minh dang, executive director & CO-Founder

Minh Dang, MSW, PhD is the Executive Director of Survivor Alliance, an international NGO that empowers survivors to be leaders in their own communities. She is also a Research Fellow and Lead in Survivor Scholarship and Wellbeing at the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab. Her doctoral thesis, Wellbeing in our own Words: Survivors of slavery defining wellbeing, emphasizes the importance of moving beyond psychopathy when discussing survivors’ mental health and focusing on wellbeing. Minh was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area region of California and is a proud two-time UC Berkeley alum. Minh earned her B.A. in Sociology and Masters in Social Welfare, with an emphasis on Community Mental Health. Minh loves the outdoors, is a fan of farmers' markets, and the person making silly faces at your child in the supermarket. You will rarely find her without a journal or post-it notes, and hopes that someone will pay her to launch a stationery line called Minhspiration.

Narit Gessler, Deputy Director

Narit Gessler is a mission-driven advocate for human rights with over 15 years of experience in nonprofit administration, program design, and project management. Throughout her career, Narit has dedicated herself to empowering rights-based organizations and making a meaningful impact in the lives of survivors. As an active member and advocate within Survivor Alliance for the past several years, Narit has worked closely with the community as an ally and champion.

Previously, Narit held roles as the Senior Partnership Manager at United Way Worldwide's Center to Combat Human Trafficking and the Director of Development at Free the Slaves, where she was responsible for designing and implementing global anti-trafficking initiatives. Beyond her professional qualifications, Narit holds dual Masters degrees from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in International Policy Studies (specialized in human rights, norms, and justice) and Business Administration for International Management. In her free time, Narit can usually be found reading a book, exploring the great outdoors, and spending quality time with her family (and cats).

Nancy esiovwa, membership program manager

Nancy is the Founder of Bradford Survivor Alliance Chapter, the first Chapter of Survivor Alliance. Nancy has the privilege of supporting survivors to raise their voices and personally advocate for survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK. Her passion for this work is founded upon her humanity and compassion, as well as her personal identification as a survivor of modern slavery. Nancy has been an active member of Survivor Alliance since 2018. She raises awareness about modern slavery and human trafficking through public speaking in her local community, at national conferences, and at colleges and training events around the UK.

AMIE RAINFISH, Consulting Program Manager

Amie is the Program Manager of Consulting at Survivor Alliance and an active Lived Experience Subject Matter Consultant. Amie coordinates Survivor Alliance's collaboration with the Office for Victims of Crime's Survivor Engagement Training and Technical Assistance program (SETTA). She regularly works with consultants and organizations focusing on complex issues in the anti-trafficking sector. Amie understands and appreciates diversity, inclusion, accessibility, reparation, and repair as key issues in working with communities for positive change.

Amie has been a capacity builder, consultant, instructor, advocate, and activist for more than 20 years. She has worked with legal, medical, governmental, academic, non-government, and faith-based organizations to create and further opportunities for survivors. Amie is an AmeriCorps Alumna who has been dedicated to improving the lives of others and strengthening communities. She has served 4 years in her local counties as a capacity builder for victim service programs and has developed and facilitated various training and prevention programs.

kathy givens, Leadership Academy Program Manager

Kathy Givens is a wife, mother, writer, speaker, and consultant in the anti-trafficking field.  Throughout her career, she has demonstrated unwavering dedication to raising awareness and implementing effective strategies to combat human trafficking and gender-based violence. Some of her former roles include being program director, where she designed and managed a trauma-informed curriculum for adults who identified as survivors of trafficking; director of outreach, where she launched a youth-focused awareness program in a new city; and co-founder, where she designed a unique mentorship program for individuals who identified as survivors of trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. With a deep commitment to inclusivity, Kathy actively engages in meaningful conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion as a consultant. She is devoted to navigating complex social justice issues with empathy, empowerment, and a call to action. Kathy often jokes that her favorite language is poetry. She loves attending poetry shows, reading books, and spending time with her family. 

Alicia Ley, Fellowship Program manager

Alicia Ley serves Survivor Alliance as the Fellowship Program Manager. Previous professional adventures include grassroots community development, economic empowerment, direct services, and collective impact work. Alicia has spent the last decade advocating and building holistic, trauma-applied spaces to support survivors as they journey toward becoming their whole healthy selves. It is these face-to-face relationships that fuel her fiery passion to address systemic injustices and fight for economic equity. Alicia is fervent about bringing survivors and allies together in order to provide empowering solutions in the anti-trafficking sector. Her best moments include sharing cups of frothy coffee, mountain climbing adventures, and the simple joy of being present with loved ones.

Christabelle Robinson, Communications Associate

Christabelle Robinson (she/they) is the Communication Associate for Survivor Alliance. They are also the Program Coordinator at the Global Center on Human Trafficking. Christabelle has years of survivor advocacy experience including blogs, interviews, and public speaking on human trafficking and related issues focusing on disability and neurodivergent accommodations and awareness, as well as ethical and equitable survivor engagement in professional spaces. They are experienced in program development, training curriculum development and facilitation, writing, and marketing.

In addition to her work in the human trafficking field, Christabelle brings to this position a wealth of experience developing communications strategy and social media campaigns as an independent consultant to private companies and non-profit organizations. Since 2017, her focus has been on ethical and inclusive marketing and product design that is designed to include people from all walks of life.

With a cup of coffee in one hand, when not working, some of Christabelle’s other interests include running an online storefront to be an outlet for her art and macrame, video gaming, makeup artistry, thrifting, curling up with a good book, or attempting to write a couple pages of their own book (but it is definitely a work in progress).

