Yael Swerdlow comes to the Center on Public Diplomacy from the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, where she was the Director of Media Relations, as well as the media specialist on the Consulate Speaker's Bureau. A native Angeleno, Yael has been a freelance photojournalist based in Los Angeles for over twenty years, shooting for United Press International, the Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, where she was a part of the Pulitzer Prize winning teams for the Los Angeles Riots in 1992 and the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. In summer of 1994, Yael went to Somalia, Southern Sudan, and Rwanda for International Medical Corps to document the reestablishment of the medical infrastructure in those war-torn countries. Yael also writes fiction, including the cinematic script for Activision's best selling video game, "True Crime: Streets of L.A."