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.

Jane Khodarkovsky

Jane Khodarkovsky is a Partner with Arktouros pllc. Prior to joining Arktouros, Jane Khodarkovsky was General Counsel and Head of Risk & Compliance at Celo Foundation, which was founded to support the growth and development of the decentralized, open-source, mobile-first Celo platform to help build a regenerative financial system. Jane oversaw all aspects of legal, regulatory and compliance, focusing on decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), anti-money laundering, sanctions, securities, and corporate law in the digital technology space in the United States and abroad.

Additionally, Jane advises private companies and projects focused on regenerative finance, sustainability, machine learning, digital identity and on-chain AML and sanctions compliance. She also serves as an expert witness in civil cases at the intersection of money laundering, financial crimes, corruption and human trafficking, and she is frequently invited to speak and train private and public sector actors on these issues.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Jane was a Trial Attorney and Human Trafficking Finance Specialist with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (DOJ/MLARS), where she investigated and prosecuted multi-jurisdictional and international money laundering and financial crimes, including those involving virtual currency and exchanges, Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) violations, human rights, human trafficking, corporate supply chains, and child exploitation.

She regularly provided subject matter expertise, guidance and training to DOJ litigating components, U.S. Attorney's Offices, and international, federal, state, and local law enforcement on issues relating to money laundering, financial crimes, forfeiture and restitution. She co-authored “Prosecuting Sex Trafficking Cases in the Wake of the Backpage Takedown and the World of Cryptocurrency,” 69 Dep't of Just. J. Fed. L. & Prac. 101 (2021), published in the Department of Justice Journal of Federal Law and Practice. Prior to DOJ, Jane investigated and prosecuted enterprise corruption, money laundering, financial crimes and public corruption cases in the New York County District Attorney’s Office and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. Jane earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School, and Bachelor in Arts from Barnard College, summa cum laude.