Our People
Leadership
Cathy Knowles
Chief Development Officer
Cathy Knowles is the Chief Development Officer of The Fuller Project, overseeing the expanding fundraising program to nurture a culture of philanthropy that supports our newsroom’s priorities.
Cathy was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to an Ethiopian mother and an American-born Caucasian father. After living in Karachi and Geneva, she and her family moved to the American South in the late 1970s. Cathy went on to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Anthropology. Cathy is fascinated by the way people communicate and drawn to learning how cultures and societies evolve and affect the way people behave.
Cathy’s love of bringing people together through corporate and individual giving, community engagement and special events shines through every facet of her work: matching companies with programs that fit their philanthropic profile, cultivating donors and helping them identify their passion projects, and implementing fundraising strategy for large charity galas. Cathy’s passion for social justice and equity, complemented by her 21 years of experience as a professional fundraiser, shapes her approach to each initiative.
Cathy is very proud of her work in top development departments in New York and Los Angeles for organizations including the American Cancer Society and The Salvation Army. Additionally, she found great fulfillment as a volunteer tutor for the International Rescue Committee in New York, and as a founding board member of South Bronx United, a nonprofit organization and youth development organization that uses soccer to engage immigrant and first-generation youth and support the broader South Bronx community. In Los Angeles, Cathy volunteered for The Salvation Army’s Territorial Anti-Trafficking Initiatives in the Social Justice Department.
Cathy is an avid equestrian and is resisting the pull to buy a horse for as long as she can. She lives in North Carolina with her two high-maintenance rescue dogs, Lulu and Opus. Cathy currently serves as a volunteer for the Children’s Law Center of Central North Carolina.
Holly Ojalvo
Interim Editor in Chief
Holly Ojalvo is interim editor-in-chief of The Fuller Project, overseeing U.S. coverage of issues involving and affecting women and girls. She brings deep experience in strategy and operations, team management and coaching, newsroom culture, and collaborative work.
As talent lab editor at Quartz, she led initiatives supporting the global editorial team, including hiring, onboarding, mentorship, awards, and professional development, in addition to editing articles and newsletters. At USA TODAY, she served as editorial director of the College vertical and managed partnerships and special projects. At YR Media (formerly Youth Radio), she launched and ran a national newsroom of young correspondents. At The New York Times, she was deputy editor of The Learning Network, which supports the teaching of Times content, drawing on her previous decade of experience as an award-winning high school teacher and student newspaper adviser. She also spent four years as the founding editor of the digital news startup Kicker.
Holly is especially proud of the impactful work done by journalists she has mentored and managed. She holds a B.A. from Lafayette College and two master’s degrees, one in English from the University of Delaware, the other in education from NYU, and has lived and worked in five U.S. states and two countries (so far). She enjoys running and yoga, serves on the school leadership team at an NYC public high school, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and rescue cat, Tomie Twotone.
Kimberly Abbott
Chief Communications Officer
Kimberly Abbott is the Chief Communications Officer of The Fuller Project, where she amplifies the organization’s strategic priorities including public relations and events, ensuring the newsroom’s groundbreaking reporting on women reaches diverse audiences worldwide.
Kimberly draws on her deep experience of expanding the impact of mission-driven organizations. She has 25 years of success overseeing global communications, media training, public relations, foreign policy, and journalism with a particular focus on underreported humanitarian issues in post-conflict situations.
Kimberly started her career as a broadcast journalist and has worked as a booker, writer, producer and reporter. During Kimberly’s seven-year tenure at CNN, she covered breaking news around the country from the 2000 Presidential Election and recount to 9/11, and was an on-air reporter for “CNN Newsroom”, filing stories from D.C., Bosnia, and Germany. Her first job was reporting for local radio covering education and government. Her journalism has also included France 3 television, Radio France, and BFM Radio in Paris.
Prior to joining The Fuller Project, Kimberly was Vice President of Marketing and Communications for World Learning, a global development, exchange and education nonprofit. There, Kimberly established a rigorous digital media strategy that included the overhaul of multiple websites and the tripling of social media traffic to drive business growth. She also conducted media training for women around the world and created journalism fellowship programs in South Africa and India that enabled young journalists to gain international reporting experience.
At World Learning, Kimberly launched a communications department and led a team of 18 to drive brand awareness and elevate the importance of individual programs, including that of The Fulbright Specialist. Her work drove recognition of a range of development programs, from teaching Syrian refugees in Lebanon to STEM education in Egypt. She produced professional videos that won several awards, including four Gold, one Silver, and three Bronze Telly Awards. Her robust content production resulted in earned media placements in PBS NewsHour, Christian Science Monitor, Inside Higher Ed, US News & World Report, AARP, and many local outlets.
