ABOUT ASSET

Mission

Founded by Julia Ormond, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC) Goodwill Ambassador against Slavery and Human Trafficking, the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) works to address the causes of slavery and trafficking at their source. Through its focus on supply chains, ASSET helps corporations, NGOs, and governments work together to innovate and implement best practices for removing the economic impetus for slavery

ASSET's Staff

Alison Friedman

Executive Director

Prior to becoming Executive Director of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking, Alison Kiehl Friedman helped run Hope for Cures, a 527 using incumbents' votes on stem cell research to illuminate how out of touch they were with their constituents. She served as District Director for Congresswoman Jane Harman, California Policy Director for People For the American Way, and National Student Director for the Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign. She's a founding boardmember of Public Interest, and also serves on the board of Earth Day Network, Ms. Magazine, and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

Chris Miller

Program Director

Prior to joining ASSET, Chris worked for Geneva Global, a Philadelphia-based international philanthropic consulting firm, as Senior Sector Advisor in the company's Slavery and Human Trafficking and Conflict Recovery Sectors. In his role as Senior Sector Advisor, Chris was responsible for managing over $2 million in grants issued to grass-roots organizations combating slavery and trafficking in Ghana and India, and conflict recovery initiatives in Sudan, Eastern Chad, and Northern Uganda. In addition to Geneva Global, Chris has also worked for the American Refugee Committee, in the organization's international headquarters in Minneapolis, MN and in the former Yugoslavia, and the MN House of Representatives. Chris has lived and worked in the US, UK, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ghana, and holds a Masters in Philosophy (MPhil) in International Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.

ASSET's Board

Julia Ormond

Founder and President

Julia has a track record of advocacy on human rights issues in her individual capacity, as the Founding chair of FilmAid International and the President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET). FilmAid, an independent non-profit launched at the height of the Kosovo refugee crisis, uses the power of film to promote health, strengthen communities, and enrich the lives of the world's vulnerable and uprooted. ASSET works with corporations, NGOs, government officials, and individuals to create the systemic change needed to eradicate slavery at source.

In September 2003, Julia testified before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus about the plight of refugees. In January 2003, she received the prestigious Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. The award is reserved for media figures that use their talents and influence to make substantial contributions to humanitarian causes. ASSET has since helped, as a member of the US Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery, to launch the United States Congressional Caucus to Abolish Slavery and organized a UN Security Council Arria on the intersect between terrorism, organized crime, and trafficking in persons and its threat to international security.

Ms. Ormond has worked closely with Vital Voices Global Partnership, a prominent NGO actively engaged in anti-human trafficking initiatives. In September 2005, she worked on anti-human trafficking advocacy initiatives with Vital Voices and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Moscow. During this mission to Moscow she also presented the MTV Russian Music Award to a young activist fighting AIDS. Other activities have included appearances at events for Human Rights Watch and Paul McCartney's Adopt-a-Minefield Campaign. In November 2005 she received an award from Women for Women International on 19 November 2005. She co-hosted the 2005 UNAIDS' annual World AIDS Day event in New York, as well as UNODC anti-trafficking events on 2 December 2005, the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery.

Ms. Ormond is well known for her film roles in the following motion pictures: "Legends of the Fall"; "Sabrina"; "Smilla's Sense of Snow"; First Knight; and, "The Barber of Siberia." She is also the Executive Producer of the 1996 Emmy award-winning documentary "Calling of the Ghosts," an intimate story of survival of two women in Bosnia, caught in a war where rape was as much an everyday weapon as bullets and bombs. She received a 2002 Golden Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 2002 Television movie "Varian's War", and was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award that same year for her performance in "My Zinc Bed" at the Royal Court Theatre.

In December 2005 she became the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador against Trafficking and Slavery, and has since visited Ghana, Cambodia, Thailand and India. In June 2006 she gave Congressional testimony on trafficking and slavery before the House Sub Committee on Human Rights.

Andrew Morton

After serving for six years as FilmAid's pro bono legal counsel and a member of the Board of Directors, Andrew transitioned into the role of Interim Executive Director in June 2007. Previously, Andrew was a government relations attorney with the Washington D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP, where he launched a firm-wide effort titled the "Child Refugee Project," advocating alien child custody reform legislation in Congress and providing pro bono legal representation to juveniles detained by the Department of Homeland Security. A frequent speaker on human rights and immigration/refugee law, Mr. Morton has testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, and he appears regularly in national media outlets such as ABC News, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times. For his extensive advocacy on behalf of refugees and asylum-seekers, the D.C. Bar Association honored Mr. Morton as "Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year" in 2002, and in 2006, he received the "Outstanding Pro Bono Service Award" from the Legal Aid Society.

