Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sabrina Stratford. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sabrina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
The biggest risk I’ve ever taken was leaving my career at the pinnacle of my success to move to Alaska in the dead of winter to take on human traffickers. Do you know how you’re making an impact against the bad guys? When they start making death threats and the FBI has to get involved. I knew my efforts were effective. Today, I am a TEDx Speaker, full-time Human Trafficking Abolitionist and I work in Alaska on a project basis. I’m a trained Advocate for the 24/7 Colorado Human Trafficking Hotline and educate organizations about the realities of modern slavery and our corporate and individual responsibility to take on the biggest atrocity of our generation. And I love it!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Coming out of high school I took a job as a Machinist in a metal shop. I was a single mother and had a son to raise and the money was good. I quickly learned that the guys selling our work made double the money I did on the floor, and they didn’t have to wear steel-toed boots. I transitioned to selling software and enjoyed a long career as a Global Business Development Manager. I made a lot of money, traveled the world, and felt secure. In 2016 I heard about the atrocities of human trafficking and started to pay attention. In 2021 I met a woman working for an NGO that fought sex trafficking, boots on the ground, and I got excited. Coming out of Covid I had started to question my effectiveness in solving the world’s big problems and serving my community and was coming up short. Hearing about people who were actually doing something to stop Traffickers and interrupt business model kept me up overnight clicking through the stories of victims who emerged as survivors. Within 48 hours I had agreed to become the first domestic Project Manager for an International organization with a mandate to stop human trafficking somewhere in the United States. My boss was…. surprised at my abrupt resignation. I thought I would be sent to Florida or California – I had read so many stories about modern slavery in our coastal communities. I was more than surprised to learn that I was to load my car onto a barge and move to Anchorage, Alaska. Alaska has a tremendous problem with sex trafficking, especially of indigenous women. I had just built my dream home on a Colorado river and found myself packing up a few bags and leaving the rest to take on a self-supporting role in Anchorage. I arrived in the dark of winter and trained myself and 16 volunteers to take on the fight. The outcome looked NOTHING like I could have imagined and far exceeded my need to serve people and fight the bad guys. I came toe-to-toe with Traffickers, befriended survivors, and worked for the State of Alaska Department of Safety in the Sex Offender Registry unit. I even discovered my ‘real’ reason for wanting to seek justice against predators and worked through some intense personal trauma that I had somehow avoided for decades.
When I speak to teams about identifying their “ikigai” or reason for being, I speak as someone who found hers coming out of the pandemic. When I talk to teams about embracing their challenges or traumas head-on to achieve their goals I come from a place of empathy. When I talk about corporate and individual responsibility to combat modern slavery, I inform understanding with real-world stories. Coming to our own logical conclusions fortified by contagious passion produces outcomes. Carrying a bag in the I.T. world for 25 years brought me success. Unpacking that bag and filling it with the stuff that really matters has brought me peace and contentment. https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinastratford/ and SabrinaStratford.com
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Listening. It’s something we hear constantly in sales training and it always served me well but it wasn’t until I sat face-to-face with a girl who had been trafficked and raped and understood that I could not fix it – that I really understood the power of active listening. All I could do was listen to her story and repeat back to her what I heard her say and the dialogue allowed her to release the pain, release the terror and rage, and start a grieving process. But it was also an integral part of my training. It allowed me to understand how Traffickers work, how they groom their victims, how they immobilize their prey, and what their motivations are. If my “customers” now are potential victims and survivors, I can’t help if I don’t listen.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Professionally, we avoid going deep. We don’t talk about politics or religion or one’s home life or drug use. I had to get comfortable with going deep immediately in order to offer effective remedies. It’s impossible to help someone if you don’t know what got them into their predicament. Trafficking is rarely the first thing to go wrong in a victim’s life. There is usually a trauma that puts them in the Trafficker’s path such as drug abuse, domestic violence at home, a death in the family, homelessness, or mental illness. We can’t help people by talking about the snow or how the Cowboys are playing.
Contact Info:
- Website: sabrinastratford.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinastratford/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sabrinalovesjustice
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinastratford/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SabrinaStrat
- Youtube: @SabrinaLovesJustice
- Other: TEDx Talk – https://youtu.be/kvEO1QQ2mVY?feature=shared