Sheriff Tom Dart, Cook County As Cook County Sheriff, Tom Dart has brought an aggressive, yet innovative approach to law enforcement. A former prosecutor and state legislator, Sheriff Dart has long fought to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. He reformed the way Sheriff’s Police handle prostitution arrests– steering prostitutes toward rehabilitative services through the Sheriff’s Women’s Justice Program rather than jail. Sheriff Dart also launched a national campaign to target the “johns” who solicit sex and highlight their roles as catalysts for the sex trade. Since its first operation in 2011, the “National Day of Johns Arrests” has grown to include 51 law enforcement nationwide partners who have combined for 1,832 johns arrests. The Child Exploitation Unit, also founded under Dart, actively pursues child pornography and human trafficking cases; such work provided the foundation for his federal lawsuit against the website Craigslist, which ultimately led to the removal of the Adult Services section previously listed on their website. Sheriff Dart has since turned his attention to Backpage.com, now the most prominent conduit for online sex ads, shining a light on the company’s facilitation of the sex trade while pushing for policy and legal strategies to protect the website’s victims. In 2009, Time magazine named Sheriff Dart one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, thanks to his groundbreaking efforts. He and his wife Patricia live on Chicago’s South Side and are the proud parents of five young children.

Sheila Simkins McClain Shelia Simpkins McClain is a Magdalene graduate, Assistant Resident Manager for the program, Coordinator for Magdalene on the Inside, a program for inmates at Tennessee Women's Prison and Intervention Specialist at End Slavery Tennessee. Her own story began with early sexual abuse, followed by drug use. By the time Shelia was 18, she had turned to prostitution and was subsequently trafficked across the country. After being in and out of jail numerous times, Shelia asked the judge to let her join the Magdalene community in 2004. Six months after entering the program, she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Shelia's physical and emotional recovery continued, though, and she graduated in 2007. She is now married with two children, owns her own home, and has a B.A. in Psychology. Through her work and personal life, Shelia is a passionate advocate, and role model, for women who have experienced prostitution and trafficking.

Lisa Goldblatt Grace Lisa Goldblatt Grace is the Co-founder and Director of My Life My Choice. Since 2002, MLMC has offered a unique continuum of survivor-led services including prevention groups, training, survivor mentoring, and program consultation. Ms. Goldblatt Grace has been working with vulnerable young people in a variety of capacities for over twenty years. Her professional experience includes running a long term shelter for homeless teen parents, developing a diversion program for violent youth offenders, and working in outpatient mental health, health promotion, and residential treatment settings. Ms. Goldblatt Grace has served as a consultant to the Massachusetts Administrative Office of the Trial Court’s “Redesigning the Court’s Response to Prostitution” project and as a primary researcher on the 2007 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study of programs serving human trafficking victims. She has served as the Co-Chair of the Training and Education Committee of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s appointed Task Force on Human Trafficking. Ms. Goldblatt Grace is Adjunct Faculty at the Boston University School of Social Work. She is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and holds masters degrees in both social work and public health.

Jennifer Windsor Jennifer L. Windsor is the Chief Executive Officer of Women for Women International (WfWI), where she sets the strategic vision, mobilizes resources, and leads 550 staff across 11 international offices. For more than 20 years, Women for Women International has supported over 420,000 of the most marginalized women in countries affected by conflict and war to access the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to be catalysts for change in their lives and families. Ms. Windsor is a strong leader and passionate advocate for the rights of women around the world. She has over 25 years of experience in international development, human rights, and governance in the nonprofit sector, government, and academia. Throughout her career, Ms. Windsor has focused on the rights of all people, and particularly women, to live with dignity, exercise their fundamental human rights, and realize their potential.

Andrea Powell Andrea Powell co-founded FAIR Girls in 2003 and currently serves as Executive Director. Since that time, Andrea has led FAIR Girls’ efforts to prevent the sex trafficking and exploitation of girls in the United States and in FAIR Girls’ global programs in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Russia, and Uganda. In her current position at FAIR Girls, Andrea over-sees all operational, programmatic, and developmental aspects of FAIR Girls. Andrea currently serves as the FAIR Girls’ chief liaison to the D.C. Anti Trafficking Task Force and has trained hundreds of U.S. and international audiences, including federal and local law enforcement, service providers, state and federal policy makers, teachers, how to identify and assist child victims of sex and forced labor trafficking. In 2009, Ms. Powell served as co-investigator to a Department of Justice funded study on commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States. Ms. Powell currently acts as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University teaching courses in global sex trafficking and girl's empowerment. Her efforts to stop the trafficking of youth have been featured in media outlets including Marie Claire, CNN, the BBC, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and Voice of America. In 2012, Ms. Powell was one of four selected women for the Diane Von Furstenberg's People Choice Award. Her work has been published in the Huffington Post, FAIR Observer, and the Washington Post.

Nicholas Kristof Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since November 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. In 1990, Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, previously a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square movement. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006 for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur.” Kristof and WuDunn are authors of three best-selling books: China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power in 1994; Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia in 2000; and Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide in 2009.

Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof

Shelia

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