Zainab Salbi
Zainab Salbi
Founder
Women for Women International
As a young girl living in Baghdad, Iraq, Zainab Salbi, the daughter of Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot, dreamed of helping women around the world escape from fear and tyranny. Many years later she has made this dream a reality. She believes “the status of women is the bellwether for the direction in which society as a whole is headed,” and thus she has worked since her early twenties with women in conflict and post-conflict regions around the world. In providing access to job skills training, microcredit loans, and myriad support services designed to make them more self-sufficient, Zainab enables women in vulnerable areas to become leaders within their communities, thus sparking a grassroots movement allowing women in developing nations to take control of their own lives. In the United States, Zainab has made it possible for American women to connect with women in war torn regions through a sponsorship program. The relationships fostered between these women and their “sisters” overseas helps create an understanding of one another’s culture that would never take place through traditional media efforts. Women in the US are in turn sustaining the movement for women’s rights and global awareness through state chapters, media efforts, and simple word of mouth. She describes her efforts as helping those women who are in need in front of her while masses of women in the United States are coming up behind her to increase her impact. To date, more than 73,000 women in post-war regions have been connected to “sister” sponsors in the United States and other countries around the world.
Zainab founded Women for Women International in 1993. Time magazine has named her an “Innovator of the Month” and Forbes bestowed their 2005 Trailblazer Award upon her. She is frequently interviewed by the BBC, NPR, NBC, PBS, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times. Zainab is the author of Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam, published in 2005, and The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope, published the following year.
For more on Zainab Salbi:
Overcoming Cultural Barriers With Sound Economics
By Zainab Salbi, Huffington Post
July 7, 2010
Women for Women Founder Borrows Best Practices from Corporate World
University of Michigan Ross School of Business
May 17, 2010
Remembering Afghan Mothers This Mother's Day: A Letter from Sweeta Noori, Women for Women International-Afghanistan Country Director
By Zainab Salbi, Huffington Post
May 5, 2010
A Report from 'Women in the World: Stories and Solutions'
By Marcia G. Yerman, Huffington Post
March 24, 2010
Foreign Policy: Iraq's Forgotten Women
By Zainab Salbi, NPR
March 15, 2010
One Woman's Formula for Change
By Lynn Sherr, The Daily Beast
March 12, 2010
Women to Watch: This Month and Beyond
By Lisa Germinsky, Tonic
March 9, 2010
Women in Rwanda Promose 'Holistic Development' Through Financial Independence and Rights Awareness
By Allyn Gaestel, MediaGlobal
March 5, 2010
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