While Communications Director for North America at the International Crisis Group, an independent, nongovernmental organization, Kimberly was responsible for developing strategic approaches for communicating its policy prescriptions. This included partnering to create news reports with legacy media outlets such as “60 Minutes”, “Nightline” and “PBS NewsHour” to cover underreported stories in Darfur, DRC and Northern Uganda, and producing multimedia that enhanced the visibility of the organization as a highly recognized, go-to source for news and analysis on conflict situations. Her podcasts and stories about Crisis Group reports appeared in Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN Global Public Square and Huffington Post. She produced over a dozen documentaries about Crisis Group’s impact, including “Crisis Group On the Frontlines”, which was a finalist for the CINE Golden Eagle Award, and interviewed global leaders including U.S. President Bill Clinton, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, and U.S. General Colin Powell.
At InterAction, an alliance of international development and humanitarian NGOs, Kimberly served as Acting Communications Director and successfully brought attention to lesser known humanitarian and development stories, while collaborating with InterAction’s 160 member organizations to develop media and advocacy campaigns on collective humanitarian and development priorities.
She has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is the recipient of numerous fellowships in journalism and international affairs, from the Radio Television News Directors Foundation, German Marshall Fund, Atlantik-Brucke German-American Foundation, French American Foundation, and others. Her career has also included time on Capitol Hill, in U.S. presidential politics, and as an envoy and translator for the Centennial Olympic Games.
A French speaker, Kimberly earned a Bachelor of Science in broadcast journalism from Boston University and studied French media at the Ecole Française des Attachés de Presse in Paris. She now lives in Maryland with her husband and son.
Lilian Tan
Chief Operating Officer
Lilian Tan is the Chief Operating Officer of The Fuller Project — focused on strategy, operations, institution building and culture — ensuring the organization’s groundbreaking reporting on women reaches diverse audiences around the world. Lilian collaborates closely with the internal Fuller team, along with editors and partners working on women and journalism to boost the success and impact of our reporting.
Lilian is an experienced strategy and operations professional with a focus on socially conscious organizations. She has worked across Fortune 500 companies, Forbes 100 largest non-profits, high growth startups, Corporate Social Responsibility departments, and educational institutions to help them grow in a financially sustainable manner and support their missions.
Before joining The Fuller Project, Lilian worked as a management consultant for Grant Thornton’s Not-for-Profit & Higher Education Advisory practice, one of the largest in the country. There, she advised a range of organizations focused on humanitarian needs, social services, foundations, health, and education as they sought to revise their long-term strategies to ensure maximum impact. She also directed them in how to best evaluate investments in new programs and services to meet their beneficiaries’ needs and assess and improve their fundraising, operations, human relations, finance, and technology practices to promote sustainable and effective growth.
Most recently, Lilian lived and worked in Kampala, Uganda for an organization focused on providing renewable energy and financially inclusive products to more than 600,000 low-income rural households in Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mozambique. She has worked with organizations including USAID, Save the Children, Open Society Foundation, Rotary International, National Marrow Donor Program, World Bank, Signify Foundation, and UNICEF.
Lilian received her Master of Business Administration from New York University, where she was a Forté Foundation Fellow, and her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin. She is now based at The Fuller Project headquarters in Washington, D.C., and, when not working, Lilian enjoys hiking, camping, running, and relaxing behind her piano or a good book.
Xanthe Scharff, PhD
Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer
[ZAN-thee SHARRF]
Dr. Scharff is the CEO and Cofounder of The Fuller Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to groundbreaking reporting on women worldwide that raises awareness, exposes injustice and spurs accountability.
Under her leadership, The Fuller Project has evolved from a grassroots start-up to the global newsroom dedicated to reporting on women and publishing with leading outlets. Since its cofounding in 2015 from Turkey, The Fuller Project newsroom has won various accolades including the Military Reporters & Editors Award, the One World Media Award, the Amnesty International Media Award, the Milwaukee Press Club Silver Award; reporting has also been shortlisted for the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism, One World Media Award, South Asia Journalism Association Daniel Pearl Award, and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Award.
At The Fuller Project, Xanthe heads an organization that includes several dozen editors, reporters, global contributors, and senior business leaders. The team’s reporting has spurred the introduction of new legislation to protect women and girls in the U.S., the hiring of hundreds of policewomen in India, the banning of virginity testing in state hospitals in The Philippines, and much more. She has raised nearly $25 million for The Fuller Project and other nonprofits that raise the voices of women and girls, and she has led The Fuller Project through year-on growth, more than tripling organizational resources between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, Xanthe was awarded the Helen Gurley Brown Genius Grant for her visionary leadership in bringing to light groundbreaking stories affecting women.
