Dr. Xanthe Scharff is President and CEO of the Women’s Refugee Commission, a leading global organization advocating for the rights and protection of women, children, and youth displaced by conflict and crisis. She is a founder, newsroom leader, women’s rights advocate, and movement-builder who has spent two decades turning bold ideas into organizations that shift narratives, unlock capital, and drive social change at scale.

Most recently, Xanthe served as Managing Director for External Affairs and Editor-at-Large at The Freedom Fund, a global collaborative dedicated to ending modern slavery. She revamped the organization’s fundraising efforts, leveraging data and AI, and led the communications team to win a Telly Award for innovative video storytelling about frontline work to end modern slavery in Nepal. As the organization’s US-based ambassador, she engaged donors, partners, and the public in support of The Freedom Fund’s mission, while elevating the voices of its 288 frontline partners across Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

A recognized nonprofit leader, Xanthe has raised more than $200 million for social impact organizations and influenced billions of dollars in development and philanthropic capital. Passionate about helping organizations expand their reach, resources, and impact, she excels at pairing powerful storytelling with strategic fundraising to mobilize donors, policymakers, and global audiences around urgent issues facing women and girls.

Her career began with a story. In 2005, Xanthe reported on Anesi, a young Malawian girl forced to drop out of school. When readers reached out to help, Xanthe responded by founding Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa, an organization that now reaches millions of girls through radio programming and thousands more through educational support in Malawi. Backed by leading philanthropists including Michelle Obama and Melinda French Gates, the organization has been recognized by the Malawian government for its impact. Nearly two decades after meeting Anesi, Scharff returned to report on the girls who inspired the organization, earning the National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Award for her Christian Science Monitor cover story.

In 2014, Xanthe moved to Turkey to report on Syrian refugees and co-founded The Fuller Project, a global newsroom focused on women. At a time when only one in four voices in news were women, The Fuller Project helped to shift the perspectives in front-page stories by centering women’s voices and experiences through a pioneering co-reporting model with legacy outlets like The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, and many others. During her tenure, the newsroom worked with more than 100 reporters, earned 39 industry awards and nominations, and influenced major policy conversations. She stepped down as CEO in 2024 and continues to serve on the organization’s Board of Directors.

Xanthe previously served as Associate Director at The Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education, where she helped grow the center to three times its original size, overseeing reporting on girls’ education, fundraising, communications, budgets, and personnel. She built and led an international fellows program for women leaders from Africa, India, and beyond, advised more than 60 philanthropies and grantmakers, and pioneered strategic partnerships that expanded the institution’s reach and influence.

A prolific writer and sought-after speaker, Xanthe’s reporting and commentary have appeared in TIME, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Devex, and other leading publications. Her work and that of the organizations she has led have been featured by The New York Times, The Associated Press, Reuters, Politico, The Washington Post, CNN, BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, and many others. In 2021, the Society of Professional Journalists nominated her for their Dateline Award for her TIME reporting, which was the first to show the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on women, and the Helen Gurley Brown Trust awarded her a Genius Grant for her vision for climate journalism.

Xanthe is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, where she has reported on women peacebuilders in Israel, Palestine, and Syria, and she is a Non-Resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies. She is a former scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, an Education Pioneers Fellow, and an advisor to the Institute for Human Security at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, where she earned her doctorate researching humanitarian aid in northern Uganda. She also serves on the advisory board of Tufts University College, advises PhilanthPro and the Palahnuk Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and its Washington Committee. She has done executive coursework in nonprofit management at Harvard Business School and at Harvard Kennedy School, in media leadership through Columbia Journalism School’s Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program, and in the Daylight Impact Philanthropy Advisor program.

Her leadership has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Women’s Leadership Award from The Fletcher School, designation as a Distinguished Alumna of Tufts University, and recognition among the Leadership Center for Excellence’s 40 Under 40. She has lived in Sudan, Uganda, Malawi, Turkey, Argentina, and Peru, and she currently resides in Washington, D.C.