359 - Economic Empowerment: The Frontline Against Human Trafficking

359 – Economic Empowerment: The Frontline Against Human Trafficking

Diana Mao joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how economic empowerment serves as a frontline defense against human trafficking, revealing why desperation—not just deception—drives vulnerable families into exploitation.

Diana Mao

Diana Mao is a dynamic leader at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking and workforce development. As the President and Co-Founder of Nomi Network, she’s helped raise and mobilize over 30 million dollars to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk. Her work has brought together corporate leaders, government agencies, and social impact partners to build pathways to freedom and stability. She’s a Presidential Leadership Scholar and a New York Academy of Medicine Fellow, and her innovative approach has earned her awards like the NYU Alumni Changemaker Award and the Texas Women’s Foundation Young Leader Award. She’s advised Congress on key policy issues, and her voice is regularly heard on some of the world’s biggest stages, including the United Nations, the Bush Presidential Center, and the Clinton Presidential Center. With degrees in Business Economics and Chinese from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Public Administration from NYU Wagner, Diana blends academic rigor with hands-on leadership.

Key Points

Economic vulnerability drives trafficking more than deception alone—when families face starvation and earn less than 75 cents a day, they may knowingly take dangerous jobs because desperation outweighs risk assessment.
Nomi Network operates 42 training sites across India, Cambodia, and the United States, providing trauma-informed workforce training, job placement, and micro-enterprise support that creates sustainable alternatives to exploitative labor.
Building capacity within existing community organizations—rather than disqualifying partners who don’t meet predetermined standards—creates more sustainable and culturally contextualized anti-trafficking interventions.
Living immersively in the communities being served allows organizations to co-design programs with survivors and understand the daily realities that shape vulnerability, from gathering water at 5 AM to facing harassment after 6 PM.
Successful prevention requires creating bridges between vulnerable communities and the private sector, as demonstrated by Nomi Network’s partnerships with major employers like India’s largest manufacturers and Toyota subsidiaries that provide direct job pipelines.
Youth in Dallas County’s detention system who complete Nomi Network’s apprenticeship programs secure jobs earning $18 per hour—more than double the minimum wage—fundamentally changing their economic trajectories and reducing trafficking vulnerability.
The anti-trafficking movement is increasingly leveraging technology and AI as tools for prevention and intervention, recognizing that criminal networks are already using these technologies at exponential rates to target vulnerable populations.
Self-care practices including morning exercise routines, faith-based reflection, and intentional rest enable sustained leadership in emotionally demanding anti-trafficking work, helping leaders operate from inspiration rather than obligation.

Resources

Transcript

[00:00:00] Diana Mao: And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing.

[00:00:11] Delaney: When your children sleep on bare ground and you earn 75 cents a day, risk management isn’t just about losing your car. It’s about facing the decision to take a job that might cost you everything or watching your family starve. Today’s conversation is about why economic empowerment isn’t just a nice idea, but it’s a frontline of prevention.

[00:00:32] Hi, I’m Delaney and I’m a student here at Vanguard University. I help produce this show. Today, Dr. Morgan talks with Diana Mao, president and co-founder of Nomi Network. Diana has mobilized over $30 million to create workforce pathways for survivors and at-risk women across 42 training sites in India, Cambodia, and the us.

[00:00:53] And now here’s their conversation.

[00:01:00] Sandie Morgan: I am so happy to be with you, Diana Mao Kelly for the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. Welcome.

[00:01:10] Diana Mao: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here this morning.

[00:01:13] Sandie Morgan: I met you through the Public Private Partnership Advisory Council to end human trafficking. We were both presidential appointees and we served for two years. And part of that was during the pandemic, so we haven’t ever had a lot of in-person time, but I feel like I know you so well because of your very strategic contributions to the team during that season.

[00:01:49] And I learned a little about your history during that time as I tried to get to know everybody on the council, and I was really struck by your heritage and how that impacted your personal mission formation. Can you talk a little bit about your family history?

[00:02:14] Diana Mao: Yeah, didn’t really discover family history really until after the fight against human trafficking. I started Nomi Network in 2009 and so over the course of time I learned more and more about some of the intergenerational trauma that my father faced. He was actually in labor camp.