Xanthe is an award-winning nonprofit founder and journalist whose reporting has been featured in Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and beyond. During the coronavirus pandemic, she was among the first to write about the disproportionate impact of the economic crisis on women in a major U.S. news outlet (TIME). Xanthe then called for a federal release of data to better inform policies in The Boston Globe. She and her team reported based on exclusive statistics received from 17 state agencies to show women as the majority of unemployment seekers in all states. Over a dozen journalism outlets including The New York Times sourced The Fuller Project’s data reporting, which led the national news cycle three weeks ahead of federal data releases.
In 2019, Xanthe was named among the top 40 under 40 by the Leadership Center for Excellence for outstanding public service. Xanthe is the Founder and Board Chair Emeritus of Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa, a thriving nonprofit in East Africa which has served 3,000 girls with secondary school opportunities. The UN gave AGE Africa a good practice award, and Michelle Obama endorsed the organization’s work. CBS’s The Early Show, Voice of America, The Christian Science Monitor, and several African media outlets have covered their work. The nonprofit named the Xanthe Scharff Workplace Experience project in her honor.
Formerly, Xanthe was the Associate Director at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings where she led research and programming on girls’ education. There, she published extensively and edited a volume on girls’ education, built a partnership with Brookings India, and facilitated a network of 60 global foundations. She was an Education Pioneers Fellow and a Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace during her investigation into government and donor failures to support the survivors of a devastating 20-year war in Northern Uganda.
The Fletcher School awarded Xanthe her doctorate in International Relations for research on post-conflict education, during which she was named Minear Fellow, Earhart Fellow, Henry Leir Fellow, and was an Active Citizenship Fellow. She was also a D.C. Education Fellow and worked at the District of Columbia Public Schools. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and she has worked with organizations including The World Bank, United Nations, Arabella Advisors, CARE, and Save the Children. Xanthe graduated with honors from New York University and completed executive education courses at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School at Harvard.
Xanthe serves on the Board of Advisors of The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that supports military spouses and educates the public on military service, having herself been a military spouse during numerous 9/11 deployments. Having lived in Argentina and Peru, Xanthe speaks Spanish. She has also lived and worked in Turkey, Uganda, Sudan, and Malawi and now leads The Fuller Project’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her two children. If not working, you can find her running, reading, or heading to the woods.
Recent Reporting by Xanthe:
Federal Government Needs to Change How it Releases Unemployment Data – Boston Globe
Team
Alison Anderson
Head of Finance
Alison Anderson is the Head of Finance for The Fuller Project, where she helps ensure the organization delivers on its mission of breaking new ground in journalism to raise awareness and expose the injustices surrounding women and their communities. Alison works closely with members of The Fuller team around the world to efficiently manage the organization’s finances and budget, and to assist the COO in strategic efforts to boost the success and impact of reporting.
Alison is a highly-skilled finance professional with over fifteen years of experience. Her speciality is helping nonprofit mission-driven organizations thrive. As a consultant, Alison’s financial expertise has assisted in growing numerous international, women-focused nonprofits, including Nadia’s Initiative, Komera, Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa, and Free to Run. Previously, Alison was the General Manager of New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, MA and the Manager of Operations at Grantmakers for Organizations in Washington, D.C.
She is an alumna of Davidson College and Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. She currently lives in Chattanooga, TN with her husband, three children, and two cats. She enjoys gardening, podcasts, and very rare moments of peace.
Erica Hensley
Reporter
Erica Hensley is a public health and data reporter based in and covering the South, with a particular focus on reproductive health and equity.
Before joining The Fuller Project, she freelanced and worked as an investigative reporter focusing on public health for one of the first Southern non-profit digital outlets, Mississippi Today, where she was a Knight Foundation fellow and her COVID-19 work helped put national attention on Mississippi’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was the inaugural recipient of the Doris O’Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship and won Atlanta Press Club’s investigative reporting award for her work on lead exposure in Georgia.
Erica received a bachelor’s in print journalism and political science from the University of Southern California and a master’s in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia. She now splits her time between Mississippi and Georgia.
Jeanne Minor
HR Business Partner
Jeanne Minor is The Fuller Project’s Human Resource Business Partner. She joins us as part of JLM HR Consulting. She has over 20 years of experience with solid and progressive skills in all facets of HR management.
Jeanne’s experience spans across a variety of industries, including Marketing, IT, Telecommunications, Construction, and Biomedical, among others. Her background includes working as an HR leader with companies as well as operating her own consulting business working with clients of various sizes.
Jeanne has successfully managed and provided hands-on implementation of numerous HR programs. She has a strong grasp of employment law, compliance issues and benefits administration. She is very adept at managing a wide range of employee relations issues. Jeanne’s focus has been on setting up HR Departments, streamlining processes and implementing cost control measures, while maintaining high levels of employee morale.
Jeanne holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Rutgers University, Douglas College. She also has completed graduate studies in Family Studies at the University of Maryland. Jeanne holds her SHRM-CP and is an active member of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) and local HR organizations.
