Board of Directors
Christina Arnold - Founder/Board President - Driven by her upbringing in South and Southeast Asia where she encountered exploited children daily, Christina Arnold has worked passionately for human rights since she moved to the U.S. at age 21. Christina founded Prevent Human Trafficking - PHT (previously known as Project Hope International) in 1999, as a vehicle to support a handful of innovative human rights organizations working in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Since then, she has represented its grantees in many contexts and evaluated more than one hundred organizations and projects in the region to determine impact and sustainability, focusing on reliable, well-managed programs with committed, results-oriented leadership. Her expertise has contributed to policy and legislative change, such as the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. Christina is a Harry S. Truman Scholar and Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. She holds her B.A. in political science with honors from American University where she also completed a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) with a focus on non-profit management and social entrepreneurship while she was a Presidential Scholar-in-Residence. Christina is thrilled to build on this foundation as an NYU Reynolds 2010 Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship.
Dr. Thomas M. Steinfatt is a professor in the School of Communications at Miami University. He is an authority on intercultural communication, health communication, statistical methodology, and propaganda. As a Fullbright scholar with decades of Southeast Asian experience, Steinfatt has taught professors at the Royal University in Phnom Penh how to better conduct and analyze social science and hard science research. He is the author of several books, numerous papers, and award winning research including the United Nations First Prize Award for finding the best methods of estimating the numbers of trafficked persons.
Jay Dedman worked as a journalist at CNN and as an educator at MNN.org, and has since helped orchestrate a number of online videoblog projects. For the past ten years, Jay Dedman has continued to find new ways to help independent media creators connect into larger, collaborative groups. He began as a writer and producer of local news in Cincinnati and Atlanta. After working at CNN International, he became discouraged with the coverage and worked as a freelance journalist in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he first tried to use the internet to publish video showing how people live in a country at war. Returning to New York, he taught at Manhattan Neighborhood Network. He continued his experiments with publishing video on the web until he found that blogging was the perfect distribution method. In 2004, he cofounded the Yahoo Videoblogging Group and has since collaborated in various online video projects and co-authored the book, Videoblogging.
Nancy Long is the daughter of a U.S. AID officer and grew up under the umbrella of the Marshall Plan. She has traveled in the U.S., Europe, and the Near East, has a Masters in Teaching degree, and pursued word smithing at several federal and private institutions. She is currently a college-level writing instructor.
Nicolas Lainez is originally from Barcelona, Spain. Lainez worked as a photojournalist in Southeast Asia after graduating film school. He received his master's degree in Development Studies at Sorbonne University, as well as a master's of Social Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Currently, he is PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at EHESS. His research focuses on cross-border mobility, slavery, indebtedness, women and family issues. Since 2007, he has been affiliated with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the An Giang University, both in Vietnam. He is also a researcher and communication officer for the NGO, Alliance Anti-Trafic Vietnam (AAT). For the past two years, he has conducted field research in the district of Châu Dôc (Mekong delta) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia). His work has been published in international peer review journals. Currently, he is working on a new manuscript titled The Yellow Trade.
Nicolas Lainez is originally from Barcelona, Spain. Lainez worked as a photojournalist in Southeast Asia after graduating film school. He received his master's degree in Development Studies at Sorbonne University, as well as a master's of Social Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Currently, he is PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at EHESS. His research focuses on cross-border mobility, slavery, indebtedness, women and family issues. Since 2007, he has been affiliated with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the An Giang University, both in Vietnam. He is also a researcher and communication officer for the NGO, Alliance Anti-Trafic Vietnam (AAT). For the past two years, he has conducted field research in the district of Châu Dôc (Mekong delta) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia). His work has been published in international peer review journals. Currently, he is working on a new manuscript titled The Yellow Trade.
Aisha Bain is the Asia Program Coordinator for the India and Mongolia operations at The International Rescue Committee. She has a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution with a concentration in Human Rights from American University. She has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Madagascar and Deputy Director at the Center for the Prevention of Genocide investigating and reporting the massacres in Darfur and Northern Uganda, and lobbying for international action. She co-directed, Darfur Dairies to raise awareness and support for international action.