No Woman Left Behind: A Journey of Hope to Heal Every Woman Injured in Childbirth by Kate Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

No Woman Left Behind: A Journey of Hope to Heal Every Woman Injured in Childbirth is a powerful and deeply moving memoir by Kate Grant, founding CEO of the Fistula Foundation. Grant traces her unexpected path from a career in advertising to global development, including work at USAID and other institutions, and ultimately to becoming the passionate leader of one of the most impactful maternal health organizations in the world. Today, the Fistula Foundation is the leading funder of fistula surgeries across Africa and Asia, helping women reclaim their dignity and health after devastating childbirth injuries.

For anyone interested in working in global health, particularly with women as the sole focus—No Woman Left Behind offers rare, behind-the-scenes insight into nonprofit leadership, management, and fundraising. Grant is candid about both the successes and the missteps of running a nonprofit, and she explains how shifting circumstances pushed the Fistula Foundation from working exclusively in Ethiopia to partnering with trusted hospitals across Africa and Asia. The result is a realistic, instructive look at what it takes to scale impact responsibly.

The memoir also serves as a revealing critique of the global development industry itself. Grant does not shy away from discussing uncomfortable truths about foreign aid, including how funding can remain in the United States for overhead, consulting fees, and salaries, or be tied to American goods that are shipped abroad only to rot in ports. While acknowledging that this is not always the case, these realities shaped Grant’s resolve to build the Fistula Foundation as a lean organization, one where the vast majority of funds go directly to life-changing fistula surgeries for women who have often suffered in silence for years.

One of the most compelling aspects of No Woman Left Behind is Grant’s discussion of major donor funding. Some of the Foundation’s largest supporters remain anonymous, but their contributions dramatically increased the number of surgeries performed. These gifts also required organizational growth: what began as a four-person operation had to expand into a larger team capable of responsibly managing and maximizing large-scale donations.

With increased funding came a greater willingness to take calculated risks, including purchasing advertisements in The New York Times. Despite the steep price tag, the ads generated donations that far exceeded their cost, ultimately funding even more surgeries. Throughout the memoir, Grant emphasizes that increasing the number of fistula surgeries is always the end goal. She repeatedly highlights the collaborative nature of the global health community, where a single phone call to a colleague can connect the Foundation with doctors and hospitals urgently in need of funding to continue caring for women living with obstetric fistula.

As Grant notes, securing large donations from wealthy individuals and institutions is no small undertaking. She offers a detailed account of the rigorous process behind the Fistula Foundation’s largest gift to date. After being contacted by Bridgespan, the consulting firm that advises philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, Grant, her team, and the board embarked on months of Zoom calls and the creation of an entirely new strategic plan. This effort was followed by three months of silence until Grant received the call confirming a transformative $15 million donation. It was a moment that underscored both the uncertainty and the immense potential of high-impact philanthropy.

In an interview with Social Good Moms a few years ago, Kate Grant said about the grant from Scott, “We’ve been at this a long time, so we take this spending money side of this endeavor very carefully. If we are better at spending that money, that will enable us to help more women. It’s really that simple. That motivates a kind of tough-mindedness to do what we do. $15 million puts an internal pressure on us to spend that money well, but also relatively quickly. Why quickly? If I had a hole in my vagina that’s leaking urine and sometimes feces, I would want that problem fixed like today. Not a month from now. Not a year from now.”

While Grant highlights the remarkable growth in the number of surgeries the Fistula Foundation has funded and the countless women whose lives have been transformed, she also candidly addresses the obstacles she faced along the way. She writes about the misogyny that, at times, slowed the Foundation’s progress and forced her to rethink and pivot her leadership approach. Grant is equally honest about the personal toll of the work, including how her intense dedication to fistula patients affected her health and led to difficult realizations about a leadership style that, at times, alienated some staff members.

This level of candor is one of the memoir’s greatest strengths. Grant makes clear that serving the most vulnerable is never as straightforward as it may appear. Yet despite these challenges, her commitment to women never wavered. That perseverance has helped the Fistula Foundation reach a remarkable milestone: more than 100,000 life-changing surgeries performed to date.


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