In her free time, Jeanne likes cooking, gardening and attending live music and sporting events. She is a huge Washington Capitals fan. She especially enjoys spending time with friends and family.
Jessica Klein
Contributing Reporter
Jessica Klein is a journalist covering intimate partner and domestic violence, blockchain technology, and sex work (among other things). Outlets including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Fortune have published her work, and she writes a monthly column for the National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention.
In 2016, she coauthored Abetting Batterers: What Police, Prosecutors, and Courts Aren’t Doing to Protect America’s Women, updated in 2020. With The Fuller Project, she’s reported on how intimate partner abusers weaponize the U.S. court system and the obstacles Indigenous abuse survivors face when it comes to voting confidentially in U.S. elections.
Recent reporting by Jessica:
How a little-known legal loophole punishes girls who don’t behave – The Fuller Project
Jessica Washington
Reporter
Jessica Washington is a reporter with The Fuller Project focused on women and health, especially as it relates to the coronavirus. She raises awareness of issues impacting women and their communities to expose injustice.
Before joining The Fuller Project, Jessica covered reproductive health for Mother Jones. Prior to working at Mother Jones, she worked for “All in With Chris Hayes” as a production assistant and digital content producer.
Her work has appeared in THE CITY, Mother Jones, NBC News, NBC Latino, Marie Claire UK, The Lily and in The Guardian.
Jessica graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She is now based in Washington, D.C.
Recent reporting by Jessica:
Maya Wiley Won’t Be New York’s Next Mayor. What Will Happen to Her Signature Proposal? – THE CITY
How a little-known legal loophole punishes girls who don’t behave – The Fuller Project
Louise Donovan
Reporter
Louise Donovan is an award-winning reporter based in East Africa, where she works closely with the editorial team of Kenya’s largest newspaper, The Daily Nation, raising awareness of issues impacting women and exposing injustices. Louise manages The Fuller Project’s strategic partnership with The Daily Nation and teams up with Kenyan journalists to cross-publish stories in both African and international outlets.
A European Journalism Centre grantee in 2017 and 2018, Louise was named a ‘30 Under 30’ rising star by the Professional Publishers Association in 2019. That year, she also won the One World Media award for her India reporting. In 2020, Louise’s work examining the deadly consequences of curbing reproductive rights in Kenya was shortlisted for the Anthony Shahid Award for Journalism Ethics.
Louise’s groundbreaking reporting has taken her across the globe. In Kenya, she investigated the issue of dumped foetuses and how restricted access to prenatal care, contraception and reproductive services is leaving women in increasingly desperate situations. Her reporting shone a light on an often overlooked but growing problem.
She embedded with an all-female biker squad who fight sexual violence in Jaipur, North India for a story with ELLE UK. One year after the story’s publication, the local government rolled out seven further women-only police units, created over 400 jobs for female officers and dedicated nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to buy extra equipment. More recently, she reported on a Ugandan woman’s experience of domestic violence during Covid-19 restrictions, which led to a women’s organisation reaching out to offer the single mother support.
She reported on global migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia who were kicked out of employers’ homes during COVID-19 and detained unlawfully without regular access to food and water. The reporting, which was published on the front page of The New York Times International Edition, led to a raid on the agency and the women were repatriated Several of the women in the story told Louise that this reporting – and its subsequent impact – had saved their lives. She also reported on the collapse of the global garment industry during the pandemic, directly linking two women on each end of this crumbling supply chain: One in America and another some 10,000 miles away in Lesotho, both laid off when J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy and closed 150 stores in the U.S. and limited orders from its global factories. The story was published by the Associated Press and picked up by more than 100 news outlets globally.
Previously the Deputy Digital Editor of ELLE UK, Louise edited the multiple award-winning Warrior series published in partnership with The Fuller Project. Louise’s work appears in outlets such as CNN, Guardian, Foreign Policy and The Telegraph.
Recent reporting by Louise:
‘I’m one of them’: the FGM survivor providing a lifeline in Leeds – The Guardian
Domestic Workers in Gulf Countries Vent Woes on TikTok – The New York Times
‘It Felt So Freeing’: Why Young Women Are Dropping the Pill – The Fuller Project
Maher Sattar
South Asia Editor
Maher Sattar is an award-winning journalist and editor at The Fuller Project. Maher’s career has spanned broadcast, print, and digital reporting, with a decade covering South and Southeast Asia for outlets such as The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post. He has reported extensively on the climate crisis, migration and refugees, politics, and the international labor movement, with a particular focus on how women – such as Bangladeshi garment workers – organize for their rights in these arenas.
