Our People
Leadership
Eva Rodriguez
Editor-in-Chief
Eva Rodriguez is the award-winning editor-in-chief of The Fuller Project, focused on global coverage to raise awareness of the myriad of important, interconnected issues impacting women and girls, and spark action through storytelling.
Eva joins the Fuller Project after 14 years at The Washington Post, where she served as the deputy foreign editor and oversaw riveting coverage of Ukraine, Afghanistan, the global Covid-19 pandemic, as well as other global news stories. Eva was a lead editor of the “Losing Control” series that won a 2021 Overseas Press Club Award that judges praised as revealing “the shocking truths of how pervasive corruption and violence had become” in Mexico.
She was also a supervising editor for the “Africa’s Rising Cities” project, which was awarded a 2022 Overseas Press Club award for its “creative and dynamic” multimedia storytelling that spotlighted how and why Africa would become the center of the world’s urban future.
As founding editor and head of the Washington Post’s highly-successful Talent Network, Eva oversaw a network of freelancers around the United States and world to diversify and enrich the outlet’s reporting and extend the reach and impact of news coverage. At the Post, Eva was also a writer on the editorial board and the deputy of The Post’s Style section where she led a team covering politics, media and culture.
Prior to The Washington Post, Eva was the legal affairs editor in The New York Times’ Washington bureau. There she organized and shepherded The Times’ rigorous coverage of Judge Samuel A. Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court and Judge John Roberts’ nomination to succeed Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Eva worked closely with The Times’ congressional, political and legal affairs correspondents, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse, to produce analysis and enterprise pieces, as well as daily gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings. She also directed coverage on immigration reform on Capitol Hill and landmark legislation to ban the use of torture by U.S. interrogators.
At The Wall Street Journal, Eva was a Justice Department reporter, where she landed high-profile, market-moving scoops and crafted A1 stories on the alleged fraudulent activities of Columbia/HCA HealthCare — the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country.
Her work at The Wall Street Journal was bookended by positions at Legal Times, first as a reporter covering the Supreme Court, and, later, as its executive editor and then its editor-in-chief. Eva was lead editor on a series that revealed the impact of legal and global machinations on trade that was a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious award in business and financial journalism. As part of the top leadership team, Eva directed coverage of the courts, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court, the business of law and lobbying, sentencing policy and general justice issues, winning dozens of local and regional awards and exposing the often-sloppy way in which justice was meted out in the nation’s capital.
Eva started her career at the Miami Herald and at the impactful Miami Review, where her work was recognized as a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award. Eva’s career has also included time at Politico Magazine as a senior editor, and as Washington bureau chief for Businessweek.
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 Meridian Center Rising Leadership Council and a lifetime 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:
Ukrainian Women on the Front Lines but Not in the Headlines – Foreign Policy
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.
Claire Cozens
Managing Editor
Claire Cozens is managing editor of The Fuller Project, focused on developing international coverage of issues involving and affecting women and girls. She has extensive experience in international journalism, both as a reporter and as an editor, and a deep interest in shining a light on underreported issues.
As senior editor with the Thomson Reuters Foundation for nearly four years, Claire commissioned and edited enterprise and investigative stories on issues that disproportionately affect marginalised communities around the world, from modern slavery to climate change.
Before that, she worked for more than a decade for the AFP newswire, taking in postings in New Delhi, Beijing, Hong Kong and Kathmandu. As AFP’s news editor for South Asia, she led a multimedia team of journalists, driving coverage of stories ranging from the rise of Hindu nationalism in India to China’s growing regional influence. She also led on-the-ground coverage of the Nepal earthquake and the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh.
Claire speaks fluent French and has an M.A. in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a B.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge. She lives in London and enjoys hiking, yoga and attempting to grow as many different plants as she can fit in her postage stamp-sized garden.
Disha Shetty
Reporter
Disha Shetty is a reporter with The Fuller Project where she writes on environment and health issues. Her science reporting combines data, latest research and human stories.
Before joining The Fuller Project, Disha spent a decade working across print, digital and television platforms in India in both full-time and freelance roles. At her most recent full-time job with the data journalism initiative IndiaSpend, Disha travelled across India for six months to document how climate change was affecting communities. She also worked on a collaborative investigative series ‘Environment Undone’ that looked at how India was systematically opening up its protected areas like national parks and wildlife sanctuaries to infrastructure projects at great costs to the environment. The work received an honorary mention at the 2021 SEJ awards.
Disha has extensively covered infectious diseases like Tuberculosis as well as stories on maternal and child health. She is the winner of ICFJ’s 2018 Global Health Reporting Contest Award, and has been a 2019 RAF fellow to the UN. She has received reporting grants from the Pulitzer Center, Earth Journalism Network and International Women’s Media Fund, among others.
Disha has a Bachelors in Mass Media from Mumbai University, a PG Diploma in TV journalism from Asian College of Journalism and holds an MA in Science, Environment and Medicine Journalism from Columbia University. She currently lives in Pune, India.
Her work has appeared in publications such as Undark, Hakai, Forbes, IndiaSpend, and Scroll, among others.
