Laurie Sylla, a native New Yorker, has been with her husband, Abdoulaye Sylla, who hails from Guinea, West Africa, since 1994.

Her desire to create a resource to help cross-cultural couples grew out of her personal experience negotiating the cultural surprises and challenges in her own relationship, and watching friends in similar relationships struggle, sometimes unsuccessfully.  She has more than three decades of experience in human services as a counselor, program manager, executive director, advocate, and researcher.  She has served as the International/Community Research Director at the Yale AIDS Program and now coordinates evaluation at the King County Department of Community and Human Services in Seattle.  She is a published poet and has co-authored peer-reviewed journal articles and a book on AIDS, as well as book chapters on microbicides and on the mother’s movement.