[00:02:36] so really all I knew was growing up in Southern California. ’cause my parents had met and gotten married there, but he definitely has trauma and PTSD from that. And so more and more, as I researched labor camp, connected the dots with the issue I was fighting against human trafficking and what are some of the lingering effects of someone that is in slavery.

[00:03:02] Sandie Morgan: And when did you learn about human trafficking?

[00:03:07] Diana Mao: I learned about it actually in college. I know Sandie, you work with really bright and brilliant college students. so in college I learned about the issue of child soldiers in Northern Uganda through invisible children. And so as a young person, I was touched by their film and I started raising funds for invisible children and for World Vision.

[00:03:36] At the time, they had children’s villages in some of these volatile areas, and so that’s when I first became aware of the issue of human trafficking.

[00:03:45] Sandie Morgan: And you led, or you were part of a research trip in Cambodia.

[00:03:51] Diana Mao: Yeah, so fast forward when I was in graduate school, getting my master’s, I learned intensely the issue on the front lines. I was there working for a microfinance bank and during that time I was charged with meeting with microfinance clients, some of whom lived in very remote areas, where it would take.

[00:04:16] A moped and walking through leach infested muck to get to the community.

[00:04:22] Sandie Morgan: Ooh.

[00:04:23] Diana Mao: The community was getting microfinance loans, so it was there I met a single father with seven children. He had lost his wife the year before to I think it was malaria, but some disease that is curable but they had no access to healthcare, potable water, electricity.

[00:04:42] And so after we surveyed him, asked him about a hundred questions related to his loan and what he was doing with his loan, I learned that he was still earning less than 75 cents a day. Still reliant on low yield agriculture, still living in a mud hut with his children on the floor sleeping without a mattress or any mat.

[00:05:05] And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing. And my colleague and I looked at each other in horror and very uncomfortably left his hut.

[00:05:25] But his daughter, I still remember her face. I remember her long hair, remember her big brown eyes. And I just, really shook me because in the more urban areas, I would see really young girls like her on the street or in restaurant bars with old foreign men. so at the time in that period, there is high.

[00:05:51] Cases of human trafficking is very and apparent during that time and you could literally see children being trafficked in Cambodia. So that’s what really led me to investigate and dedicate my resources and time to fighting the issue.

[00:06:09] Sandie Morgan: And you have done exactly that and one of the hallmarks of Nomi Network is how it works at the intersection of economic development as well as social justice. So how do you balance those domains?

[00:06:29] Diana Mao: Yeah, would say, we, I look at it as people that we work with are either deceived, they migrate haphazardly. Like in the case where we work in Cambodia, many times they are living in abject poverty, and so they migrate to Thailand or other places within Southeast Asia for a job. Many cases our clients end up being trafficked, like one client who is promised a job in Malaysia and

[00:07:01] Sandie Morgan: Mm

[00:07:01] Diana Mao: and abused and managed to escape.

[00:07:04] repatriate back to Cambodia. And we helped her start, we provided with her with the training and healing and also helped her start an ice cream shop that now is prospering and she’s able to support herself. So you have deception and then you also have desperation like I mentioned. The single father who I met living in abject poverty, trying to support his family and economic interventions such as NOMI Network, providing them with trauma informed training and technical training a job, or helping them start a micro enterprise along with continuous support, ongoing support and counseling so that they can retain their job and grow their business is very important to combat.

[00:07:51] Desperation because if I had to put myself in the shoes of some of our clients, I would say yes. I may be aware that it’s not safe to migrate from the north of India to the south of India, or from Cambodia to Thailand or to Cambodia to Malaysia. However, if I have five mouths to feed, may ignore that.

[00:08:17] Voice and take that job right and end up being in a very bad situation. So that’s why it’s so important and our focus is both on desperation side by building economic resiliency so people can stay in their communities and have that support system to begin with so they’re not trafficked.

[00:08:38] And of course, deception, preventing people from being deceived and encouraging them not to take jobs where they’re not certain that is an actual job.

[00:08:49] Sandie Morgan: So what you really point out so well here is this idea of risk management. We come at it, I mean, we’re both here in the vicinity and have lived in Southern California. So risk management for us to accept a job might be about the traffic and the commute, or how much it’s going to cost to move to a new job, and what kind of risks we might take if we got into a bogus job and we might lose our home, we might lose our car.

