Layla is an international cross-platform journalist, writer, podcaster, sometimes poet, and once-upon-a-time lawyer.
Born and raised in London, Layla’s childhood summers were spent in Syria, where her mother is from and where Layla has enduring, warm memories of delectable feasts amid large family gatherings in fresh mountainous surroundings. Her Libyan Palestinian father was a former Prime Minister and diplomat in the UK who became a dissident in exile after becoming heavily involved in Libya’s opposition movement.
After qualifying as a solicitor – and deciding the profession wasn’t for her – Layla moved to the Middle East to pursue her passion for telling stories about the region during the early days of the “Arab Spring” protest movement. She spent several years working as a journalist while based out of Lebanon, Syria and the United Arab Emirates and has ample experience in all elements of presenting, voicing, writing, research, programming and segment production for global networks, including CNN International and Reuters.
Layla returned to the UK in 2019 to join Save the Children’s global media team and later took up the position of senior correspondent in the London bureau of The National News.
In March 2023, Layla launched the podcast Third Culture Therapy, which she hosts and which explores the unique and often complex causes, symptoms and cures for mental health issues within different communities and cultures.
Layla is currently writing her first book, a non-fiction part-biography part-memoir about growing up as a British-Arab third culture child in England within a highly politicised and revolutionary family.