Before moving to New York, Maher was a lead reporter on the Washington Post’s Ivanka Inc project, taking a sweeping look at the women being exploited throughout the Ivanka Trump brand’s global supply chain. Since then he has covered the 2020 US primaries and general election for CBS News, and won a Webby for a documentary investigating organ traffickers targeting refugees in the Middle East. He began his journalism career as a local fixer on Water World, PBS NOW’s Headliner award-winning documentary on the impact of climate change in Bangladesh.
Mariyah Espinoza
Communications Associate
Mariyah Espinoza is a communications associate with The Fuller Project, providing administrative support to the communications team by handling multiple projects from managing content on the website to organizing and maintaining marketing materials.
She conducts in-depth research to help measure and assess the impact of The Fuller Project’s work and helps with external communication development.
She also builds media contact lists to reach target markets and communicates with external partners to assist in helping The Fuller Project reach new audiences.
Mariyah recently graduated from American University where she received her master’s degree in journalism and public affairs. Prior to that, she received her bachelor’s degree in mass communications at Bethune-Cookman University.
Before joining The Fuller Project, Mariyah interned at WNDB, a local news station in Daytona Beach and was a 2018 Bloomberg journalism fellow in San Francisco. In 2019, Mariyah became a top undergraduate researcher in the state of Florida after investigating how college students use social media to consume the news. This past year, she’s worked as a communications assistant for the School of Communication’s Diversity and Inclusion Team at AU.
Mariyah specializes in multimedia projects, with some of her most recent work consisting of a documentary that focused on health care inequality and covering stories that dealt with social justice issues.
She’s originally from Las Vegas, Nevada; however, she prefers to live on the East Coast. In her free time, Mariyah loves to travel, read mystery novels and try new food.
Melissa Thompson
Finance & Operations Specialist
Melissa Thompson is a Finance & Operations specialist with The Fuller Project, where she liaises between the editorial and finance teams, contractors, and vendors. Her responsibilities include processing payment requests, contract drafting and amendments, tax compliance, and administrative support.
Her twenty years of experience in the financial and accounting sector includes managing the financial operations for the largest female-owned logistics company in the world, as well as overseeing the day-to-day operations and compliance requirements of small and mid-size businesses.
She is a University of Tennessee alumna. As a mother of a child with a rare genetic disease, she is also a passionate disability advocate and a peer advisor to other newly diagnosed families through the National MPS Society. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her husband, son, daughter, and two dogs.
Michaela Norman
Development Associate
Michaela Norman is a Development Associate with The Fuller Project, where she assists with fundraising efforts through research, grant writing, and providing administrative support to the CDO. She also acts as a liaison between the development team and other departments in the organization, cultivating board and donor engagement.
Before joining The Fuller Project, Michaela worked as an Operations Associate at American Corporate Partners, a nonprofit that provides one-on-one mentorships with corporate professionals to transitioning service members and active-duty military spouses. At ACP, she supported program participants and served as the point of contact for multiple Fortune 500 Corporate Partners, negotiating funding renewals, planning virtual events, and coordinating mentor recruitment. Prior to working at ACP, she was a development intern with the Catholic Guardian Services and The Poetry Society of New York.
Michaela graduated from Colby College where she received her Bachelor’s degree in American Studies and English with a creative writing concentration. While at Colby, Michaela worked as a Writing Tutor and spent her senior year writing her capstone project on the Feminist Spirituality Movement.
Michaela is a born and raised New Yorker where she currently resides with her cat, Dinah. In her free time, she enjoys reading poetry, visiting museums, and attempting to complete The New York Times’ daily crossword puzzle.
Rebecca Klein
Contributing Reporter
Rebecca Klein is a contributing reporter for the Fuller Project covering how COVID-19 has impacted teachers. Her work has appeared in outlets like NPR, The Guardian and The Hechinger Report. Previously, she worked as a senior reporter and editor at HuffPost, covering education, politics, labor and policy. Her work has been recognized by groups like the Online News Association and the Education Writers Association. She teaches journalism to master’s students at NYU.
Samantha Santhanam
Digital Marketing Associate
Samantha Santhanam is a Digital Marketing Associate with The Fuller Project, where she works on developing and executing web, social, and digital marketing strategies. She specializes in digital advertising, data analytics, and SEO. Sam works closely with the CCO in strategic efforts to increase the impact and reach of The Fuller Project.
Sam is an experienced professional who started her digital marketing career with a media start-up, working with clients from a broad set of industries encompassing higher education, technology, healthcare, and hospitality.
Prior to joining The Fuller Project, Sam worked as a Digital Marketing Manager at World Learning, a non-profit focused on education and international development. There, she developed strategies and executed campaigns that bolstered the company’s digital and online presence, increasing enrollment, and providing data-driven solutions.
Sam has a Bachelor’s degree in Science from India and received her Master’s degree in Digital Media Technology from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. When not working, Sam loves to tackle DIY projects at home or attempts to learn a new language.