Daniela Fonkatz, Director of Movement Building

Daniela Fonkatz is the Director of Movement Building of Survivor Alliance. Daniela is a Latin-American feminist with 20 years of work and commitment to advance women’s rights and social justice. She has worked at a local, national and global level, in grassroots collectives, feminist organizations, local governments and academic entities in different countries of Mesoamerica, Europe and East Africa. For the last 8 years, she worked at AWID (Association of Women’s Rights in Development) as the Women Human Rights Defenders Manager and later as the Knowledge Building Tactic Lead. Community and movement building has always been at the core of her work and activism. She is passionate about co-creating spaces for movements to collectively develop tactics and strategies for social change and political mobilization and facilitating participatory processes to support, strengthen and connect movements.

Raven montenegro, admin & operations coordinator

Raven Montenegro is the Admin and Operations Coordinator of Survivor Alliance. She calls Atlanta home, having graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Anthropology from Georgia State University. After moving to D.C., Raven completed her Master’s in Ethics, Peace, and Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service, where she focused on the communications of peacebuilding within social movements. She has experience building foundational systems and developing efficient strategies for organizational growth. When she’s not accidentally buying too many books at local, independent shops, Raven is probably busy in the kitchen, exploring new recipes or baking cookies for her neighbors.

sharon hawkins-leyden, LCSW

Sharon Hawkins Leyden, MSW, LCSW has more than 38 years of experience working with transitional age youth, adults, and seniors with significant vulnerabilities.  She has been licensed as a Clinical Social Worker in the state of California for the past 21 years.  She has worked predominantly with issues pertaining to trauma from sexual exploitation, placement into the foster care system, isolation, poverty, systemic racism, and chronic homelessness. Throughout her career, her work has focused on three primary issues: raising people out of poverty, helping people re-author stories of trauma, and working for equality of access through social justice practices.

Read more about Sharon here!

Aims Babich

Aims Babich (they/them) is a lived experience consultant, trainer, and speaker on sex and labor trafficking, who approaches their work from a sex-work affirming and anti-oppressive lens. They have been working in various roles at Survivor Alliance since 2021, currently including: Lead Trainer for Survivor Alliance’s training series, Facilitator and Student Coach in the Survivor Leadership Academy, and Curriculum Developer. Aims also supports survivors through mentorship at You Are More Than, and has served on a number of task forces and advisory councils, striving to bring voice and representation to LGBQ+, transgender, and sex working survivors.

In addition, Aims currently works in the mental health and alternative healthcare fields, with an emphasis on supporting the LGBQ+/TGNCI community, individuals living with eating disorders, survivors of violence, and marginalized folx. They take a holistic approach in their work through community-based care, trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and mutual aid. Babich also owns a small business where they practice massage therapy and somatic bodywork.

Anastasia Lynge

Anastasia Lynge (they/she) is an associate researcher with Survivor Alliance. They are currently conducting a project on approaches and best practices for survivor-designed and survivor-informed convenings in the anti-trafficking sector.

Outside of this role, Anastasia is a program coordinator for a labor rights organization, where she assists on projects related to the mitigation and prevention of forced labor and child labor. They have consulted on anti-trafficking research projects led by nonprofit and academic organizations. She is especially passionate about bringing the voices of those with lived experience to the forefront of all efforts, incorporating survivor voices into the design, process and outcomes of both research and programming.

When not engaged in professional work, Anastasia spends their time outdoors, reads and writes poetry, and works locally with her communities towards transformative change.

Bee Damara

Bee Damara is a Student Coach for the Survivor Alliance Leadership Academy. Prior to this role, Bee supported and facilitated community building sessions for the Survivors LEAD programme. She has also worked in direct services with unaccompanied asylum seeking young people for over 10 years. Bee graduated with a first class honours degree in Youth Work and Community Development and is currently studying Human Rights and Global Ethics MA at the University of Leicester. She is a survivor leader who is passionate about rights and participation approaches to community building. Bee also works for the King's College London MS-COS team, which investigates desired outcomes for survivors of human trafficking. In her free time, Bee loves to draw, cook and practice Tai Chi.

Eseosa Eguamwense

Eseosa is the Membership Programs Assistant at Survivor Alliance. She finds joy in supporting the survivor community, as well as facilitating capacity building and development and support programs.

Prior to this, she worked as Community Impact Advisor at United Way’s Center to Combat Human Trafficking where she co-created the Ethical Storytelling Policy for executing storytelling consultations involving survivors of human trafficking in an ethical and non-exploitative manner through Survivor Alliance’s LEAD program.

She has been involved in grassroots community organizing to increase participation in victim protection, destigmatization, and survivor perception. She enjoys dancing, cooking, and watching crime & documentary films.

Wilnisha Sutton

Wilnisha Sutton pronouns are She/Her and she is a Lived experience expert (survivor) and proud of it. She has always wanted to give back to those impacted by injustice and empower them. Wilnisha worked for San Diego Youth Services at STARS as a Case Manager for youth ages 12-24 who were being trafficked or impacted by CSEC. She was also a RISE Court advocate (Resiliency Is Strength and Empowerment) With San Diego Superior Court and an advocate with HOPE Court program in D.C. Superior Court. Therefore, when she worked as a HOPE court Case manager with Fair Girls is was a perfect fit. Serving at both diversions youth courts gave Wilnisha the opportunity to engage in the restorative work happening in the juvenile justice system. 

Read more about Wilnisha here!