Derek Ellerman is a co-founder, former Co-Executive Director, and current Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Polaris Project. Mr. Ellerman supervised the development and implementation of Polaris Project programs in the United States and Japan. An expert on US-based sex trafficking networks, Mr. Ellerman has trained and worked closely with federal and local law enforcement, testified before the U.S. Congress, and worked directly with survivors of trafficking. He has been featured in various media including National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and several network news shows.  Formerly an Adjunct Professor at Trinity University, Mr. Ellerman taught at the graduate-level on international criminal network operations and counter-trafficking strategies. Before co-founding Polaris Project, Mr. Ellerman founded and for four years served as Executive Director of the Center for Police and Community (CPAC), a Providence-based non-profit working on issues of police misconduct in Rhode Island.  In 2004, Mr. Ellerman was selected as an Ashoka Fellow and then as an Ambassador with Ashoka Innovators for the Public, where he provides consultation services as a Senior Venture Advisor. Mr. Ellerman has a Sc.B. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Brown University.


Katherine Chon - President
President/Co-Founder
Polaris Project

Katherine Chon is the President and Co-founder of Polaris Project, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization combating human trafficking and modern-day slavery.  Katherine has worked closely with survivors of labor and sex trafficking through victim identification and service provision.  She has testified before U.S. Congress to advocate for stronger policies on human trafficking and has provided training and consultation to numerous government, corporate, and community organizations.  Katherine is the recipient of the Do Something Brick Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Brown University's John Hope Award for Community Service, and a Center for Social Innovation Fellowship from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  She graduated from Brown University with a Sc.B. in Psychology.  Katherine is currently on sabbatical at the Harvard Kennedy School, with a fellowship from the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

 

 

Vice-Chairman, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission
Chief of Staff and Counsel, former, Office of US Representative Nancy Pelosi

 

Carolyn Bartholomew is a consultant to non-profit organizations on policy analysis, legislative and media strategy, advocacy, and issue development and management.  She serves as the Chairman of the US-China Economic and Security Commission, a Congressional-advisory body.  Ms. Bartholomew has been appointed to the Commission for four consecutive terms by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Ms. Bartholomew worked at senior levels in the U.S. Congress, serving for almost sixteen years as Counsel, Legislative Director, and Chief of Staff to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She also served as a Professional Staff Member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Previously, she was a legislative assistant to then-U.S. Representative Bill Richardson.  Ms. Bartholomew was a member of the first Presidential Delegation to Africa to Investigate the Impact of HIV/AIDS on Children; and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Congressional Staff Roundtable on Asian Political and Security issues.  In addition to U.S.-China relations, her areas of expertise include terrorism, trade, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, human rights, U.S. foreign assistance programs, and international environmental issues. Ms. Bartholomew is a director of the Kaiser Aluminum Corporation and a member of the Public Policy Board of the Feminist Majority Foundation.  She received her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, M.A. in anthropology from Duke University, and J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.  She is a member of the State Bar of California.


Mei-Mei Ellerman

 

Mei-Mei Ellerman, PhD, is a founding board member of Polaris Project (2002).  She strives to raise awareness of modern-day slavery by addressing audiences in schools, universities, churches, libraries, fundraisers, and conferences, both nationally and internationally. Ms. Ellerman has testified before the Massachusetts State House in support of a state anti-trafficking bill and organized two Vermont Freedom Walks along the ten-mile-long stretch of an old slave route. She has given interviews to the media in the United States, China, and Italy.

In 2006, Ms. Ellerman was the recipient of the MA Commission on the Status of Women award of “Unsung Heroine” for her contribution in raising awareness of human trafficking. She is currently a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center (where she is writing two memoirs), and co-founder of the Brandeis Gender and International Development Initiatives. She also serves on the Board of Chinese Adoptee Links International and the International Advisory Board of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Adopted in the United States, Ms. Ellerman was raised and educated primarily in Italy, France and Switzerland. She attended the Liceo Michelangiolo in Florence, the University of Geneva, and Boston University. She holds a PhD from Harvard in Romance Languages and Literatures. Until turning to full-time writing and social activism, Ms. Ellerman taught Italian literature and cinema in Boston area institutions for 30 years.
 

 

 

Thom Lockerby was appointed Vice President for Development at Boston College in June, 2008; he has served in leadership roles in the BC Advancement Office since 2004.  Mr. Lockerby directs the Boston College campaign, Light the World, which was launched in October, 2008, with a goal of $1.5 billion.  He has spent his entire career working in or consulting with charities, primarily focusing on major and planned gift fund raising.  His expertise is advising donors and families about strategies to effectively maximize their philanthropy in concert with overall financial, estate planning, and wealth transfer goals.  Prior to joining BC, Mr. Lockerby served as Director of Gift Planning at Dartmouth College.  Previously, he was Relationship Manager at Kaspick & Company, an investment firm specializing in charitable trusts and endowments; Vice President at PG Calc Incorporated, a development software company; and Director of Development Relations at Harvard Business School.  Mr. Lockerby speaks widely on the topic of effective philanthropy from both the donor and institutional perspectives and his articles have appeared in Planned Giving Today and the Journal of Gift Planning.  He serves on the board of the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning, is a past President of the Planned Giving Group of New England, and is a graduate of Harvard College.

