Dr Sylvia C Frain is an inaugural 2024 Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab fellow with the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi with support from The Japan Foundation, Tokyo. She is a co-founder of the Marianas Critical Research Initiative and was selected for the 2024 Rotary Positive Peace Activator Oceania Program in partnership with the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Previously, as a photojournalist in the Republic of Timor-Leste, she taught photographic skills and documented peacebuilding programs. Her Master’s thesis was completed at the University of Queensland, Australia in 2012.

Currently, Sylvia is an impact producer working on multiple projects across the Mariana Islands, Aotearoa, and Hawai’i. She seeks to support a growing film industry in the Mariana Islands, having completed Creative Lab Hawai‘i Indigenous Storytellers Ideation, Hawaii Filmmakers Collective Producers Lab, and is a member of Hawai’i Doc Club. In 2022, she was selected as Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking: Wahine in Film Lab fellow. She has co-founded several NGOs, research collectives, and digital platforms to support digital storytelling. In 2021, she received the CNMI Governor’s Humanities Award, Research and Publication in the Humanities.

Sylvia earned her Ph.D. in Peace & Conflict Studies at The National Center for Peace and Conflict Studies | Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa at the University of Otago | Te Whare Wānanga Otāgo in Ōtepoti | Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2018, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Pacific Media Center, and in 2020 was awarded a Whitinga Research Fellowship in Visual Arts | Toi Whakatu in the School of Art + Design | Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa at Auckland University of Technology | Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makaurau.

Sylvia continues to work with journalists and photographers for The New York Times Magazine, resulting in articles published in 2023: The America That Americans Forget and In Guam, the U.S. Military Presence Is in Full View.