Freedom Collaborative is a platform for and by the global anti-trafficking community to connect partners, provide information and share knowledge.

Freedom Collaborative was launched in 2016 by Liberty Shared, with support from Chab Dai International, as an online platform to facilitate cross-border cooperation between anti-trafficking service providers in Asia. The first forum of its kind, and now an independent non-profit organization, Freedom Collaborative has grown into a dynamic space with thousands of users across more than 100 countries and dozens of partnerships. It continues to support collaboration between a wide range of civil society, government, and private sector stakeholders from around the world, through tools and services for data and information sharing. It is the largest community of professionals and other activists working to end human trafficking, forced labour and exploitation globally.

One connected global anti-trafficking community

Over the past six years, we have established Freedom Collaborative as the primary platform that enables anti-trafficking service providers and activists working across the world to come together for information sharing and learning.

Global access to knowledge and expertise on human trafficking and exploitation

We have made it easier and faster for community partners to source and access information on human trafficking and exploitation globally. This has enhanced our collective understanding of trafficking in persons, and the ability of our partners to effectively design and implement programs.

Real-time real-world data from trusted partners around the world

By providing our frontline partners with accessible data collection and analysis tools, we bring together data sets on exploitation activity, contextual factors, and the existing response landscape.

Democratized access and participation of diverse stakeholders

We have enabled stakeholders with no previous access to the community to become connected, and have provided the infrastructure for organizations of all sizes to participate in the global discussion. By sharing and highlighting the expertise of local grass-roots groups, we increase their strategic visibility in the community.

Updates and news

We curate weekly and monthly updates on anti-trafficking news from around the world, including field reports from partners and the latest opportunities for collaboration and funding.

Expert discussions and webinars

Every month, we host expert discussions and webinars on industry topics and practical issues. Our panels bring together practitioners from around the world to discuss challenges, needs and potential solutions in responding to human trafficking and exploitation.

Data collection and surveys

Data collection can be costly and resource intensive. Freedom Collaborative provides organizations with free support for the development and implementation of data collection that can be adapted to local contexts and implemented quickly.

Partnership and network strengthening

We facilitate connections and conversations between community members to help them collaborate on case referrals, program advice and sharing of best practices. We also support networks in activities designed to grow their member base.

Workshops and training

We regularly host workshops and training events for organizations that wish to enhance their case management practices, ensure data quality, and use data insights to inform their programming. During workshops we examine data-sharing processes from several perspectives, as well as case studies of existing regional and global data-sharing initiatives.

Online meetings and collaborations

In many countries, face-to-face exchanges and training sessions are not possible for the foreseeable future. We help organizers host meetings, workshops, learning sessions and training events through collaborative online sessions.

Our TEAM

Julia Macher

Julia is the CEO of Freedom Collaborative Inc and has committed the past seven years to building the program into a community of almost 5,000 members across 115 countries, and the largest platform for professionals and activists working to end human trafficking, forced labour and exploitation globally. While it was a Liberty Shared project, she rose from platform product manager to director of the program.

Julia holds a BA in Political Science and a Bakk.phil in Journalism and Communication Studies from the University of Vienna. Following internships with environmental and child protection NGOs in Vienna and Nairobi, she moved to Bangkok, Thailand, to join Chulalongkorn University’s master program in International Development with a focus on migration and displacement in the region. As her master thesis, she researched disaster risk reduction efforts after Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in the Philippines, including the coordination and collaboration challenges in the humanitarian response.

Julia is currently based in Berlin, Germany. She holds an Executive MBA from ESMT Berlin and served as class president of the EMBA 2020 cohort.

Heather Fischer

Heather C. Fischer serves as executive chairperson of Freedom Collaborative’s board of directors.

Heather is the senior advisor for human rights crimes at Thomson Reuters Special Services. She serves on the Executive Leadership Team and advises on company strategy to protect human rights and combat crimes of exploitation.

Previously, Fischer served as the White House special advisor for human trafficking. During her detail assignment to the White House from the U.S. Department of Justice, she served as the human trafficking coordinator for the Executive Office of the President and the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Prior to this role, Fischer was the special advisor to the Ambassador-at-Large in the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) at the U.S. Department of State. Fischer previously served as a subject matter expert on human trafficking at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, where she implemented a national prevention action plan in partnership with key federal, state, and non-profit stakeholders.

Additionally, she instituted a public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families and co-authored a nationwide Justice Sector report with community-based solutions to address human trafficking in the U.S.

Prior to this, Fischer was the mobilization and partnership strategist at Love146, where she managed government, major corporation and community partnerships to combat child trafficking and exploitation globally.

Fischer is the co-chair of the public-private Financial Crimes Working Group to Prevent Human Trafficking through the Knoble network. She serves on the National Child ID Program Human Trafficking Advisory Team, is a board member of Freedom Collaborative and RecollectiV, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Institute Socrates Program.

