Mona Younis is an independent consultant on organizational development and human rights. A sociologist by training, she previously served as director of the Science and Human Rights Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, program officer at the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and coordinator of the International Human Rights Funders Group. She also co-founded the Arab Human Rights Fund (Beirut, Lebanon) and Fund for Global Human Rights (Washington, DC).

Mona is an Arab American of Syrian origin who has lived and worked in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and conducted research throughout the Arab region. She has published on human rights, community development and social movements, and authored Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements (2000). She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and earned her Bachelor and Master degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And whenever she gets a chance, she indulges her passions for music and art, especially pen and ink, sculpting and mixed media collage.