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.
Jessica Karbowski is an attorney practicing public international law in Washington, DC. She clerked for Justice Dana Fabe of the Alaska Supreme Court from 2009-2010. Jessica has been committed to working on issues of international human rights and economic development since her sophomore year of college, when she lived with an amazing host family in Tanzania for the summer, and followed that passion to a career in the law. During law school, Jessica served as a student director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, was a submissions editor for the Yale Journal of International Law, and received the Jerome Sayles Hess Prize for excellence in international law and the Raphael Lemkin Prize for best paper in the field of international human rights. She has published on the intersection between international trade law and international human rights. Jessica is a Harry S Truman and a Fulbright Scholar. She holds a B.A. in Foreign Service from Alma College in Michigan and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Shibani Malhotra is a Programme Specialist with the Rule of Law, Justice & Security Unit located in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) in UNDP, based in New York. She has a Juris Doctorate (specializing in International Law) as well as a Masters Degree in International Affairs (specializing in International Politics).In NY she supports Rule of Law programmes in several country offices, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Sri Lanka. She has developed rule of law programmes in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has secured funding of USD 9 million as seed funds for those programmes. These programmes entailed technical support on issues covering justice, security, police, and corrections. She has also developed a Family Protection, Justice and Security Programme for Iraq, which focuses on building the capacity of law enforcement and national government to address gender based violence, while also providing for protection and socio-economic empowerment. In addition, she is UNDP’s representative on the Inter-Agency Security Sector Reform Task Force as well as on UN Action Against Sexual Violence, and serves as her Unit’s Gender Focal Point. She is also UNDP’s focal point with DPKO’s Police Division and is actively engaged on policing matters. Ms. Malhotra joined the UN as a consultant for UNDP in Vietnam, where she worked on their Access to Justice Report, as well as with the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice on the implementation of their Legal System Development Strategy (LSDS). She specifically worked on capacity building of her national counterparts, working closely with them to ensure a comprehensive application of the LSDS. She then spent two and a half years working as a Programme Specialist for the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the UNDP-Iraq office. During her time with UNDP-Iraq, Shibani designed and developed a comprehensive Rule of Law Programme for Iraq working closely with national counterparts, national and international NGOs, other UN Agencies, as well as with donors, including the European Commission and the Spanish Government. The Programme includes capacity building of judicial institutions, including the Ministry of Justice and the Higher Judicial Council, as well as of non-governmental institutions, i.e. the Iraqi Bar Association. There are also components that address the need for legal aid clinics, legal education, and penitentiary reform. Prior to her time with UNDP, Shibani worked as a civil litigator with a private law firm in the US for three years.
Shibani Malhotra is a Programme Specialist with the Rule of Law, Justice & Security Unit located in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) in UNDP, based in New York. She has a Juris Doctorate (specializing in International Law) as well as a Masters Degree in International Affairs (specializing in International Politics).In NY she supports Rule of Law programmes in several country offices, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Sri Lanka. She has developed rule of law programmes in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has secured funding of USD 9 million as seed funds for those programmes. These programmes entailed technical support on issues covering justice, security, police, and corrections. She has also developed a Family Protection, Justice and Security Programme for Iraq, which focuses on building the capacity of law enforcement and national government to address gender based violence, while also providing for protection and socio-economic empowerment. In addition, she is UNDP’s representative on the Inter-Agency Security Sector Reform Task Force as well as on UN Action Against Sexual Violence, and serves as her Unit’s Gender Focal Point. She is also UNDP’s focal point with DPKO’s Police Division and is actively engaged on policing matters. Ms. Malhotra joined the UN as a consultant for UNDP in Vietnam, where she worked on their Access to Justice Report, as well as with the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice on the implementation of their Legal System Development Strategy (LSDS). She specifically worked on capacity building of her national counterparts, working closely with them to ensure a comprehensive application of the LSDS. She then spent two and a half years working as a Programme Specialist for the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the UNDP-Iraq office. During her time with UNDP-Iraq, Shibani designed and developed a comprehensive Rule of Law Programme for Iraq working closely with national counterparts, national and international NGOs, other UN Agencies, as well as with donors, including the European Commission and the Spanish Government. The Programme includes capacity building of judicial institutions, including the Ministry of Justice and the Higher Judicial Council, as well as of non-governmental institutions, i.e. the Iraqi Bar Association. There are also components that address the need for legal aid clinics, legal education, and penitentiary reform. Prior to her time with UNDP, Shibani worked as a civil litigator with a private law firm in the US for three years.