Zainab Salbi

People Magazine named her as one of the “25 Women Changing The World” in 2016, Foreign Policy Magazine named her as one of the “100 Leading Global Thinkers,” and Fast Company identified her as one of 100 “The Most Creative People in Business”.

At the age of 23, Zainab Salbi founded Women for Women International, a grassroots humanitarian and development organization dedicated to serving women survivors of wars by offering support, tools, and access to life-changing skills to move from crisis and poverty to stability and economic self-sufficiency. Under her leadership as the organization’s CEO (1993-2011), the organization grew from helping 30 women upon its inception to more than 400,000 women in 8 conflict areas. It also distributed more than $100 million in direct aid and micro credit loans that impacted more than 1.7 million family members.

Salbi is also the host and creator of several TV shows including #MeToo, Now What on PBS (2018), The Zainab Salbi Project, original series on Huffington Post (2016), The Nidaa Show with TLC Arabic where she started with the historic first interview of Oprah Winfrey in the Arab world, and an upcoming new show, Through Her Eyes, on Yahoo! News.

Salbi is the author of several books including the national bestseller Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam, If You Knew Me You Would Care, and Freedom is an Inside Job. She is currently a Senior Advisor to the How Institute for Society.