Hometown: Fairfax, Virginia
Research Interests: Cultural production and identity politics in the Arab World and diaspora, cultural diplomacy, displacement, and representations of Arabs in U.S. and European cultural institutions

Laila graduated from George Mason University's School of Integrative Studies in Fairfax, Virginia with a B.A. in Integrative Studies and a focus on arts and culture, gender studies and photography. She holds certificates from SPEOS Photographic Institute Paris in Photography and Harvard Business School Online in Business Fundamentals. She was a 2017 and 2019 recipient of a D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellowship and her artwork resides in the permanent collection of the Department of State Office of Arts in Embassies. Laila has lived and worked in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Geneva, Paris, and Palestine. As a freelance art producer and curator, she has worked on major exhibitions including Tania El-Khoury's "Gardens Speak" at the National Building Museum (2016) and "Art in Isolation: Creativity in the Time of COVID-19" (2020) at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, AlHurra TV, The New York Times and D.C. Modern Luxury Magazine among many others. Laila is currently the Managing Director of Washington Studio School, a nonprofit arts organization in Washington, D.C., where she is responsible for fundraising, communications, operations, and strategies, including partnerships and community outreach in collaboration with the Artistic Director. She is a member of Museum Hue, recently served on the Executive Committee of the Washington, D.C.-region chapter of ArtTable, Inc. and co-chaired "State of Art5/DC: A Conversation" at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in October 2019.