Shola Lawal
Contributing Reporter
Shola Lawal is a Lagos-based journalist covering gender, conflict and the environment in West Africa. Her work has been published in publications such as the Mail & Guardian and TIME. Lawal was the 2019 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow and completed stays at MIT, the Boston Globe and the New York Times during the program. Lawal has a masters degree in communication from the University of Lagos.
Recent reporting by Shola:
In Nigeria, gas giants get rich as women sink into poverty – VICE
Isolated in Rural Nigeria – and Waiting for America to Vote – Foreign Policy
Tiffany Arnold
Senior Social Media Producer
Tiffany Arnold is an award-winning multiplatform journalist who joins The Fuller Project as a senior social media producer, helping shape the way people consume, share and engage with the stories of women around the globe.
She arrives at Fuller from Washington, D.C.-based WTOP News, where she earned multiple regional Murrow Awards as a social media and engagement specialist. Tiffany also was a Books Marketing Fellow for Shout Mouse Press, a nonprofit indie book publisher that produces works for, by, and about youths from historically underrepresented communities.
Tiffany earned a master’s degree in publishing from The George Washington University and has an undergraduate degree in journalism from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Her career began with an internship at The News Journal in Delaware, as Chips Quinn Scholar. She has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers and digital media startups throughout the D.C. region, leading to a prestigious Multimedia Editing Fellowship from the Maynard Institute and multiple awards from the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association for her digital projects.
In her spare time, Tiffany enjoys reading, sewing dresses, dancing, and eating other people’s food.
Trip Eggert
Communications Manager
Trip Eggert is the communications manager at The Fuller Project. They have managed strategic communications with policymakers, news shows, podcasts and newsletters, and key stakeholders for organizations including The Marshall Project, Demos and the Brennan Center for Justice. They specialize in impact-driven nonprofit communications from media strategy to graphic design, with their work appearing or being covered in outlets such as The Hindustan Times, Mic and Refinery29. They’ve worked in Uganda, India and across the United States, but they are currently based out of a sunny bedroom in Brooklyn, New York.
Zahra Nader
Contributing Reporter
Zahra Nader is a contributing reporter to The Fuller Project, working on our series, “Ending America’s Forever War: What is next for Afghan women?”, which documents what the end of America’s longest war on foreign soil means for the women who have lived through it. She is also a coordinator and editor for Fuller Project’s partner newsroom, Rukhshana Media, an all woman newsroom in Afghanistan. From 2011 to 2017, she worked as a journalist with local and international media in Kabul, including The New York Times. She is currently based in Toronto, and is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at York University.
Recent reporting by Zahra:
The Humiliation I Experienced Just to Escape the Taliban – Rukhshana Media
‘The Taliban Came and Killed My Spirit!’ – Rukhshana Media
‘They Left Us to the Taliban’ – Foreign Policy
What Afghanistan’s women stand to lose – TIME & Rukhshana Media
Board of Directors
Ana Reyes
Secretary, Board Member
Ana Reyes is a partner at William & Connelly LLP. She Co-Chairs the firm’s International Disputes practice group and is a member of its Executive Committee. She focuses her practice on complex litigation and international arbitration, representing clients throughout the world.
In 2017, Ana was named as the D.C. Women’s Bar Association’s Woman Lawyer of the Year in recognition of her international litigation practice and for her efforts in representing the rights of those seeking asylum in the United States. She has devoted a substantial portion of her practice to pro bono work, representing refugee organizations and refugees seeking asylum in the United States. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has retained Ana for representation in numerous appellate matters and commissioned her to draft a comprehensive report on asylum law in the United States.
Ana is a Clinical Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, where she co-teaches Advocacy in International Arbitration. Ana was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2000. In 2014, Ana also received a Master’s in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.
Deneen Howell
Board Member
Deneen Howell is a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP. She is Co-Chair of both Williams & Connolly’s Transactions and Business Counseling practice group as well as its Employment Counseling and Litigation practice group, and also serves as Chair of the firm’s Budget Committee.
A transactional lawyer, Deneen is a highly skilled negotiator with broad experience helping memoirists, non-fiction authors, thriller writers and illustrated children’s book authors secure book deals; advising senior executives, fiduciary and advisory board members of public and privately-held companies in matters related to executive compensation and corporate governance; assisting former government officials, public speakers, broadcasters and journalists in their professional, academic, media and publishing pursuits; and counseling privately held businesses and non-profit organizations in employment, corporate governance and publishing-related matters.
Recognized by Chambers USA a member of Williams & Connolly’s “renowned” media and entertainment practice, Deneen also has been honored as one of Savoy magazine’s Most Influential Black Lawyers and frequently has been selected as one of the top 500 lawyers overall(Lawdragon magazine).
