Avraham Ben Yitzhak (Ibis), and The Shunra and the Schemetterling, by Yoel Hoffmann (New Directions).

Cole has received numerous awards for his work, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the 1998 Modern Language Association Translation Award. J’Accuse received the 2004 PEN-America Award for Poetry in Translation.

Dorit Cypis is an award winning artist, educator and mediator. Her work has been presented internationally at museums and other cultural contexts. Foreign Exchanges, an initiative since 2007, offers conflict engagement and diversity skills through mediation and aesthetics. Dorit is Founding Member, Mediators Beyond Borders and past Chair/MBB Middle East Initiative; she founded Kulture Klub Collaborative, artists working with homeless youth to bridge survival and inspiration; directed FAR, Foundation for Art Resources, partnering with private and public organizations to support cultural production in urban settings by artists. On Policing, a current project, weaves her strengths to design community development events in vulnerable neighborhoods where local youth and police officers engage through collaborative and interdependent efforts. Dorit was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in 2014 and has taught throughout USA, Canada, Israel, Holland and France. She earned a Masters of Fine Art, California Institute for the Arts, and Masters of Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University.

Nile Regina El Wardani, MPH, MPhil, Ph.D. currently lectures at CSUSM.edu, UCSD.edu and SDSU.edu in Global Public Health. Previously she taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt in the Graduate School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. A multi-cultural person, Nile speaks English, French, Arabic and Spanish. She holds a PhD and MPhil from the University of London in Public Policy and a Master in Public Health from UCLA.

She has worked for over 25 years in Africa, the Middle East and USA as a program manager/business developer in the fields of public health and international development. She specializes in public health education, human rights, reproductive health and women’s empowerment. She was awarded the Middle East Award for Social Science Research for her research on policy, governance, human rights, and civil society. Nile has consulted for UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, and the Egyptian Ministries of Health, Education and Information. She has worked with bilateral donors including USAID, Finnida, Danida and Dutch Aid and many NGOs in the ME and Africa.

In the cultural realm, Nile has produced for the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Music Festival, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Carnegie Hall as well as venues in Paris and Cairo. Dedicated to improving lives and bridging gaps between people, Nile produced the world’s first pediatric AIDS benefit at Carnegie Hall in 1989 that was televised on NBC. A visionary, Nile subsequently developed the indigenous Egyptian production of Sesame Street (Alam Simsim) with a focus on nutrition, safety and hygiene.

In media, she co-hosted/produced Radio Intifada (for five years) a weekly one-hour radio show covering the politics and culture of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on Pacifica Radio 90.7 FM (Los Angeles). She currently serves on the UCLA School of Public Health Alumni Board of Directors and the Advisory Board of Levantine Cultural Center which champions a greater understanding of the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region by presenting cultural and educational programs that bridge political and religious divides. She continues to cover culture, travel and design for Obelisque Magazine (Cairo, Egypt) and blogs at www.nileelwardani.org.

Bana Hilal was born and raised in Beirut, where she received her B.A. from the American University of Beirut. She also has an Interior Designer Degree from the Newport Beach Interior Designer Institute, and has worked in real estate property management. Bana is a community activist who has long committed herself to humanitarian issues that involve empowering women and assisting underprivileged children, as well building bridge of understanding between diverse communities. She is Co- President of AAUW (American Association of University Women), Laguna Beach Branch—an international women’s organization that advocates equity for women. She is active with the American University of Beirut, and the Daniel Bliss Society Leadership Committee, and is past president of the Lebanese Ladies Cultural Society, an organization that teaches underprivileged students in Lebanon. She is also President and Founder of WIN, Women’s Intellectual Network in Orange County, a group that dedicates itself to building a strong community of women. She is a past board member of Contacts of Orange County, professional women’s group, past board member of Art Matrix, an organization that encourages art as means of expression for Students, and has been a member of several organizations that provide support for the community. She has been a member of Levantine Cultural Center’s national advisory board since 2007. In December 2010 she received the East-West Bridge builder Award, along with Jodie Evans and Roxana Saberi.

Elie Karam is an award-winning playwright, director and actor. Born in Beirut, he fled the Lebanese civil war to Vienna and Montreal to study Dramatic Arts. Relocating to post-war Beirut, he has written and directed critically acclaimed plays exposing important issues in the Middle East. His eclecticism has led him to write for French literary magazines, teach workshops at the University of Toronto, work in advertising for Grey Worldwide as well as exhibit art work in museums and create a hit Arab TV show. He’s been invited as a resident author at the Royal Court Theatre in London and his plays have been performed at the Theatre du Rond-Point in Paris and La Mama in New York. His new play “Tell Me About the War So I’ll Love You” received the prestigious Beaumarchais literary grant, the Lyon Author award and has been published in France by Actes-Sud. It was produced at the world-renowned Avignon Theater Festival in 2010. Elie Karam divides his time between Beirut, Paris and Los Angeles. He served as the artistic consultant for Levantine Cultural Center programs based on his many years’ experience in theatre, television and public events.

