Leadership
Email us for more information about the Women's Refugee Commission. For general information, email info@wrcommission.org. For media inquiries, email media@wrcommission.org. For ways to give to WRC, email dev@wrcommission.org.
Email us for more information about the Women's Refugee Commission. For general information, email info@wrcommission.org. For media inquiries, email media@wrcommission.org. For ways to give to WRC, email dev@wrcommission.org.
Your gift will change the lives of refugee women, children, and youth displaced by violence, persecution, and human rights violations.
President and CEO
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.
Vice President, Finance and Administration
Eldar Kekic is the Women’s Refugee Commission’s vice president, finance and administration. He leads the organization’s financial management function, including planning, budgeting, and reporting.
Eldar has more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit financial management and accounting. Originally from Bosnia, he has dedicated much of his career in the US to working with nonprofit agencies. Prior to coming to WRC as finance controller in 2011, he spent 12 years with Volunteers of America, where, most recently, he was senior staff accountant.
Eldar holds a master’s degree in accounting from Hunter College and a bachelor’s degree in business administration, accounting from Baruch College, where he graduated magna cum laude.
Vice President, Programs and Partnership
Kellie Leeson is the Vice President of Programs and Partnership at the Women’s Refugee Commission. She is an accomplished leader with more than two decades of experience addressing forced displacement and humanitarian crises in East and West Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe. She has designed, led and managed large scale health, education, and livelihoods programs for the displaced. Kellie has held senior leadership roles with the International Rescue Committee and NYU’s Development Research Institute.
In addition, Kellie has held advisory and management roles with American Institutes for Research, Concern Worldwide, InterAction, Unicef, and the International Institute for Environment and Development. She co-founded the globally recognized Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, initially hosted by the Women’s Refugee Commission and RefugePoint, and she serves as US Board Chair of Cohere. Kellie also co-founded Empire State Indivisible (ESI), a local organizing group dedicated to building a compassionate and more equitable New York.
Kellie is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, instructing on humanitarian action, displacement, and development. She graduated with a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MA from Teachers College at Columbia University.
Director of Migrant Rights and Justice
Zain Lakhani is the director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission. Along with her team, she develops research and policy recommendations on the needs of migrants seeking safety in the US, focusing on the needs of migrant women and girls.
Zain has built her career working at the intersection of gender and migration issues, both as an academic and policy maker. Prior to joining the Women’s Refugee Commission, she served on the White House Gender Policy Council, where she developed and led its first-ever portfolio on human trafficking and migrant women. She has also consulted with migration organizations such as the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project and Centro de los Derechos del Migrante on a variety of policy areas, including labor migration, sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence.
Zain began her career as an academic, focused on gender, law, and human rights. She has worked on a variety of border and migration policies, including asylum, labor migration, and human trafficking. She has held academic positions at The University of California at Berkely, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law.
Zain holds a PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Yale Law School. Her bachelor’s degree in history and sociology is from Queen’s University, in Canada.
Director, Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights
Catherine Harrington is a director at the Women’s Refugee Commission and campaign manager of the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, a coalition of national and international NGOs, UN agencies, academics, and civil society partners. The Global Campaign is housed within the Women’s Refugee Commission.
Catherine has more than a decade of experience in advocacy and civil society capacity-building on issues related to gender equality, human rights, and citizenship. She represents the Global Campaign as a member of the advisory committees to the “Equality in Law for Women and Girls by 2030” initiative, the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, the Global Movement Against Statelessness, and served on the High-Level Group on Justice for Women.
She previously worked at Women’s Learning Partnership, where she was the senior program officer for advocacy and communications. Catherine has also been a research assistant at the Center on International Cooperation and an editorial assistant for Foreign Affairs at the Council on Foreign Affairs. She has co-produced two films – one on the backlash against women’s rights post-Arab Spring, Because Our Cause Is Just, and a documentary on combating gender-based violence, From Fear to Freedom.
Catherine holds a master’s degree in global affairs from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in history from Tulane University.
Senior Advisor
Sarah Costa is the senior advisor at Women’s Refugee Commission, following a nearly 16-year tenure as the organization’s executive director.
Under Sarah’s leadership at WRC, the organization experienced significant growth and expanded its ability to ensure refugees’ right to sexual and reproductive health care, to safety from gender-based violence, and to economic and social empowerment.
Sarah has more than 25 years’ experience in the fields of women’s rights, reproductive health, gender, and youth development, as well as global philanthropy. Throughout her career, she has worked in partnership with those closest to the issues, from government officials to local women’s organizations.
Before joining WRC in 2010, Sarah served as regional director of the Global Fund for Women, a grant-making organization that supports women’s rights organizations working on economic security, health, education, and leadership. Previously, she was a program officer for the Ford Foundation in Brazil and New York, developing and managing international and national programs on gender, sexuality, reproductive health, women’s rights, HIV/AIDS, and health policy.
During her tenure as professor of women’s health at the National School of Public Health, Brazil, Sarah was active in the national women’s movement, serving as a member of the Advisory Committee to the National Council on Women’s Rights. She also served on the boards of several women’s organizations. She is a member of World Learning’s Global Advisory Council.
Sarah holds a master’s degree in medical demography from London University and a PhD in social medicine from Oxford University.
