Sumaya was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Fleeing the civil war, Sumaya and her family moved to the United States when she was 12. After completing high school, she attended Dartmouth College, and majored in political philosophy with an additional concentration in education. The combination of these two areas of study gave Sumaya a lens through which to understand the political and social chaos that had defined her childhood in Lebanon. As her studies progressed, she became increasingly committed to exploring the ways in which schools can strengthen and re-vitalize a democracy by educating responsible and engaged democratic citizens. After graduating from Dartmouth, Sumaya spent two years teaching high school and middle school in Alabama, an experience that further fueled her desire to study the relationship between education and democracy. She left Alabama for a Ph.D. program in political theory and education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. During her five years of graduate work in Boulder, Sumaya's research, teaching and community work all focused in different ways on the relationship between democratic theory, education and social justice. Sumaya is the mother of Owen, Watershed School class of 2019.