Zainab Salbi - Author & Activist - Interviewees

MAKERS: WOMEN WHO MAKE AMERICA

ZAINAB SALBI

Humanitarian, author, and journalist Zainab Salbi was born in 1969 in Baghdad Iraq. As a child her father became the personal pilot for Saddam Hussein who regularly visited the family at their home while he was president of Iraq.The Iran-Iraq War occurred during her childhood, including missile attacks on Baghdad. In 1990, at the age of 20, Salbi was sent to the United State for an arranged marriage after her mother became concerned about the attention she received from Hussein. She left the marriage after her husband became abusive but could not return to Iraq due to the start of the first Gulf War. She moved to Washington D.C., worked as a translator, and married Palestinian-American lawyer Amjad Atallah. In 1996, she became a US citizen and completed her bachelor's degree in sociology and women’s studies at George Mason University. She has a 2001 master's degree in development studies from the London School of Economics. At the age of 23, 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), Women for Women International 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 the co-founder for DaughtersforEarth.com, Chief Awareness Officer at FindCenter.com, and host of Redefined podcast. Zainab is also the author of several books, including the national bestseller Between Two Worlds (2005). She is also the creator and host of #MeToo, Now What? on PBS, and Through Her Eyes with Zainab Salbi at Yahoo News. Oprah Winfrey identified her as one of the 25 women changing the world to People magazine and Foreign Policy magazine called Zainab one of “100 Top Global Thinkers”.