Laila Ayad

Laila Ayad is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She is a founding member of Ovation Award winning IAMA Theatre Company, named by Playbill.com as one of the countries' top 20 "must know” regional theaters, and an associate member of Ammunition Theatre Company.

Laila is a champion for new play development, and has been successful in working with writers to develop new works for the stage. She was recently seen in the world premiere production of Leslye Headland’s Cult of Love and developed both Christopher Gabriel Núñez's Locusts and Stephen Belber’s Joan at the Ojai Playwrights Conference. Other world premieres include Headland’s Bachelorette and Reverb, D.G. Watson’s Unbound, and Christian Durso’s Shiner, which she debuted Off-Broadway. She has also been seen in the Los Angeles premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s French Waitress and Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries. She developed DreamWorks’ The Prince of Egypt for the stage in the role of Tzipporah, and recently ended four seasons as Charlotte Reid on ABC’s Scandal. She will be seen next in L.A. Theatre Works' upcoming national tour of Seven.

She is a longtime writing mentor with The Young Storytellers Foundation, a program that engages creativity through the art of storytelling by using mentoring, collaboration, and performance to provide students in Los Angeles public schools the opportunity to write stories and see them brought to life.