Elizabeth Melendez Fisher, MA
Co-Founder, Selah Freedom
Judge Virginia Kendall
United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
Katherine Kaufka Walts, JD
Director, Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago
Human Trafficking and Exploitation: Law, Policy, and Restorative Programs
Family Action Network (FAN) assembles three experts in the fields of law, public policy, and the non-profit sector on the topic of human trafficking and exploitation.
Elizabeth Melendez Fisher, MA co-founded Selah Freedom, a national nonprofit organization focused on ending domestic sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. Selah Freedom educates over 70,000 and works with close to 2,000 at-risk youth and sex trafficking survivors annually. Selah Freedom offers 12- month Residential Recovery Programs, at-risk teen prevention programs, and outreach to survivors. The organization trains and equips law enforcement agencies and has co-developed one of the nation’s first successful Prostitution Court Diversionary programs.
The Hon. Virginia Kendall was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in January 2006. Judge Kendall lectures extensively in the areas of public corruption, corporate supply chain compliance, human rights, especially in relation to human trafficking and crimes against women and children, and ethics. Judge Kendall is the co-author of Child Exploitation and Trafficking: Examining the Global Challenges and the U.S. Responses.
Katherine Kaufka Walts, JD is the Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children at Loyola University Chicago. One of the focus areas of the CHRC’s work is combatting child trafficking. Formerly, Ms. Kaufka Walts was the Executive Director of the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA), where she developed one of the first programs in the country to improve the capacity of child welfare system to better respond to child trafficking and exploitation cases. This work was informed by her experience managing the Counter-Human Trafficking project at the National Immigrant Justice Center, where she worked with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies on single and multiple-victim sex and labor trafficking cases.
NOTE: The panel spoke at two FAN events on Thursday, November 9, 2017.
Event 1: 12:00 PM, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, 25 E. Pearson St., Chicago.
Event 2: 7:00 PM, New Trier High School, Northfield Campus, Cornog Auditorium, 7 Happ Rd., Northfield.
Upcoming Events
How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work
Jodi Kantor
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter
Jennifer Breheny Wallace
Award-winning journalist and bestselling author
ON ZOOM
Backtalker: An American Memoir
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and the cofounder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum
Beth E. Richie, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Black Studies and the Inaugural Chair in Social Sciences and the Humanities at The University of Illinois at Chicago
Evanston Township High School Auditorium
Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.

America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Ph.D.
James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University
Imani Perry, JD, Ph.D.
Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute
ON ZOOM

