Meet Our Team > Maya Paley

Maya Paley is Co-Owner and Managing Consultant at Cities & People Advisors, where she leads strategy, facilitation, evaluation, and research projects that support equity-centered learning, collaboration, and systems change. With over two decades of experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, Maya partners with foundations, networks, coalitions, and mission-driven organizations to build strategy, shift power, and strengthen relationships across communities and institutions.

Maya’s consulting practice focuses on bridging funders and grantees, advancing trust-based practices, and building infrastructure for sustainable impact. She designs and facilitates processes that bring clarity to complex work, strengthen team alignment, and support thoughtful, equity-aligned decision-making. Her recent work includes multi-year evaluation initiatives, participatory research, organizational planning and alignment, and grantee capacity-building and coaching.

As a trained facilitator, ICF-accredited leadership and executive coach, and certified team coach, Maya brings a trauma-informed and relational approach to leadership development and team strategy. She is known for cultivating inclusive, grounded spaces that allow for deep reflection, collaborative visioning, and values-aligned action. Her work frequently includes coaching for executive leaders and teams, support shifting organizational culture, and integrating equity into program design, evaluation, and strategy.

Maya’s work is deeply rooted in her lived experience. She grew up with a keen awareness of her mixed privilege as a mixed-race person, observing and experiencing the differences between the Middle Eastern and Eastern European American sides of her family—in wealth, opportunity, health, education, and access to equity and inclusion. These early experiences catalyzed Maya’s lifelong commitment to justice and led her to self-identify as an intersectional feminist and anti-racist activist from a young age. Her consulting and coaching practice is shaped by that lifelong dedication to ending systems of oppression and creating new pathways for collective well-being.

Prior to co-leading Cities & People, Maya served in senior nonprofit leadership roles, including overseeing advocacy, community engagement, and policy strategy at NCJW|LA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit. She co-founded an award-winning teen-led sexual violence prevention program, developed a long-standing advocacy training cohort, and helped advance key policy wins, including paid sick leave and expanded family leave in California. She has also worked internationally on refugee rights and sex worker advocacy, and continues to speak and train on issues related to gender equity, workplace justice, community-based policy, and network and coalition-building.

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. In 2020, she was featured in artist Taiji Terasaki’s Heroes at Borders exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum. She holds a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, with a focus on gender, migration, and economic development. Maya currently serves on the Board of Directors of the League of Women Voters California as Chair of the Development Committee and is a member of the American Evaluation Association and the International Coaching Federation.

Outside of work, Maya finds joy in writing, reading, movement, resting, and spending time with her children, family, and friends—with tea and dark chocolate close at hand.

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