Honorary Board

Paul Farmer
Co-Founder and Executive Vice President
Partners in Health and Global Health Delivery Project

Paul Farmer is the Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Partners in Health, a multifunctional organization that renders health services to rural, often impoverished, communities through direct clinical assistance, and the Co-Leader of the Global Health Delivery Project, an organization attempting to develop new and innovative healthcare practices that can be widely disseminated. Dr. Farmer is a medical anthropologist, physician and a leading authority on tuberculosis treatment and control, and has made wide use of his skills as an attending physician and Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Bringham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. Dr. Farmer also serves as the Medical Director of the Clinique Bon Sauveur in Haiti. Beyond his medical practicing, Dr. Farmer serves as the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. An avid writer, Dr. Farmer has also written several works, most recently Pathologies of Power (University of California Press, 2003). Due to his work in medicine and education, Dr. Farmer is the recipient of several humanitarian awards including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition and the American Medical Association’s International Physician Award.  He received his B.A. from Duke University in 1982, and concurrently received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1990.

 

Founder President of Apne Aap Women Worldwide has worked for 25 years for women’s and girls’ rights, especially the ending of their sex trafficking. Ms. Gupta founded Apne Aap in 2002 - a grassroots organization working on the issue of human trafficking and women rights. Today Apne Aap impacts the lives and livelihoods of thousands of women and children. She lobbied with other activists with the United Nations during the formulations for the UN protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children resulting in the first UN instrument to address demand in the context of trafficking in Article 9, of the Protocol. She has addressed the Un General Assembly twice on the subject.
 Ruchira has worked in the United Nations in various capacities for over ten years in Nepal, Thailand, Philippines, Kosovo, USA, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia and Iran. In some of these countries she has helped to develop National Action Plans on women’s empowerment and laws against human trafficking.
 

Adam Hochschild                             
Co-Founder
Mother Jones Magazine

Adam Hochschild is the Co-Founder of Mother Jones Magazine, a nonprofit news organization that is published bi-monthly and as an internet news outlet. Mr. Hochschild previously served as a commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and has spent most of his professional career involved in journalism, writing for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, Grantla and The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Hochschild currently teaches narrative writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, and he formerly taught as a Fulbright Lecturer in India in 1997. As a result of his commitment to journalism, Mr. Hochschild has been lauded by several institutions, including the Overseas Press Club, the World Affairs Council, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalist. Mr. Hochschild has also written several works, including Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2005), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, and King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Houghton Mifflin1998), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.


Rachel Lloyd
Founder and Executive Director
Girls Education and Mentoring Service (GEMS)

Rachel Lloyd is the Founder and Executive Director of the Girls Education and Mentoring Service (GEMS), the only organization in New York designed to serve girls and young women who have been exploited by the sex industry and domestic trafficking.  Ms. Lloyd founded GEMS in 1999 due to her own experience of sexual exploitation as a teenager and her slipping through the cracks of the political and social systems designed to protect victims of drug and sexual abuse. This engendered in her a desire to help girls, ages 12 – 21, who have exited the sex industry and also, to raise greater awareness about the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Due to her humanitarian work Ms. Lloyd has been honored by the Reebok Human Rights association and awarded the Frederick Douglas Award from the North Star Fund. Ms. Lloyd is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College where she received her B.S. in Psychology in 2002, and the City University of New York where she received her M.A. in Applied Urban Anthropology in 2005.


Her Majesty Queen Noor
Queen of Jordan

Queen Noor al Hussein of Jordan, born Lisa Najeeb Halaby, has continuously committed to humanitarian endeavors since her marriage to King Hussein of Jordan in 1978. Working in fields ranging from education to anti-nuclear proliferation, Queen Noor remains an active participant and contributor to several institutions, serving as: a patron of the Landmines Survivor Network; a member of the Advisory Board of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; President of the United World Colleges; member for the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Co-Founder of the Alliance of Civilizations Media Fund; Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons; Board Member of Refugees International; Founding leader of Global Zero; and Chair of the United Nations University International Leadership Institute.  One of Queen Noor’s most invested efforts has been establishing the King Hussein Foundation, which funds educational opportunities within Jordan in order to cultivate and retain its brightest youths.  Due to her magnanimous endeavors, Queen Noor has been honored by several organizations, including the United Nations Environmental Program Global 500 Award for her work in environmental protection and the 2009 Global Environmental Citizen Award furnished by Harvard University’s Center for Health and Global Environment. Beyond her humanitarian work, Queen Noor has also published two books: Hussein of Jordan (KHF Publishing 2000) and Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life (Miramax Books 2003), a New York Times Best Seller. Queen Noor received her B.A. in Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University in 1974.


Evelyn Murphy
Founder and President
WAGE Project
Former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts

Eveyln Murphy is the Founder and President of the WAGE Project—an organization that works to end wage discrimination against women.  Prior to this work, Ms. Murphy had a distinguished career in business and education, serving as: the Corporate Director for SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Company and Citizens Energy Corporation; Founder of the Commonwealth Institute; Managing Director of Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer; Blue Cross and Blue Shield Executive Vice President of Media and Civic relations; President of the HealthCare Policy Institute; Trustee for Regis College, Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, Honorary Chair of the Lost Coin Women’s Fund. Ms. Murphy, has also left a notable mark in politics; she not only served as Massachusetts’ Secretary of Environmental Affairs and Secretary of Economic Affairs, she was also elected as the Lt. Governor of Massachusetts—becoming the first woman in Massachusetts history to hold a statewide office. Ms. Murphy has recently written and published Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What to Do About it (Simon & Schuster 2005), and run the Boston Marathon.  Ms. Murphy attended Duke University where she received her B.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Economics, and Columbia University where she received her M.A. in Economics; she also holds ten honorary degrees due to her business, educational and political work.