Jordan Elgrably cofounded Levantine Cultural Center during the summer of 2001 with several other professionals of Middle Eastern heritage. A writer, editor and producer, Jordan is of French and Moroccan origin. He has been passionately committed to strengthening Arab/Muslim and Jewish relations for many years. He founded the New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers Int'l. in 1996 and Open Tent Middle East Coalition in 1999. With the other board members, he makes decisions regarding programming, community outreach and fund-raising. He serves as the organization's acting artistic director.

Jordan attended the American University of Paris (formerly ACP) and was based for a number of years in Paris and Madrid, where he worked as a journalist and associate producer for TF1. His essays, articles and stories have appeared in many anthologies and periodicals. Visit Jordan's web site.


Noora Elkoussy is a first-generation American of Egyptian heritage, and a graduate of Occidental College's Diplomacy and World Affairs program. Her academic specialty is the Middle East and Peace and Conflict Resolution. She has spent most of her post graduate years in the non-profit world, working in international disaster relief and international relations, and later dabbling in business. Noora is one of Levantine Cultural Center's original members, having rolled up her sleeves as a volunteer back in the days when several of the cofounders were active with Open Tent Middle East Coalition—this was in the Spring of 2001, shortly before the center was officially announced. Noora has helped to define the center's mission, and implement its public programs. At 30, she is the youngest member of Levantine's board of directors. Noora is the new director of international programs at HOBY, a national organization which provides leadership seminars, workshops and other services to students and recent graduates.


Nile Regina El Wardani, MPH, Mphil, Ph.D., has more than twenty years of experience in developing and industrialized countries, conceptualizing, planning, implementing, funding, publicizing and evaluating projects in public health, education and culture for a diversity of public, private and non-governmental organizations. Her experience includes grant writing, fundraising, media and publicity, strategic planning, program/project design, management and evaluation, qualitative research, program and policy decision-making analysis, training and human resource development, governance and civil society promotion, Arab and Islamic culture and societies.

In the cultural realm she has produced and worked for the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Music Festival, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and has independently produced at Carnegie Hall, NYC and various concert halls in Paris and Cairo. She organized and helped establish the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award for Literature. In the field of public health and development she has worked with UNESCO, UNIFEM, WHO and many Egyptian NGOs. She has worked on projects with the Egyptian Ministries of Health, Education and Information and bilateral donors including USAID, Finnida, Danida, and the Ford Foundation.

As an activist/producer she produced the first paediatric AIDS benefit in the U.S. at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1989. The concert was televised on NBC raising awareness that AIDS was a disease, which affects everyone, at a time when the disease was believed to be a "gay" disease. In 1998 she developed the indigenous Egyptian production of Sesame Street (Alam Simsim), which continues to air daily in Egypt and focussing on literacy and health.

She has served (2004/05) on the Pacifica Local Station Board of Directors of KPFK 90.7 FM (Los Angeles) and is a co-host and co-producer of the Radio Intifada a weekly one-hour magazine show on KPFK that covers culture, news and politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Nile currently serves on the UCLA School of Public Health Alumni Board of Directors and the Levantine Cultural Center Board of Directors. Of Egyptian and Danish heritage, Nile is fluent in French, Arabic and Spanish. She received her Ph.D. from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Public Health and Policy Department.


Cheryl J. Faris is a native of Fall River, Massachusetts, and has lived in Los Angeles for over 30 years. She was a corporate Labor & Employment attorney for AT&T for 21 years, and currently teaches Law and Social Studies. As a Lebanese-American, Cheryl has long been involved with the Arab-American community. She sits on the National Board of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, as well as on the local Los Angeles Steering Committee. She was the first woman president of the Arab-American Lawyers' Association. For 16 years, she served on the Executive Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Cheryl lives with her husband Patrick King and their two college-age children.


Bita Milanian is Director of Marketing Communications at TelePacific Communications, a facilities-based communications provider of broadband data and voice communication services. She has over 14 years of experience in sales and marketing, business development, project management and new product launches globally, mainly within the international telecommunication industry. Ms. Milanian attended California State University, Northridge, majoring in Business Administration and Marketing.

