Laila Maher
Dean of Student and Alumni Affairs
305 Dodge Hall
212.851.0442
Since joining the School of the Arts in 2010, Laila Maher has brought her legal and administrative experience and passion for fairness and inclusion into her work on behalf of School of the Arts students and alumni.
Prior to joining the School of the Arts, she was a Director of Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, where she investigated discrimination complaints and implemented the University’s nondiscrimination and affirmative action hiring policies. During her time at EOAA she also worked with the University’s inaugural Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives, serving as the founding Director of the Metro New York & Southern Connecticut Higher Education Recruitment Consortium.
Before shifting to higher education, Dean Maher worked in human rights and public interest law. She oversaw the New York City Bar Association’s Legal Clinic for the Homeless and served as a staff attorney for Housing Conservation Coordinators, a grassroots organization in Hell’s Kitchen representing residents in eviction proceedings in Manhattan Housing Court. While at the New York City Bar Association, she also did pro bono work for the Refugee Assistance Project and the Elder Law Project.
Her additional human rights and public interest work include time at the International Human Rights Law Group’s Women’s Rights Division in Washington, DC; the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights; the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies; and the Missionaries of Charities Orphanage in Mokattam, Cairo, Egypt; and advocacy for Haitian Refugees at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida.
Laila was born in Cairo, Egypt and immigrated with her family to Kansas City, Missouri when she was two years old. She has a BA in Psychology, from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a JD from the University of Cincinnati, where she was a fellow at the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights Studies and Staff Editor of Human Rights Quarterly. After law school she received a graduate certificate in human rights from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at The Hague, now part of Erasmus University.