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Growing up an international citizen in a small Ohio town taught me the importance of the small details within bigger pictures: I saw first-hand how local actions create global waves and how long journeys are made up of small steps.  I try to reflect this understanding by working to improve the world and myself in major decisions and small quotidian choices. Some of those small steps proved to be turning points:

Upon my arrival at Duke University, the events and aftermath of September 11th, 2001 powerfully displayed how religion and politics interacted and effected everyday life around the world, and cemented my interest in studying these interactions and effects.  Graduating four years later as a young political scientist with a desire to impact the world, I knew I would need a deep understanding of a broad array of fields.  Within three years, I had insider knowledge of the non-profit, medical, insurance, legal, corporate, communications and financial sectors, and was prepared to return to academia and continue pursuing my passion.

My master's research at the University of Chicago would prove no less than life-changing.  In the course of interviewing men and women who volunteer for Safe Families for Children, I was deeply inspired by their willingness to disrupt and even transform their lives for the sake of strangers--even as I was heart-broken by new knowledge of systemic suffering in the form of modern-day slavery.  I returned to New York with a new calling: the re-abolition of slavery.

I became the New York State Director of the Not For Sale Campaign, an international abolitionist organization, and began building up the abolitionist movement in New York City by helping coordinate Freedom Week 2010, a series of events incorporating anti-trafficking organizations of all kinds from across the New York metropolitan area.  After two years of active abolition work, I look forward to using the skills I have honed to help your company develop and/or implement programs to use your unique skills and resources to engage employees and gain public trust by making the world a better place, as only you can.

Peace and hope,

Deirdre