Al Meyerhoff

ALBERT H. MEYERHOFF has concentrated his practice for more than 30 years in labor, civil rights and environmental law. After graduating from Cornell Law School, he joined California Rural Legal Assistance representing farm workers and the rural poor where he litigated a host of state and federal civil rights cases involving racial discrimination in employment, voting and public education, including Maria P. v. Riles, invalidating a California statute excluding undocumented children from California schools. In 1981, Mr. Meyerhoff joined the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), where his concentration in litigation brought successful challenges to the continued use of cancer-causing pesticides (Les v. Reilly), the exclusion of women of "child-bearing age" from the workplace (Love v. Thomas) and the California Governor's failure to comply with Proposition 65, an anti-toxics law (AFL-CIO v. Deukmejian).

Since 1998, Mr. Meyerhoff has been lead counsel in several labor and environmental cases, including UNITE v. The Gap, contesting the sale of garments manufactured under sweatshop conditions in the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands, and Public Citizen v. U.S. D.O.T., challenging cross border trucking from Mexico that conforms to NAFTA but violates United States environmental laws. Mr. Meyerhoff was recently selected as "Trial Lawyer of the Year" by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and given a lifetime achievement award from the ACLU.

Eric Nonacs

Eric S. Nonacs is the Managing Director for Global Affairs at Endeavour Financial, based in Vancouver, Canada. He also serves as a Senior Advisor to the William J. Clinton Foundation. From June 2002 until August 2007, he was the Foreign Policy Advisor to President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Prior to joining President Clinton's staff, Eric was the Executive Director of The Coexistence Initiative. Previously, Eric served as the U.S. Executive Director of Co-operation Ireland, and, from 1992 until 1995, he was the inaugural Director of The Project on Justice in Times of Transition. During his career, Eric has developed and implemented a broad array of programs on topics including sustainable economic and social development, conflict resolution, peace-building, and reconciliation in Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Eric holds an AB from the University of Chicago, an MA from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MBA from New York University. He is a Director of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET), and he sits on the Advisory Board of the George Washington University Africa Center for Health and Human Security. Eric is also a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Melanne Verveer

Melanne Verveer is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international nonprofit that supports emerging women leaders in building vibrant democracies and strong economies. Verveer served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady in the Clinton Administration. As a member of the White House senior staff, she advised the President and implemented a wide range of substantive policies, budget priorities and communications strategies. She was the First Lady's chief assistant in her international activities, where her responsibilities included overseeing Hillary Clinton's global initiatives on women's rights as human rights, democracy building, micro-enterprise development, and the education of women and girls. She organized the First Lady's historic trips overseas, including her travels to Central and South Asia, Russia, Northern Ireland, Central Europe and Africa. She helped to create the US government's Vital Voices Democracy Initiative to promote women's economic and political progress globally. The initiative was an outgrowth of the U.S. response to the UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing in l995. Verveer also took the lead in establishing the President's Interagency Council on Women, which serves as a model for governments to address issues of concern to women. She was instrumental in coordinating the US response to the growing global problem of the trafficking of human beings and represented the US government at various international conferences.

Dr. Kevin Bales

Kevin is the world's leading expert on modern slavery and President of Free the Slaves. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Roehampton University in London, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative.

Bales's book Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy published in 1999, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and has now been published in ten other languages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu called it "a well researched, scholarly and deeply disturbing expose of modern slavery". A revised edition was published in 2005. This book was based on the first-hand in-depth study of five slave-based "businesses" in five different countries: Thailand (prostitution); Mauritania (water selling); Brazil (charcoal production); India (agriculture); and Pakistan (brick making).

Bales is a Trustee of Anti-Slavery International and was a consultant to the United Nations Global Program on Trafficking of Human Beings. He has been invited to advise the US, British, Irish, Norwegian, and Nepali governments, as well as the governments of the Economic Community of West African States, on the formulation of policy on slavery and human trafficking. He recently edited an Anti-Human Trafficking Toolkit for the United Nations, and published, with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley, a report on forced labor in the USA.

Gayle Smith

A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Director of the International Rights and Responsibilities Program and Energy Opportunity Program, Gayle Smith served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998.

Smith was based in Africa for over 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs for the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail, London Observer, and Financial Times. Smith has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991, and in 1999 won the National Security Council’s Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace.

Smith is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the Africa America Institute, USA for Africa, and the National Security Network. She also serves on the policy advisory boards of DATA, the Acumen Fund, and the Global Fairness Initiative, and is the Working Group Chair on Global Poverty for the Clinton Global Initiative.

Laurene Powell Jobs

Laurene Powell Jobs is Founder and President of the Board of College Track, an after-school program that prepares under resourced high school students for higher education. Through its three centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, College Track provides a comprehensive program of academic support, leadership training, community service and extra-curricular involvement. Founded in 1997, all of the program's graduates have completed their secondary education and gone on to college.

In addition to her work in education reform, Laurene has a strong focus on non-profit entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on women's human and economic rights. Her board affiliations include Global Fund for Women, NewSchools Venture Fund, Stand for Children and EdVoice. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Laurene holds a B.A. and a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Stanford University. She lives in Palo Alto with her husband and three children.