Lucig H. Danielian has worked on human and civil rights throughout her career and volunteer activities and is focused on efforts to ensure that the rights and welfare of women and girls are at the forefront of policy decisions. Dr. Danielian is a fourth-generation American Armenian and a proud Californian with a heritage of more than a hundred years. She attended public schools in Los Angeles from kindergarten through Hollywood High. She then completed her first three college degrees at UCLA, USC, and CSULA and her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Danielian most recently worked as an independent contractor with 30 years of research and consulting experience in a variety of areas concerning political participation and the mass media, interest group participation in public policy, consensus building in policy making, and legislative processes. She has been the recipient of several national fellowships and grants for field research on democracy building, including a Fulbright Fellowship and the Harvard University Goldsmith Research Award.
Dr. Danielian left her faculty position at the State University of New York to move to Armenia as it gained independence from the Soviet Union. She first conducted funded field research in the Armenian Parliament and, in 1995, joined the faculty of the newly founded American University of Armenia, where she served as Provost and Vice President, Dean of the Graduate School of Political Science and International Affairs, and Director of the Center for Policy Analysis. As Provost, she led successful efforts to become the first international university to receive US accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
She is an expert in survey and polling research and applying quantitative and qualitative research methods under challenging conditions and in project monitoring and assessment. She has served as principal investigator for dozens of research projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, UNDP, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF, OSCE, and the EU. A few examples of her activities in Armenia include leading the first independent election monitoring project in the former Soviet Union, chairing the Soros-funded Open Society Institute Armenia Foundation, founding the first non-governmental organization to defend the rights of political prisoners, conducting the first nationwide survey of domestic violence against women, supervising the first assessment of human rights education, and implementing the first project to increase citizen participation in local government.
Dr. Danielian is committed to using a lifetime of learning and experience in service of the city she grew up in and to support Mayor Karen Bass and the LA Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department as they work to transform the city she loves into one based on justice for all who call it home, especially those without one.