What if the difference between lifelong isolation and restored dignity was $633?

In this powerful conversation, Nikki sits down with Kate Grant, founding CEO of the Fistula Foundation, to talk about obstetric fistula — a preventable childbirth injury that affects millions of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia when emergency obstetric care isn’t available.

After days of obstructed labor, many women lose their babies and are left with a constant drip of fecal and urinary incontinence, often facing abandonment and social isolation. And yet — 90% of the time — a trained surgeon can repair the injury and give a woman her life back.

For $633.

Kate shares how Fistula Foundation has grown from funding 500 surgeries in one Ethiopian hospital in 2005 to supporting more than 17,500 surgeries across 30 countries this year — and why she wrote No Woman Left Behind to tell the stories of the heroic surgeons, generous donors, and resilient women at the heart of this work.

This is Nikki’s charity of choice — and an organization she is proud to support — because no woman should suffer for lack of basic, life-saving care.

If this conversation moves you, we invite you to learn more, share the episode, and consider supporting the work.

Kate shares:

What obstetric fistula is—and why it doesn't exist in countries with access to emergency C-sections
"I would rather be blind because people will sit with the blind person, but they won't sit with me"
The first fistula patient she met in 1994—a teenager abandoned by her husband, blamed for her own injury
Why Fistula Foundation only funds indigenous doctors (African doctors training African doctors)
How they've funded over 100,000 surgeries—and why they're on track to keep growing
$633 funds one surgery that transforms a woman's life permanently
Why 85% of their donors are women
The connection between poverty, lack of access to care, and women bearing all the risk of childbirth
Why they don't take government money (U.S. contracting procedures are too onerous)
How a $15 million gift from MacKenzie Scott was spent in months—turned directly into surgeries
37% of women have stress incontinence by age 50 (even in the U.S.)
Why prevention would require massive systemic change, but treatment is achievable now
The book: No Woman Left Behind by Kate Grant (foreword by Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone)

Website: fistulafoundation.org
Book: No Woman Left Behind by Kate Grant (100% of proceeds go to the foundation)
Email: info@fistulafoundation.org (for book club Zoom calls!)

$633 to Save a Life: The Childbirth Injury No One Is Talking About