Recent reporting by Disha:
The Struggle to Keep Track of India’s Dead – UNDARK
In Goa, the Water Runs Black – Hakai
Interactive: Unravelling air pollution in Asia – The Third Pole
Environment Undone – IndiaSpend
India’s climate change hotspots – IndiaSpend
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.
Fatima Bamba
Assistant to the CEO
Fatima Bamba is the Assistant to the CEO at the Fuller Project. She was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and is a first-generation Ivorian-American. Fatima recently graduated from American University with her M.A in Ethics, Peace and Human Rights with a concentration in Social Justice. While at American, Fatima’s research interests touched on genocide, religion, women’s issues, and Africana Philosophy. She is also a research fellow for the Center of the Study of Religion and the City (CSRC) at Morgan State University.
In prior roles, Fatima worked in Diversity Equity and Inclusion at the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs as well as American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion. Her research with CSRC centers on community justice initiatives in urban cities across American cities. Fatima through her work aims to tell and preserve the stories of marginalized voices and communities at the intersections of gender, race, and religion.
In her free time, she loves to cook, eat, and cultivate communal spaces for others.
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
Karoline Gonzalez
Communications and Marketing Fellow
Karoline Gonzalez is the Communications and Marketing Fellow at The Fuller Project. She recently graduated from Rutgers University-Newark with a B.A. in Journalism and Media Studies and a concentration in Social Justice. While at Rutgers, Karoline was the copy editor of the university’s student-led newspaper, The Observer, winning the Journalism Excellence Award for her department. She also conducted in-depth research under the mentorship of Gaiutra Bahadur, who teaches writing and journalism as an assistant professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, with the goal of empowering the narratives of the victims of the 1980s Hinduphobic hate group, The Dotbusters.
Prior to joining The Fuller Project, Karoline was the gallery intern at Project for Empty Space; a women-led, non-profit arts organization dedicated to creating safe and equitable spaces for social discourse. Here, she collaborated with the gallery manager to plan events advocating for the unification of the Newark community through public art initiatives. She also helped curate and digitize the Project for Empty Space Feminist Library.
Through her passion for storytelling using written and photographic mediums, Karoline aims to create safe spaces for herself and her community to thrive in, as well as uplift the narratives of those with socially marginalized identities, including but not limited to race, class, gender and sexual orientation. She has been featured in NBC News “Stay Tuned” in a dialogue about the Latinx identity and “Faces & Voices of Rutgers” in a conversation with President Holloway.
Though born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Karoline moved to the United States when she was thirteen and has lived in New Jersey ever since. During her free time, she enjoys creating and consuming art, including creative writing, photography and music, as well as spending time with her two cats, Milo and Haiku.
Louise Donovan
Reporter
Louise Donovan is an award-winning reporter, working 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:
She Made Jeans for Americans. When They Stopped Shopping, She Turned to Sex Work – TIME
Violence Spikes As Myanmar Garment Workers Say Factories Are Colluding With the Junta – VICE World News
‘I’m one of them’: the FGM survivor providing a lifeline in Leeds – The Guardian
Female migrant workers and the families they support are being abandoned by the money-transfer industry – Fortune Magazine
Maher Sattar
Senior Editor
Maher Sattar is an award-winning journalist and senior 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
Senior Communications Associate
Mariyah Espinoza is the senior 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. In 2020, she 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.
Peter Gelling
Contributing Editor
Peter Gelling is a contributing editor at The Fuller Project. Pete has worked as a news editor and reporter focused on international affairs for 20 years. He previously worked as the geopolitics editor for Quartz, features editor at WGBH’s The World, and before that as an editor at GlobalPost, where he coordinated coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He wrote for The New York Times from Jakarta, Indonesia from 2004 to 2010.
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.
Tiffany Arnold
Senior Digital Producer
Tiffany Arnold is an award-winning multiplatform journalist who joins The Fuller Project as a senior digital 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.
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
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.
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
Tim Isgitt
Secretary, Board Member
Tim Isgitt is an independent consultant, an Executive in Residence with the Rita Allen Foundation, and a long-time supporter of journalists and media organizations around the world.
Tim was most recently Managing Director at Humanity United, a human rights-focused philanthropic organization for almost nine years. Under his leadership, Tim helped the organization focus and redevelop its mission, values, and strategic direction. He also built a public engagement portfolio aimed at cultivating greater levels of understanding, accountability, and action from key stakeholders, including lawmakers, corporations, investors, and civil society organizations. The portfolio includes an Independent Journalism and Media program that supports a variety of journalists and newsrooms in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Humanity United has supported the Fuller Project since 2017.
Previously, Tim served as Senior Vice President of Communications and Government Affairs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and in leadership and service roles at the U.S. State Department, and at the public affairs firms Burson-Marsteller and Meyers & Associates. Tim began his career as a legislative assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. He received his BA in political science from Texas A&M University, and his MA in government from The Johns Hopkins University. Tim serves as treasurer on the board of Media Impact Funders, a membership organization that advances the work of a broad range of funders committed to effective use and support of media in the public interest.
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 Meridian Center Rising Leadership Council and a lifetime 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:
Ukrainian Women on the Front Lines but Not in the Headlines – Foreign Policy
Federal Government Needs to Change How it Releases Unemployment Data – Boston Globe