At one of her recent position with Global Crossing’s Media and Entertainment division, she was responsible for the successful launch of that organization, a $250 million business unit.

Bita has extensive experience in managing and implementing various non-profit programs, fundraising activities and producing events.


Shahrzad (“Shari”) Rezai was born in Iran in 1949 to an Iranian father and Russian mother. She initially moved to the United States in 1963 and attended high school in New York. After graduating from the University of Miami, where she received her Bachelor of Business Administration, Shari moved back to Iran, where she worked at her father’s beer company, SKOL, and HEPCO, heavy equipment manufacturing. In 1978, with the growing unrest in Iran and eventual revolution, Shari and her family moved to Los Angeles, where she has lived ever since. Over the years, Shari’s career has been focused on textiles and interior design, with a four year job at managing Mirak Furniture and Textile company at the PDC. From 1982 until the present time, Shari has acted as the President and CEO of Geltman Industries, a textile finishing company in Los Angeles. In addition to spending time with her two daughters Bahaneh Haydarzadeh (a real estate attorney) and Kat Haydarzadeh (a journalist), Shari devotes a substantial amount of her time to various charitable organizations, including CODEPINK, an organization of women dedicated to peace. She is also very active and supportive of local artists in Southern California and often sponsors exhibitions for up and coming artists in Los Angeles.


A native of Pakistan, Freeha Riaz grew up in Bakersfield and later moved to Southern California, graduating from UCSD, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Cell Biology. A sales and marketing rep for a large pharmaceutical corporation, she has traveled extensively to South Asia and the Middle East. She was inspired to begin non-profit work after seeing the devastation in Pakistan of the Oct 2005 earthquake, where she traveled bringing relief aid. While traveling throughout many remote villages, deep in the mountains of Pakistan, she met people from all over the world, from Ireland, France to South Africa. The trip was a life-changing journey that inspired Freeha to begin volunteering with non-profit organizations that raise awareness about all Middle Eastern countries and cultures. She began volunteering with Levantine Cultural Center in 2005 and was nominated to the Board in 2007.


Rebecca Gonzalez-Tobias is an interfaith educator and social justice advocate. Program Director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics, she designs and facilitates community programming that seeks to foster a culture of peace. In an effort to bring ethics to government and public policy she is presently a political outreach consultant to Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives forwarding the agenda outlined in their version of a Global Marshall Plan. Recently introduced to federal legislators on Capital Hill (HR1078) the bill offers practical and substantive legislative steps to expedite the eradication of poverty, homelessness and social inequity in the US and abroad.

As a fellow at the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva she assisted Special Rappateur Miguel Alfonso Martinez in the drafting of resolutions for the Working Group for Indigenous Populations for the Human Rights Sub-Commission meeting held in August 2005. Rebecca serves as a delegate to the UN's Tripartite Forum on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace and the Committee of Religious NGOs. She resides on the board of the LA-PSR's Non-nuclear Proliferation Committee, on the LA planning and coordinating council for the Parliament of the World's Religions, and is a US representative of the Interfaith Encounter Association of Israel/Palestine.

She has been a guest lecturer and presenter on the issue of ethics and inter-cultural cooperation at the Palaise de Nations in Geneva, the Vancouver World Peace Forum, the United States Green Party Convention 2006 (and is currently serving as the USGP Outreach Coordinator Co-chair) Cal State University Northridge, Arlington West and other academic and civic institutions. Her work has been a concerted effort to build coalitions and to empower citizen advocacy in an effort to improve the lives of all stakeholders on the planet.

Rebecca attended the University of London in 1984, graduating from Florida International University in 1989 with a degree in Political Science and Comparative Religion. In 1996 she went on to study ethics, culture and mysticism of early Christianity and Islam throughout Turkey with the Catholic Sisters of Notre Dame College. In 2003 she attended the Elijah Interfaith Academy of Jerusalem studying scared tests of the Abrahamic faiths with Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein who is a founding member of the World Congress of Imams and Rabbis.