Sayonara Tomoum is a J. Dean Amro Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania and a doctoral candidate in Language, Literacy, and Culture Concentration in the College of Education's Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She holds two Master's degrees from the American University in Cairo: one in Applied Linguistics (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) and another in Journalism and Mass Communication. Her research centers on racio-religious identity in multilingual learning across underserved communities in both local and transnational contexts. As a world language educator, she is committed to pedagogical and scholarly practices that amplify cultural knowledge and promote social justice. She draws on critical pedagogy, narrative inquiry, and performance ethnography to explore agency, identity, and transformation. Laila Al-Sawi is a senior instructor of Arabic as a foreign language in the Department of Arabic Language Instruction (ALI) at the American University in Cairo. She holds a master's degree in teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) from the American University in Cairo.

She is co-author of al-Murshid: A Guide to Modern Standard Arabic Grammar for the Intermediate Level (AUC Press, 2013) and Kalaam Gamiil, An Intensive Course in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, volumes 1 and 2 (AUC Press, 2010 and 2013). She lives in Cairo, Egypt.