Layla Alanazi, Ph.D.

Layla Alanazi earned her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University-L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. She holds two MSc degrees in Global Human Resources Management from the University of Liverpool in U.K. and MSc in Industrial Relations from West Virginia University in U.S. She received her BA in English Language from Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
During her PhD journey at the Wilder School, she worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant with different faculty who have different research interests, such as HR, criminal justice, and public administration. She earned many distinctions, including but not limited to, Wilder School Assistantship, King Abdullah M.S. and PhD Scholarships, Wilder School Best Doctoral Student Award, and Best Paper Award at the NECOPA 2019 conference. Right after her graduation, she worked as an adjunct faculty at the Political Science Department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
She is a quantitative PA scholar. Her research interests include humanistic management, public management, performance management, OB, Public Service Motivation, mediation analysis, Human Resources Management, and others. Her Ph.D. dissertation examined the effects of performance-cash rewards on performance using a mediation model and a mediating variable which is Public Service Motivation (PSM). Her recent research papers focused on answering the questions of how to make public organizations more effective and resilient using the principles of Humanistic Management. Also, how to theorize HM in concrete and operational terms. Her research has been published in leading academic journals, such as the International Journal of Public Administration, and Public Integrity.
In 2023, Dr. Alanazi founded her own Consulting and Training agency “EVMC” In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Her goal is to provide solutions to different HR issues and design HR training tailored to the needs of different SMEs for Saudi and International Firms. Her ambitions were to help assist her country leaders to achieve the 2030 vision, reform HR policies in all sectors when needed, and improve the performance of some philanthropic organizations in Saudi Arabia to the highest levels possible by donating part of the proceeds of her Center to organizations in need.
Prior to travelling to the United States, she worked in several departments in Saudi Aramco. The last position she held was Contract Representative for mega projects contracts. In her spare time, Dr. Alanazi loves arts of all kinds and finds joy and happiness in visiting museums and historical and cultural tourist places around the world