[00:09:27] But when your kids are sleeping on the bare ground, what do you have in your hand to risk? And so is it risk management? Is it a poor decision? And if there’s not another avenue to improving your family’s situation, and I hear that over and over again. So I love your strategy for connecting this with the economic empowerment.

[00:10:06] And I also have been so impressed by how you’ve scaled up. It’s not Know Me House or No Me Bank. It’s Know Me Network. And tell us where Nomi network, where are all those nodes?

[00:10:23] Diana Mao: Yeah, absolutely. So we have 42 training sites, 35 in India in the four high prevalent states of India. And then we have five training sites in Cambodia and also two in the us. And so our network, it started with me enlisting to be Nomi’s Network. Nomi is a young survivor who I met the following year where I went back to Cambodia to speak with IJM Hagar, all the anti-trafficking organizations that were providing either rescue or rehabilitation.

[00:11:02] And so across the board, they all were trying to help women get out of that system, the shelter system. Some of the women there were there as long as eight years already living in the shelter. So the next step is more of the economic, the reintegration side. And so at that moment when I met Nomi, she’s a survivor who’s eight years old.

[00:11:23] I felt deep connection with her. She carried such hope. She had already been at the shelter a year, and she’s eight years old. When I met her, she was trafficked by her stepfather and she greeted my co-founder and I with such hope and joy, showed us her pet rabbits, walked us around. And

[00:11:43] Sandie Morgan: Uh.

[00:11:43] Diana Mao: that moment, I wanted to be her network.

[00:11:46] I wanted to see her grow into adulthood, and I’m still in touch with her today. She’s in her twenties really be the network behind KnowMe. So that’s the impetus of our name. And so since then, 15 years later, we now in every place, all the 42 sites, we have government partnerships. We work with the ministry.

[00:12:08] Of Labor Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Cambodia. We work with Dallas County specifically, providing training to youth as young as 12 years old who are in the detention system. And many of them have, unfortunately been trafficked or have sexual exploitation in their background. And so, the network has really expanded across.

[00:12:34] The globe, we have partners that we work with, nonprofits that refer clients to us and all of these places, specifically in Dallas as well. And in Houston, we have really strong nonprofit partnerships where we provide that continuum of care at the economic empowerment side, while we leverage the strength and expertise of other nonprofits to focus more on the counseling and other social services.

[00:13:05] And then of course we have employment partners, and so we work with India’s largest manufacturer. We work with the subsidiary of Toyota in Cambodia for job placements. We work with

[00:13:17] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:13:18] Diana Mao: international in Dallas. where I’m so proud of the youth that we’ve been able to place in jobs in Hilti, they’re earning $18 an hour in apprenticeship program, and Dallas minimum wage is 7 25.

[00:13:35] So already,

[00:13:36] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness.

[00:13:37] Diana Mao: As high school students apprenticeship program, and so I really see the change in trajectory of their lives as their first job landing it at that rate. I mean, the sky’s the limit for them as they grow into young adults.

[00:13:54] Sandie Morgan: So in scaling this model, I heard a couple of things that really struck me, especially your networking and collaboration with other nonprofits for some of the ancillary services and support for survivors that you are working with. How does that work? Because it’s obvious that the social enterprise model that you’re using is very focused on building an economic foundation to build on like a young person in an apprentice or a young person in a micro enterprise. They can look at the future, not as I’m stuck in this job for generations like my father, but I could build something. But somebody has to do the support. And you mentioned the trauma and those things.

[00:15:04] So what does that part entail in your network and how you partner and collaborate?

[00:15:12] Diana Mao: Yeah, that’s a really great question. I would say we really contextualize region by region. In the US there’s a really robust network of social service providers and so we look at our organizations and what are their assets? So some of them have very large offices, right?

[00:15:33] And it’s not fully utilized. So we go onsite and provide them with training, the clients there. And in the case of Dallas, we go onsite into the Dallas County Detention Center. We provide our trauma informed training, and then once the youth are out of detention, they get ongoing case management support and we continue to work with them because some of them is our young, as 13 years old, we work on their.

[00:16:02] and education goals on an ongoing five-year basis. We do believe, particularly for youth in the US it’s important that they have that consistency because many of them lack the parental support that they need to get at a very difficult situations. And so in the case of India, for example, we’ve been there since for over 10 years.

