Zainab Salbi

Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, bestselling author, a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, and a global advocate for women’s rights and leadership.

At age 23, she founded Women for Women International, a humanitarian organization that helps women survivors of wars rebuild their lives. Under her leadership (1993–2011), the organization grew from helping 30 women to over 460,000, distributing more than $146 million in aid and services.

In 2022, she co-founded Daughters for Earth with Jody Allen. The group is focused on mobilizing $100 million in philanthropic funding to support, celebrate, and activate women around the world to protect and restore the Earth.

Zainab is the author of several books, including the international bestseller Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny; Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam, The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope, If You Knew Me You Would Care, and Freedom is an Inside Job: Owning Our Darkness and Our Light to Change Ourselves and the World.

She is also a media host and executive editor of programs such as Through Her Eyes with Yahoo News, #MeToo, Now What? with PBS, The Zainab Salbi Project with Huffington Post, and The Nida’a Show with TLC Arabia, where she brings women’s voices to the forefront of global conversations.

Zainab’s work has earned widespread acclaim. She has been named one of the most influential women changing the world by Oprah Winfrey, as well as Newsweek, The Guardian, People, and Harper’s Bazaar. President Bill Clinton named her one of the “21st-century heroes.” In 2023, she was honored with the prestigious TIME100 Impact Award.

She is a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum and serves on the boards of Vital Voices and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).