Full Name
Zainab Salbi
Organization
Humanitarian, Entrepreneur, Author & Media Commentator
Biography
Zainab Salbi is a humanitarian, author, and media personality. In 2015, Salbi launched The Nida'a Show, a talk show dedicated to addressing and inspiring women in the Arab world. The show started with the historic first interview of Oprah Winfrey in the Arab world, and features women and men from all walks of life in addition to global and Arab celebrities. On November 15, 2016, Salbi launched The Zainab Salbi Project, an original global series in collaboration with Huffington Post US and AOL. The Zainab Salbi Project fearlessly travels the world shedding light on global issues through the incredible personal stories of people who are struggling, surviving and thriving in a sea of conflict.
Salbi is the editor at large at Women in the World in association with The New York Times. She is also the author of several books including the national bestseller Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam.
At the age of 23, she founded Women for Women International, a grassroots humanitarian and development organization dedicated to serving women survivors of wars rebuild their lives. 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 leading to a distribution of more than $100 million dollars in aid and loans, and has impacted more than 1.7 million family members.
She is a winner of the David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award and a member of the Synergos Board of Directors.
Salbi is consistently identified as one of the most influential women in the world from Harper’s Bazaar (2010), Newsweek (2011), Fortune magazine (2014), The Guardian (2015), and Fast Company (2015). Most recently, Salbi was featured on Fast Company’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business for being a voice of change in the Middle East (2016), Ranked #2 on Arabian Business’ list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women (2016), and named one of 25 Women Changing The World by People magazine (2016).
Salbi is the editor at large at Women in the World in association with The New York Times. She is also the author of several books including the national bestseller Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam.
At the age of 23, she founded Women for Women International, a grassroots humanitarian and development organization dedicated to serving women survivors of wars rebuild their lives. 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 leading to a distribution of more than $100 million dollars in aid and loans, and has impacted more than 1.7 million family members.
She is a winner of the David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award and a member of the Synergos Board of Directors.
Salbi is consistently identified as one of the most influential women in the world from Harper’s Bazaar (2010), Newsweek (2011), Fortune magazine (2014), The Guardian (2015), and Fast Company (2015). Most recently, Salbi was featured on Fast Company’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business for being a voice of change in the Middle East (2016), Ranked #2 on Arabian Business’ list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women (2016), and named one of 25 Women Changing The World by People magazine (2016).
