Meet Our Team > Maya Paley

Maya Paley, Managing Consultant, is a consultant, advocate, researcher, and evaluator who works with Cities & People through conducting research, evaluation, and analysis to support building public-sector decision-making power for Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, and low-income people in communities throughout the country.

Maya has served as a thoughtful, strategic, and effective advocate, focusing on gender, racial, and economic justice and equity. Maya grew up with a keen awareness of her mixed privilege as a mixed person, observing and experiencing the differences between the Middle Eastern and white American sides of her family in wealth, opportunity, health, life expectancy, education, equality, equity, and inclusion. These experiences were the catalyst for Maya self-identifying as a feminist, anti-racist activist as a child, making an intentional decision to dedicate her life to advocating for an end to all forms of oppression.

Maya consults and trains on a range of topics, including program development, research, and evaluation, policy analysis and advocacy, fund development, coalition-building, and strategic visioning and planning. Maya is also a speaker, panelist, and trainer on gender equity, economic justice, equity in the workplace, and sexual violence. Maya recently served as the Senior Director and Co-Founder of Change the Talk for the National Council of Jewish Women, Los Angeles (NCJW|LA), a sexual violence prevention program for and by teens. Maya also served as NCJW|LA’s Director of Advocacy and Community Engagement for several years and was responsible for the organization’s advocacy and policy agenda, communications, and community organizing. Maya was on the Steering Committee for the California Work and Family Coalition and the Executive Committee for the Los Angeles Coalition for Reproductive Justice, and she was deeply involved in the coalition that won paid sick days for workers in the City of Los Angeles in 2016. Maya has also worked internationally conducting research and advocacy for refugee and sex worker rights. Maya received the Outstanding Woman Leader Award from the City of Santa Monica in 2018 and the Women in Leadership Award from the City of West Hollywood in 2019. She was a featured "hero" in artist Taiji Terasaki's Heroes at Borders exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in 2020. Maya currently serves on the Board of Directors of the League of Women Voters California as the Co-Chair of the Development Committee.

When not doing all this, Maya loves to write, read, think, exercise, rest, and spend time with her kids, family, and friends.

Education

Columbia University
Master of International Affairs
Concentration: Economic and Political Development
Focus: Gender and Migration

University of California, Berkeley
Bachelor of Arts, Political Science

Affiliations

League of Women Voters of California, Board Member and Co-Chair of Development Committee

American Evaluation Association, Member