Dr. Xanthe Scharff is the Managing Director for External Affairs and Editor-at-Large at The Freedom Fund as of February 2025. She leads development and communications efforts and serves as an ambassador for the organisation in the United States.
Xanthe is a media executive, nonprofit founder, and journalist with a deep commitment to centering the stories and leadership of people on the frontlines of change. She co-founded The Fuller Project—the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking journalism about women—while reporting in Turkey and on the Syrian border in 2014. Under her leadership, The Fuller Project drove large-scale policy change, won 39 industry awards, and investigated trafficking and workplace exploitation in Somaliland, Lesotho, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
Xanthe is the founder and board chair emeritus of Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa, an education nonprofit that provides scholarships and peer mentoring in Malawi. The National Association of Black Journalists gave her the Salute To Excellence Award in ‘24 for magazine reporting about the girls that inspired her to start the nonprofit.
Xanthe is the former deputy of the Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution, where she helped advance education policies that impacted billions of dollars in development spending. She has received distinguished alumni awards from Tufts University, The Fletcher School and National Cathedral School; was named top 40 under 40 by the Center for Leadership Excellence; and received a Genius Grant for climate journalism from the HGB Foundation.
Xanthe’s and her teams’ work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME, The Associated Press, Politico, Reuters, The Guardian, The Washington Post, CNN, The Telegraph, USA Today, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, the BBC and beyond.