[00:16:25] And so we work in 35 training sites, and we identify local HIV clinics, local schools, local religious institutions, local hospitals that are very under-resourced. They’re in rural communities. And so we start working with them on building their capacity to work with us on delivering economic empowerment programming.

[00:16:56] So in one case, we may rent a space that’s part of a school. And so it’s more of a focal point already in the community. We’re just coming alongside and building the capacity and the economic engine. In many cases, we’ve actually been able to draw in capital and draw in private sector investment. One region that we work in, in India because of us, a large manufacturer, was willing to set up a technical school with us that provides sewing machine training. And so then directly after women graduate from the technical school that we co-facilitate with this large factory.

[00:17:37] It’s a pipeline into their factory. So the women are able to secure jobs directly. And so we’ve been able to attract private sector investment because of our presence, because employers know that Now we’ve addressed a lot of the barriers in these communities. We’ve also upskilled women in life skills, critical thinking, problem solving, preparing them for more of a formal workplace.

[00:18:02] And so these are more extremely remote communities that typically don’t have that pipeline. We in essence built a pathway into these communities for employers to engage. And these are the exact communities where unfortunately, traffickers prey on women and children and men. And so

[00:18:25] Sandie Morgan: right.

[00:18:25] Diana Mao: we are really preventing that cycle from happening, but also building a bridge between the private sector and these more vulnerable communities.

[00:18:33] Sandie Morgan: So I want to look a little closer at how you build that bridge because oftentimes when organizations are going into a community, they do an assessment. They find out who is here, who is there, and then they evaluate those orgs and disqualify. They don’t do this. So no, we are not gonna collaborate with them.

[00:19:01] This is not their value. So no, they don’t fit, but you are taking a different approach to actually build their capacity, not just in their ability to attract jobs, but in their ability to promote that wellbeing that health that is not just physical, but a life attitude it feels like. Tell me how you decided not to disqualify people, but became a capacity builder for another organization?

[00:19:49] Diana Mao: Yeah, it has directly to do with the fact that my co-founder and I lived there for two years. Combined. We lived in

[00:19:57] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:19:57] Diana Mao: Bihar is, some diplomats have noted that Bihar is like the Afghanistan of India. So in 2011, got a State Department grant to start working in region. We picked up our bags and I was in my early twenties and moved there and it was very difficult

[00:20:20] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:20:20] Diana Mao: being foreign.

[00:20:22] At times, my life was in danger. At times we had to stay indoors after six ’cause women weren’t seen on the streets and would, if they were, they would get harassed or attacked. so living there really helped me contextualize and understand the local context, understand the dynamics, understand the resources available, understand the cultural, the cultural nuances really.

[00:20:55] And so at the same time, I really understood our clients more. I understood the women that we worked with, ’cause we worked with them directly. We heard their hopes, we heard their dreams, we heard their fears. We heard they wanted out of the program, they in essence, co-designed it with us. So we had the curriculum that we had in mind on best practices.

[00:21:20] They gave us the realities of their lives and what they face, the challenges on a day-to-day basis. I took the design thinking approach of really like understanding what are their jobs every day. their job is to wake up at 5:00 AM go draw the water and gather to start a fire for their tea, to start cooking for their children.

[00:21:46] And so all the way from that time early on till like 8:00 PM how taxing their lives are. For us, we have the convenience of opening up a faucet and drawing water. We have the convenience of electricity. people around the world don’t have that. And so for me to actually live there experience it allowed me then to build that bridge directly with the clients and therefore also understanding the constraints that these nonprofits locally or these schools or HIV clinics, what the constraints they have as well.

[00:22:22] So how do we bridge that or help them overcome that because they are there providing services for the community. And so we wanna help amplify that and really create a more sustainable vehicle so that the local economy can be more prosperous as well.

[00:22:38] Sandie Morgan: This is such a great process to understand how you perceive, ’cause you used the word contextualize a lot. But I’m not gonna be able to go and live there for two years, so how am I going to help people understand those kinds of economic and local factors and how they contribute to human trafficking, exploitation, and why rescue is not enough.