Deneen was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she also served as President of the Stanford Law Review, and her B.A. from Yale University. Deneen joined Williams & Connolly in 1998 and has been a partner since 2006. She has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Folger Shakespeare Library (2010-20), and recently was elected to the Board of Directors of the White House Historical Association.
Gina Maya
Board Member
Gina Maya joined Human Rights Watch in January 2016 as the director of the newly opened Silicon Valley office. Since the office has opened, Gina has helped to significantly increase the engagement of the local community and has overseen the growth of the office into one of the largest fundraising centers for Human Rights Watch. She was previously a member of the Executive Committee of HRW’s California North Committee and traveled to Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo with Human Rights Watch. She attended Indiana University and Columbia Law School. After graduating law school, Gina worked at the law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and then at JP Morgan Securities, Inc. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Gina took a pause in her career to raise three children but continued to be actively involved in various organizations and local boards in the community.
Jodi Rudoren
Board Member
Jodi Rudoren became Editor-in-Chief of The Forward, the nation’s oldest independent Jewish news organization, in September 2019 after more than two decades as a reporter and editor at The New York Times. She is helping lead a transformation of the storied 123-year-old institution, a nonprofit that went digital-only in early 2019.
A longtime newsroom innovator and collaborative leader, Jodi was an author of the 2020 report on newsroom structure and vision.
As Jerusalem bureau chief from 2012 to 2016, Ms. Rudoren covered two wars between Israel and the Gaza Strip, two Israeli elections, innumerable terror attacks and Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed nine-month peace talks. She also wrote extensively about the Iran deal, struggles over Israeli identity and the collapse of Palestinian politics.
Ms. Rudoren was previously bureau chief in Chicago and national education correspondent, as well as Education editor, deputy International editor and deputy Metropolitan editor. She covered the 2004 presidential campaign, created the print Sunday Metropolitan section, and was executive producer of the multimedia series ““One in 8 Million” which won NYTimes.com’s first Emmy Award, for “new approaches to documentary,” in 2009.
A 1992 graduate of Yale University, the former Jodi Wilgoren and her husband, the former Gary Ruderman, combined their surnames in 2006. They live in Montclair, N.J., with their twins, who were born in 2007.
Mary G. Berner
Board Member
Mary G. Berner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cumulus Media Inc., the country’s second largest radio company, has led some of the world’s top media organizations and brands, building and directing companies to deliver strong value, financial performance and growth. Before joining Cumulus, Berner serves as President and CEO of MPA– The Association of Magazine Media. Previously, Berner was Chief Executive Officer of media giant Reader’s Digest Association and formerly led Fairchild Publications, Inc., first as President and CEO, then as President and as an Officer of Condé Nast. Among her many distinctions, in 2016, Berner was named one of the most powerful women in entertainment by The Hollywood Reporter, the only radio executive to be selected for that annual list.
Miriam Mahlow
Board Member
As a Managing Director in the Development and Outreach Department at Human Rights Watch, Ms. Mahlow works with supporters in Europe and North America. She served as founding director of Human Rights Watch’s Germany Committee and helped to establish HRW offices in five countries. Formerly working from Istanbul, she is in charge of Human Rights Watch’s Development presence in North America, Germany and The Netherlands. Formerly, Miriam worked as a journalist in Africa; a press officer for the United Nations, in Dili, East Timor; and an external staff member for the World Economic Forum. Miriam was born and raised in Berlin, Germany.
Rebecca Winthrop
Board Member
Dr. Winthrop is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education. Her research focuses on education in the developing world, with special attention to the skills children need to succeed in life, and improving quality learning for the most marginalized children and youth, including girls and children affected by extreme violence. Prior to joining Brookings in June 2009, Dr. Winthrop spent 15 years working in the field of education for displaced and migrant communities, most recently as the head of education for the International Rescue Committee. She is the co-author of What Works in Girls’ Education: Evidence for the World’s Best Investment.
Ritu Sharma
Treasurer, Board Member
Ms. Sharma is the co-founder and former president of Women Thrive Worldwide, a leading advocacy organization bringing the voices of women and girls to Washington’s highest-level decision makers. Ritu’s advocacy was instrumental in the creation of the White House Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally. Women Thrive was the driving force behind the US Agency International Development’s establishment of the Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy. Ritu now trains groups around the world in advocacy and is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is author of Teach a Woman to Fish: Overcoming Poverty Around the Globe.
Robert “Rosey” Rosenthal
Board Member
Robert J. Rosenthal is a board member and an executive producer at The Center for Investigative Reporting. An award-winning journalist, Rosenthal has worked for some of the most respected newspapers in the country, including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Rosenthal worked for 22 years at the Inquirer, starting as a reporter and eventually becoming its executive editor in 1998. He became managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in late 2002, and joined CIR as executive director in 2008. Before joining the Inquirer in 1979, Rosenthal worked as a reporter for six years at The Boston Globe and three-and-a-half years at The New York Times, where he was a news assistant on the foreign desk and an editorial assistant on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pentagon Papers project.