Mark LeVine a scholar, musician and activist with well over a decade of experience living and working in the Middle East, from Morocco to Iraq. As a guitarist and ‘oudist he has worked with Mick Jagger, Ozomatli, world music artist Hassan Hakmoun and blues and jazz greats Dr. John and Johnny Copeland. As an activist he has worked with various groups within the global peace and justice movement and spoken at some of its seminal gatherings, such as the Prague S26 Countersummit against the IMF in 2000. As a journalist he has written widely in the US and European press, including Le Monde, the Christian Science Monitor, Middle East Report, and Asia Times. As a scholar he has held positions at the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University, the Society for Humanities at Cornell University, and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. LeVine is presently Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Culture and Islamic Studies at the University of California, Irvine. His other books include Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation (co-editor, Perceval Press, 2003), Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2004) and Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies: Reconstructing Muslim Public Spheres, (co-editor, Palgrave Press, 2005). Two of his most recent books are Why They Don’t Hate Us, Unveiling the Axis of Evil (One World 2005) and Heavy Metal Islam, Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam, Random House (July 2008). Read an interview with LeVine.

Diane Shammas received her PhD in international and intercultural education from the University of Southern California. Her regional focus is on MENA while her research centers around ethno-religious and transnational identity, interethnic and interfaith relations, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans post-9/11 and the diaspora in US and Europe, indigeneity, settler colonialism, and comparative analysis of African American and Palestinian liberatory struggles.

With more than 30 years’ experience with cultures and drumming of the Middle East and Mediterranean, Rowan Storm is recognized internationally as a performer, educator and frame drum designer. Rowan is pioneering the symmetrical frame drum playing position with her most recent design, Remo’s Thinline Frame Drum. The narrow frame and light weight enable both hands to engage equally in creative rhythmic expression, promoting balance between both brain hemispheres. Rowan’s first signature drum is an updated version of the archetypal women’s frame drum of Iran, the Rowan Storm Dayereh by Cooperman and by Remo.

Based in Athens, Greece for many years, Rowan has collaborated with some of the greatest masters of Middle Eastern music, including Naser Musa, Soheil Kaspar, Souren Baronian, Ross Daly, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Sahba Motallebi and Mohammad Reza Lotfi. Rowan teaches frame drum workshops and performs in prestigious venues throughout the US, Europe and the Middle East, including Istanbul’s Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, Greece’s Epidavros Ancient Amphitheater, European Music Conservatories, New York’s Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).Visit her site.

Susanna Whitmore Fránek is a native of Los Angeles and a descendent of one of L.A.’s Hispanic founding families whose roots go back to California’s pre-mission days. She spent many years abroad, living and traveling extensively in both Mexico and Spain. An ongoing interest in Arabic music and culture led her to teach and perform Middle Eastern dance during her seven years in Spain, while she also pursued studies in Flamenco and North Africa dance forms. More recently she has made a point of attending the Middle East Music and Dance Camp in Mendocino each year.

Upon her return to L.A. in the 80s, Susanna went to work for La Opinión, L.A.’s Spanish-language daily newspaper, where she expanded the portfolio of advertisers, served as a cultural liaison between corporate America and the Hispanic community, collaborated on various sales-related projects with the Los Angeles Times. Susanna also worked as VP of Sales at the Wave Community Newspapers, a group of weekly publications targeting Southern California’s African American and Hispanic communities.

Currently Susanna is a co-founder/part owner of a multicultural market research boutique as Principal and SVP of Business Development where she has developed key relationships within major corporations and multicultural advertising agencies, selling Hispanic, Asian and African American consumer-related qualitative and quantitative research and consulting. She has also spearheaded documentary-style film production, complimenting studies on Hispanic urban youth, barbershop discussions with African American men, identity making among Hmong students, an exposé on L.A.’s Asian Indian community, and the growth of store-front Evangelical churches catering to Hispanic immigrants.

Susanna graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies combining Spanish Literature, History and Anthropology. She is currently working on a Master’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology at California State University, Los Angeles. Her thesis topic is on the cultural movement evolving within the Middle Eastern music scene in Los Angeles, and the musicians that are using musical performance and collaboration to encourage intercultural exchange and understanding to promote a dialogue of co-existence and peace. Her goal is to make a documentary film to narrate this growing movement.