MacDowell Presents: Women's Voices from the Frontlines

Jane Ferguson, Zahra Nader (photo by Soraya Mohammadi), and Xanthe Scharff.

On June 3, 2024, MacDowell welcomed to our Chelsea Galleries in NYC newsroom thought leaders Jane Ferguson (PBS Newshour) and Zahra Nader (Zan Times) in conversation with Xanthe Scharff, cofounder of the Fuller Project. Ferguson, Nader, and Scharff—three journalists at the top of their craft—shared poignant insights from their experiences in the field and discussed the unique and evolving challenges facing women reporters and the coverage of women peacekeepers in conflict zones.

Following the discussion, questions from the audience spurred on conversations that carried on well into the evening. Ferguson signed copies of her memoir, No Ordinary Assignment, provided by Toadstool Bookshop, along with a curated selection of topical books and works by MacDowell journalism Fellows.

The full recording of our livestreamed event may be found below and on MacDowell's YouTube channel.

About the Panelists:

Jane Ferguson is an award-winning journalist, author and the founder and CEO of media platform Noosphere. A war reporter and foreign correspondent, she spent more than 15 years living and working in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, most recently for PBS NewsHour; was a contributor to The New Yorker; and visiting McGraw Professor of journalism at Princeton. Now based in New York City, she remains a non-resident Fellow at the Lichtenstein Institute at Princeton University. Her work has focused primarily on U.S. foreign policy and defense, conflict, diplomacy, and human rights. With an emphasis on in-depth, magazine length broadcasting, Jane's reporting has been recognized with awards including the George Polk Award, an Emmy, a Peabody, Overseas Press Club of America Peter Jennings Award, and two DuPonts. Her memoir, No Ordinary Assignment, was published in 2023 by HarperCollins. It has been described by The New York Times as "engrossing" and "writing with the kind of intimate knowledge that is prized by novelists and historians."

Zahra Nader is an Afghan journalist and editor-in-chief of Zan Times, an online media outlet that covers human rights violations in Afghanistan with a focus on women and the LGBTQI community. She started her career as a journalist in 2011 in Kabul and joined The New York Times bureau in 2016. She has been bylined in publications ranging from Time and Foreign Policy to the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and DW. In February 2023, she received the Kathy Gannon Legacy Award from the Coalition for Women in Journalism. She is also a Ph.D. student in gender, feminist and women’s studies at York University in Canada.

Dr. Xanthe Scharff is an award-winning nonprofit founder and a frequent speaker about women's rights and foreign policy. She cofounded The Fuller Project, the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking journalism about women, while reporting in Turkey and on the Syrian border. She is the founder and board chair emeritus of Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa and contributes regularly to Foreign Policy and other magazines on topics related to women and international affairs. Scharff is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Meridian Center Rising Leadership Council and was awarded a Genius Grant by the Helen Gurley Brown Trust for visionary leadership around climate and gender reporting.

The Fuller Project is the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.