LIVE INTRODUCTION FOR ZAINAB

Zainab Salbi (Zay-nub Sal-bee)

Founder and President, Women for Women International

Author of Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam and The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope

For hundreds and thousands of women and families there is little hope after war until Women for Women International’s life saving programs come to their village.

Zainab Salbi and Amjad Atallah founded Women for Women International in 1993. Since then the organization has reached 93,000 women affecting 5.3 million family and community members. Zainab and her work have been featured seven times on The Oprah Winfrey Show and in many other national and international media outlets. TIME Magazine named Zainab “Innovator of the Month” in 2005 for her pioneering work as a philanthropist.  And in 2007 Zainab was named as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.

A survivor of war herself, Zainab details her life growing up in Iraq in the LA Times best-selling memoir, Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam. And her new book, The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope chronicles the stories of women who overcome the horrors of war and rebuild their families and countries.

Women for Women International was the 2006 recipient of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the first women’s organization to receive this honor. The $1.5 million prize is the largest humanitarian award in the world.

Zainab earned a Master Degree in Development Studies from the  London School of Economics and Political Science in 2001 and a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from George Mason University in 1996.

 Please welcome Zainab Salbi…