Fischer was previously on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-led Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Forced Labor Ad Hoc Work Group, the Washington D.C., New York Capital Region and Southern Tier Anti-Trafficking task forces, Connecticut Bar Association Special Committee on Sex Trafficking of Children, Department of Justice Civil Rights Community Working Group, and the Twitter Trust & Safety Council.

She is currently in the Executive Master of International Relations program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Katharine M. Donato

Katharine is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration and Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has examined many research questions related to migration, including: the economic consequences of U.S. immigration policy; health consequences of migration; immigrant parent involvement in schools in New York, Chicago and Nashville; deportation and its effects for immigrants; the great recession and its consequences for Mexican workers; the U.S. legal visa system; and refugee and migrant integration.

Her first book, Gender and International Migration: From Slavery to Present, was co-authored with Donna Gabaccia and published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2015. Several years later, together with Elizabeth Ferris, she co-authored a second book, Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts, published by Routledge in 2019. Katharine has also co-edited eight refereed journal issues and published more than 90 refereed journal articles and book chapters.

Since 2015, Katharine has received funding for collaborative projects from the Mexican Human Rights Commission, National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the GHR Foundation. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator on an RSF-funded project that examines the assimilation and mobility transitions of immigrant adults who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors. She is also a Co-PI on an NSF-funded project that examines how environmental stressors affect out-migration and the health of families in southwestern Bangladesh.

Katharine was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation during the 2017-2018 academic year. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, she was on the faculties of Vanderbilt and Rice Universities.

Selected recent publications by Professor Donato can be found here.

Kevin Hyland OBE

Kevin is Ireland’s representative to the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), Senior Inspector at Ireland’s Office of the Inspector of Prisons, and was the UK’s first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, working with law enforcement, local authorities and civil society organizations to improve the identification of victims and the prevention and prosecution of modern slavery crimes.

He is the author of SDG 8.7, the U.N.’s target to eradicate forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking and child labour, and has led further efforts within the U.N. for the elimination of human trafficking. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Santa Marta Group, a high-level partnership between law enforcement agencies, faith groups and civil society, and remains as a senior advisor.

Previous to his appointment as Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Kevin served as a police officer for 30 years and led London Metropolitan Police Service’s Human Trafficking Unit, where he oversaw an increase in victim identifications and perpetrator prosecutions. He retired as a detective inspector in 2014, having focused on homicide, gun crime, anti-corruption, money laundering, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking and slavery.

Kevin is chair of the Leadership Group for Responsible Recruitment, chair of the Island of Ireland Human Trafficking Project, a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Institute of Human Rights and Business, and is a board member of The Passage homelessness charity, exploited women’s charity Rahab, and the Sophie Hayes Foundation, which provides employment training for trafficked women. He helped establish Caritas Bakhita House, a London-based residential project for women and children who are victims of trafficking, and provides strategic leadership to the OSCE in producing global victim support guidance. Kevin is also a visiting professor at St Mary’s University, London.

He was appointed an OBE in 2015, awarded the Holy See’s Path to Peace Award in 2018, the UN Women UK Leadership Award in 2019, and the UN Women for Peace Association Advocacy Award in 2020.

Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.)

Ambassador Luis C.deBaca (ret.) coordinated U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery as Ambassador-at-Large to the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons under the Obama Administration. In that role, he led the Cabinet-level President’s Interagency Task Force on Trafficking and the interagency Senior Policy Operating Group, helping develop the U.S. Victim Services Strategy and an Executive Order to prevent exploitation in government contracting.

He was responsible for publication of the State Department’s TIP Report and encouraged governments to implement Prevention, Protection and Prosecution efforts in their respective countries.

Prior to that appointment, Ambassador C.deBaca led investigations and prosecutions of trafficking/slavery offenses at the Department of Justice, and served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on the Judiciary with an emphasis on civil rights, immigration and national security. 

Ambassador C .deBaca played key roles in drafting and negotiating anti-slavery instruments such as the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act and its reauthorizations, and the United Nations anti-trafficking protocol. He pioneered the influential “victim-centric approach” to anti-trafficking work as Involuntary Servitude & Slavery Coordinator and founding Chief Counsel of the U.S. Human Trafficking Prosecutions Unit within the Civil Rights Division. Following his tenure at the Trafficking Office, he returned to the Justice Department to lead the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (“SMART Office”).

He is currently a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an affiliated scholar with Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. Among other research interests, he teaches the current application of the U.S. 13th Amendment in confronting slavery and its ongoing legacies in the supply chains and business processes of architecture and building.

Ambassador C.deBaca has received numerous honors, including the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award, the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, and the Freedom Network’s Paul & Sheila Wellstone Award.