[00:23:11] Diana Mao: Yeah, I mean, I would say contextualizing it, let’s, I’m just assuming to students and people, I also lived in Southern California and I know that I lived in a bubble up until high school, right? Like people have a context of for you Orange County, for me it was Pasadena.

[00:23:33] And so that’s really a thousand steps to the bridge we’re trying to form between the communities that we’re serving. and so I think contextualizing it comes with first of all, someone that’s willing to learn, right? If someone is not open, then I think as much as you share and provide context stories, trainings like that, that may be a closed door if someone’s willing to learn.

[00:24:00] I think for us it’s allowing people to learn more about the how behind the work. Also, we have webinars where we have some of the partners we work with or communities, clients that signed on to share, be able to share directly. because I think the worlds are so different between rural India and even New York City where Nomi network was birthed.

[00:24:34] And so you’re right, not everyone’s gonna pick up their backs and go to rural India or rural Cambodia. But I think as anti-trafficking practitioners, you and I, like, we have the challenge and opportunity to share. And the scope of trafficking is changing second by second, now we have online grooming, now we have all of these things that I’m even learning about.

[00:25:01] So I even am feeling like I’m catching up with some of the latest technology advancements that sadly have really exponentially increased the amount of children and youth that are trafficked in our country alone. So I think that’s where,

[00:25:18] Sandie Morgan: Mm.

[00:25:19] Diana Mao: as long as we continue to be that bridge and to have the opportunity share very specifically and strategically, I think that’s how we bridge and help contextualize and with policy makers, I think have a role in this.

[00:25:39] That’s where it’s important, particularly for people like you and members of different councils, series of influence to be able to share and inform decisions and policies and resource allocation. I think that’s really important, especially during this time, this critical time in our country.

[00:26:00] Sandie Morgan: And you use the expression a thousand steps. And so I feel like when we have students, I love being at Vanguard University. We give them a path and they begin to take those steps and sometimes that means they’re going to end up living in another country. One of my students is on a Fulbright scholarship in Taiwan and other students have been gone off to Nepal or studied in Spain or Argentina. We do regular study abroad, but that beginning starts with walking down that path and it’s like last night I had told you at the beginning, before we started recording, I had a really late night because our students put on our Fair Trade annual fashion show and it’s educational and prevention focused, and they want to disrupt fast fashion.

[00:27:10] That has such a huge footprint in labor trafficking and exploitation. And as the students were the voices and they shared their research and their experiences and gave people practical applications. I could see how this next generation is going to take our movement to a new level, and I wanna be able to support that in my community and figure out what it looks like in another country or another culture.

[00:27:50] Diana Mao: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. That’s incredible. I mean, I agree with you that these opportunities go abroad are instrumental. I mentioned I started Nomi in my early twenties and I started actually even before that fundraising for the fight against human trafficking by fundraising for other organizations.

[00:28:13] I did not mention that when I was 15 years old I volunteered in rural Mexico on a volunteer trip, and then

[00:28:22] Sandie Morgan: Ah.

[00:28:23] Diana Mao: in Brazil in the slums of Brazil the following year. And I’ve also volunteered in college in the slums of Egypt. and so my grandmother was a firm believer of exactly what you’re saying, and so she would encourage me and support my volunteer trips abroad.

[00:28:41] And so in the slums of Egypt is where I actually lived in a garbage village for two months

[00:28:48] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness.

[00:28:50] Diana Mao: volunteered in Mother Teresa’s orphanage in that garbage village. So literally, many people that walked in the garbage village would start throwing up because literally it’s raw garbage, like mountains, mountain high of garbage.

[00:29:05] so those experiences were really formative in my life. And so what you’re saying in terms of what you support and vanguard in terms of students going abroad is really key.

[00:29:19] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. How can we walk in someone else’s shoes without at least taking a few steps in that direction. I am inspired by your description of a thousand steps and it motivates me to create pathways for my students to begin a journey like yours. I wanna ask you a little bit more about your leadership and sustainability.

[00:29:49] You have 42 know me sites now in the network, and you are a recognized and celebrated leader of a mission-driven organization in a really difficult field. So how do you sustain your own energy and continue to be innovative?

[00:30:16] Diana Mao: Yeah, absolutely. I would say for me, running full speed for the past 15 years, I’ve learned to have self care as well. So that includes like morning rhythms of exercise. I know, Sandie, you mentioned your morning routine of exercise. So for me it’s actually, I run marathons.

