Facilitating Stronger Networks Against Exploitation

Julia is the CEO of Freedom Collaborative Inc and has committed the past years to building the program into a global community 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 is the executive chairperson of Freedom Collaborative’s board of directors and serves as the senior advisor for human rights crimes at Thomson Reuters Special Services. In this role, she is part of the Executive Leadership Team and advises on company strategy to protect human rights and combat exploitation crimes. Previously, Heather was the White House special advisor for human trafficking. While on detail 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 that, she was the special advisor to the Ambassador-at-Large in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (J/TIP) at the U.S. Department of State, within the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. Heather has also worked as a subject matter expert on human trafficking at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, where she implemented a national prevention action plan in collaboration with key federal, state, and non-profit stakeholders.

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.

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.

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.

Carter Quinley is an International Affairs Specialist at the U.S. Department of Labor's International Labor Affairs Bureau, Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking. Carter has over 10 years experience with the anti-human trafficking movement, having worked with non-governmental, governmental, and multilateral organizations across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to address child and forced labor. Carter helped to develop the Freedom Collaborative and she also served as Strategic Partnerships Director at a non-profit organization in Thailand providing access to justice for survivors of trafficking and child sexual exploitation. She is a part-time faculty member at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, and serves on the board of The Freedom Story, an organization preventing human trafficking through education. She holds a Master of International Policy and Practice from George Washington University. Carter was raised in rural and urban Thailand and speaks Thai fluently.

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.