Anna Sokolina was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). In 1980 she received her Masters in Architecture degree from the Moscow Architectural Institute and in 1992 her Ph.D. from the Russian Academic Research Institute for the Theory of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2001, Sokolina completed the Certificate Program in Arts Administration at New York University SCPS Department of Arts, Sciences and Humanities. She interned at the Art Commission of the City of New York; the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York.

Since 1986, Sokolina has worked on various architectural exhibitions. The first, entitled "Concepts of Soviet Architecture 1917-1987" held in West Berlin, was developed by the Central Academic Research Institute for the Theory of Architecture and Urban Design in partnership with the Shchusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow and the Janus Foundation in Berlin. Following the fall of the USSR, Sokolina worked on international exhibitions for the Moscow Young Architects Association. In 1992-93, she curated traveling exhibitions "New Architectural Concepts from Moscow" at Green Berlin Hall, Germany, and at the Ecole d'Architecture de Strasbourg, France; and in 1994, "Art Russia" at the Gallery Buergerhaus (City Hall) Groebenzell, Germany. Sokolina was also the curator/director of the Tabakman Museum in Hudson, NY. Her responsibilities included: the inauguration of the museum's eight galleries totaling 9,000 square feet, several permanent exhibitions and an art shop. From 1996-99 as an independent curator, Sokolina organized art exhibitions at the Steiner Foundation in Harlemville, NY, the New York Open Center in Soho, and at the American Education Center in Rego Park, NY. From 2000-2002 Sokolina was co-curator to a touring exhibition "Journeys of the Imagination: From the former Soviet Union to the United States" at Exhibits USA, Mid-America Arts Alliance. She volunteers for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Education Department.

Sokolina has also edited a monographic anthology, Architecture and Anthroposophy, in which twenty-seven distinguished subject specialists wrote chapters on philosophically and spiritually inspired trends in organic architecture and art of the 20th century. In 2002 Sokolina started working on a collaborative non-profit project, Russian Art 1860-1940 in Western Collections, Information Database on the Internet funded by a number of donors including the S.R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Judith Rothschild Foundation, and Galerie Gmurzynska in Cologne. The project aims to develop a web-based bilingual database of information on Russian art to serve as a resource for educational and scholarly research, and for national and international exchange of knowledge. As of 2007, Sokolina is an assistant professor at the Architecture and Interior Design at Miami University in Ohio.