No Woman Left Behind
A Journey of Hope to Heal Every Woman Injured in Childbirth
A CEO’s revealing story, No Woman Left Behind is an inspiring memoir about the growth of a major nonprofit.
Fistula Foundation CEO Kate Grant’s compelling memoir No Woman Left Behind covers her government and philanthropy work, juxtaposing her experiences to those of the women she’s helped.
As an advertising executive in the 1980s, Grant made good money and lived in a nice apartment. Still, she wasn’t happy. Convinced that travel would help, she took a six-month leave of absence to travel across Europe and Asia. She witnessed various cultural phenomena and startling poverty in the course of her travels; the latter haunted her.
In the aftermath of her travels, Grant attended graduate school for public policy. Later, she entered politics before finding her feet in the nonprofit world with the Fistula Foundation, which has supported more than one hundred thousand obstetric fistula corrective surgeries across Asia and Africa. Following attention from Oprah Winfrey’s show, the organization received a windfall of donations. As it grew, Grant had to fight board members and face global challenges like pandemics.
With a mix of lively reportage and immersive scenes, the narrative introduces life-changing doctors who shunned comfortable hospitals for remote outposts, working on shoestring budgets to provide fistula operations in countries with little medical infrastructure and high maternal mortality rates. Profiles of those who have assisted the organization, including a New York City schoolteacher who funded a hospital and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, are also used to explore its growth. Still, the picture painted of what the organization remains up against is bleak: Women with fistulas are often shunned and cast out of their homes, the book shows; they lack the funds to seek medical help or get to clinics where the procedure is free, and they may endure clinical depression or even die of infections. Gender and poverty are shown to intersect in punishing ways throughout.
Grant also recalls experiencing sexism as a woman in the effective altruism community. Her maturation as an executive coincided with the development of the foundation itself, and she reflects with humor and aplomb on the decisions and the mistakes that helped her grow the nonprofit. And though professional concerns take precedence over personal ones throughout, the book includes a tertiary focus on Grant’s entrance into parenthood and her changing relationships with her parents, both of which impacted her understanding of the doctors, families, and women she worked to support.
Full of startling information about global maternal mortality and obstetric fistula, No Woman Left Behind is an inspiring memoir about the growth of a major nonprofit, seen from the perspective of its CEO.
Reviewed by
Camille-Yvette Welsch
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