[00:30:45] So running, and lately I’ve really adopted Peloton biking, and so that helps me kick off my day. I also really lean into my faith and so I have really quiet time, devotion time, prayer time, usually always in the morning to help ground me as well. so I find that when I do that, those things, there’s much more clarity throughout the day for me, and

[00:31:17] Sandie Morgan: I

[00:31:19] Diana Mao: doing things out of a wing versus a weight.

[00:31:23] And I would say when I feel times a bit weighted is challenges come all the time and I think it’s more of the posture of my heart and I find myself when I do those key things that helps ground me and keep me in this hopeful, faith filled state.

[00:31:39] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. So good. So what do you see in the next five to 10 years? In our movement, in know me network, in what we need to be doing.

[00:31:52] Diana Mao: That’s a great question. Well, according to our institutional supporters, like Nomi Network is the only organization that’s provided workforce development and jobs at scale for the anti-trafficking movement. And so that means for us, currently about 4,000 women and girls a year. We just embarked on our strategic plan process.

[00:32:16] Yeah, the board has approved our plan from 2026 to 2030, and by 2030 we were going to, we’re gonna get to a hundred thousand women and girls annually terms of job placement and training and micro enterprise, which is very exciting for me because we are already in those 42 sites that we work, measuring resilience against trafficking and other indicators.

[00:32:40] And so that’s exciting to be able to target these hubs and really see meaningful change that’s measured. also we are in the process of taking our curriculum and making it more available to the private sector as well, so that there’s a lot of traction there. so that’s also really exciting in terms of potential earned revenue for our organization, for the movement, I was just in a.

[00:33:10] A conference in Colorado with movement leaders. And we were brought together by people like Tim Tebow and others. And so we were in working groups and that was really powerful because I was able to build new relationships with organizations that I’ve learned about that currently aren’t in my orbit and continue in the working group.

[00:33:38] I think one thing that anti-trafficking movement recognizes is that we as a movement are very under-resourced and underfunded. we are more keen on working together to further the outcomes of our clients. So that is really encouraging. I’m gonna see, I’m excited to see more of that. I’m also excited to see how the tech world is gonna engage by trafficking.

[00:34:00] We are all across the board talking about that. And Nomi network is at the forefront of also doing it and incorporating AI and tech into our programming and interventions. So that’s really exciting. Is that, how can we use AI and tech to fight trafficking because right now the criminal network is using it at an exponential rate to target vulnerable peoples.

[00:34:25] And so I see really in the anti-trafficking movement in really leveraging that tech community as well.

[00:34:36] Sandie Morgan: Diana Mao Kelly, you took us to the garbage dumps of Egypt and now you’ve inspired us to be part of a movement going forward with limited resources. So we have to depend on each other. We have to figure out how we are going to engage the tech responses. So we’re not just, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about how they’re protecting youth and they build fences around them when we actually need to empower them, strengthen them, put scaffolding around them so they can take the lead and.

[00:35:25] I just wanna stay in your orbit. I wanna learn from you and I wanna see how my students can be just like you.

[00:35:37] Diana Mao: Oh, well, it’s such an honor. Sandie, you are a great inspiration to me, and I firmly believe that your students will go 10 times farther than me and the anti-trafficking movement because the sky’s the limit. And I feel like young people nowadays know so much more technology wise and are much more hungry, that new wind, fresh wind, fresh fire that this movement needs.

[00:36:08] So I’m excited to see the people under you being raised up.

[00:36:13] Sandie Morgan: And how we pass the baton to the next generation. You are a leader now. I am nearing the end of my leadership and I want to pass it off well, so that it is moving people, moving students, moving communities down that thousand step pathway that you’ve described. Thank you so much for being here today.

[00:36:43] Diana Mao: Thank you, Sandie.

[00:36:45] Delaney: A huge thank you to Diana Mao for helping us understand that trafficking isn’t just about deception, it’s about desperation. When you have five mouths to feed, you might take a job, you know is risky, and that’s why economic empowerment is the frontline of prevention. Listeners, if you love this conversation, make sure to check out our website at endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources.

[00:37:09] If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with somebody and connecting with us. Thank you.