Ms. Silyan-Saba also leads faith based engagements and the development of policies to prevent hate and promote inclusion.

Ms. Silyan-Saba is an accomplished public leader, with a career spanning 17 years of service in non-profit and city government. She served as a policy director in Mayor Garcetti’s Office for Public Safety, and led the strategic goals to build social cohesion, and increase social protective factors to prevent all forms of hate, extremism and violence. Previously she served as a Senior Policy Analyst for the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission where she led multi-faith engagements, and worked to promote religious pluralism, civic engagement and advocated to advance access and inclusion of disenfranchised communities.

In 2015, she was invited to the White House, where she briefed Vice President Biden.  She advised the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) Planning Committee on exploring the use of health approaches in community-level strategies to prevent extremism, and the subsequent publication.  She is a frequent invited guest speaker, moderator and panelist at national and international conferences on a wide range of topics ranging from faith engagement, community empowerment, hate prevention, among others.  Joumana has further published research and contributed to articles on these topics.  She was invited to conduct trainings with the U.S. Department of State on community-law enforcement partnerships in both Nepal and India. She has also served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at California State University Dominguez Hills and taught graduate courses on public policy conflict and peacebuilding. She is a certified mediator in accordance to the California Dispute Resolution Act.

She was recognized for her service with the 2017 Citizen Diplomat of the Year Award and has received several other awards and recognitions. Joumana is a non-resident Fellow at George Washington University Program on Extremism in Washington, DC.  She earned a Master’s degree in Mediation, Negotiation and Conflict Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement from California State University.