As a reporter, Rosenthal won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for magazine writing, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished foreign correspondence, and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Third World Reporting. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. Rosenthal was a Pulitzer Prize judge four times. He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Sarah O’Hagan
Chair, Board of Directors
Sarah is a former journalist and a long-time strategic advisor in the fields of refugee and women’s rights. Sarah is a trustee of Johns Hopkins University; and former Chair of the Board of Advisors of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (JHU-SAIS), where she and others built SAIS Women Lead. As co-Chair of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) from 2010-2016, Sarah has traveled frequently to visit programs. She also serves on the board of the Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation for the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University, and on the Board of Directors of America Media, the leading provider of editorial content for thinking Catholics.
Recent reporting by Sarah:
Why Trump’s Immigration Policy Will Hurt All Americans, The New Republic
How Immigration Reporting Overlooks Women, Columbia Journalism Review
Xanthe Scharff, PhD
Board Member
[ZAN-thee SHARRF]
Dr. Scharff is the CEO and Cofounder of The Fuller Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to groundbreaking reporting on women worldwide that raises awareness, exposes injustice and spurs accountability.
Under her leadership, The Fuller Project has evolved from a grassroots start-up to the global newsroom dedicated to reporting on women and publishing with leading outlets. Since its cofounding in 2015 from Turkey, The Fuller Project newsroom has won various accolades including the Military Reporters & Editors Award, the One World Media Award, the Amnesty International Media Award, the Milwaukee Press Club Silver Award; reporting has also been shortlisted for the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism, One World Media Award, South Asia Journalism Association Daniel Pearl Award, and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists Award.
At The Fuller Project, Xanthe heads an organization that includes several dozen editors, reporters, global contributors, and senior business leaders. The team’s reporting has spurred the introduction of new legislation to protect women and girls in the U.S., the hiring of hundreds of policewomen in India, the banning of virginity testing in state hospitals in The Philippines, and much more. She has raised nearly $25 million for The Fuller Project and other nonprofits that raise the voices of women and girls, and she has led The Fuller Project through year-on growth, more than tripling organizational resources between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, Xanthe was awarded the Helen Gurley Brown Genius Grant for her visionary leadership in bringing to light groundbreaking stories affecting women.
Xanthe is an award-winning nonprofit founder and journalist whose reporting has been featured in Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and beyond. During the coronavirus pandemic, she was among the first to write about the disproportionate impact of the economic crisis on women in a major U.S. news outlet (TIME). Xanthe then called for a federal release of data to better inform policies in The Boston Globe. She and her team reported based on exclusive statistics received from 17 state agencies to show women as the majority of unemployment seekers in all states. Over a dozen journalism outlets including The New York Times sourced The Fuller Project’s data reporting, which led the national news cycle three weeks ahead of federal data releases.
In 2019, Xanthe was named among the top 40 under 40 by the Leadership Center for Excellence for outstanding public service. Xanthe is the Founder and Board Chair Emeritus of Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa, a thriving nonprofit in East Africa which has served 3,000 girls with secondary school opportunities. The UN gave AGE Africa a good practice award, and Michelle Obama endorsed the organization’s work. CBS’s The Early Show, Voice of America, The Christian Science Monitor, and several African media outlets have covered their work. The nonprofit named the Xanthe Scharff Workplace Experience project in her honor.
Formerly, Xanthe was the Associate Director at the Center for Universal Education at Brookings where she led research and programming on girls’ education. There, she published extensively and edited a volume on girls’ education, built a partnership with Brookings India, and facilitated a network of 60 global foundations. She was an Education Pioneers Fellow and a Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace during her investigation into government and donor failures to support the survivors of a devastating 20-year war in Northern Uganda.
The Fletcher School awarded Xanthe her doctorate in International Relations for research on post-conflict education, during which she was named Minear Fellow, Earhart Fellow, Henry Leir Fellow, and was an Active Citizenship Fellow. She was also a D.C. Education Fellow and worked at the District of Columbia Public Schools. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and she has worked with organizations including The World Bank, United Nations, Arabella Advisors, CARE, and Save the Children. Xanthe graduated with honors from New York University and completed executive education courses at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School at Harvard.
Xanthe serves on the Board of Advisors of The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom that supports military spouses and educates the public on military service, having herself been a military spouse during numerous 9/11 deployments. Having lived in Argentina and Peru, Xanthe speaks Spanish. She has also lived and worked in Turkey, Uganda, Sudan, and Malawi and now leads The Fuller Project’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her two children. If not working, you can find her running, reading, or heading to the woods.
Recent Reporting by Xanthe:
Federal Government Needs to Change How it Releases Unemployment Data – Boston Globe
