Laura J. Lederer, J.D., is a Subject Matter Expert on Human Trafficking and President of Global Centurion, an anti-trafficking NGO.  She serves as Subject Matter Expert on Trafficking in Persons for U.S. government agencies including the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Justice.   Recent projects have included the development of a data collection instrument for tracking labor and sex trafficking cases in the Department of Defense; the development of the HHS SOAR to Health and Wellness training on human trafficking for healthcare professionals;  training and technical assistance efforts on human trafficking for HHS’ Family Youth Services Bureau (FSYB); and a specialized training and supplemental materials on human trafficking for the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) Title X Family Planning Clinics.

Prior to her work at Global Centurion she served for eight years in the U.S. Department of State as Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons to Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs where she helped to stand up the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.   From 2002 – 2009, she was also the Executive Directorship of the Senior Policy Operating Group on Trafficking in Persons, a policy group that staffed the President’s cabinet-level Interagency Task Force on Trafficking in Persons. She founded and directed The Protection Project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997 and moved it to Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in the year 2000.  At Georgetown Law Center, she developed and co-taught the first law school course on human trafficking from 2001 – 2014.

She was an expert consultant for “The Day My God Died,” a feature-length documentary that casts a spotlight on the devastating impact child sex trafficking has upon the lives of children trafficked from Nepal to India.  She was an advisor for the New York Times article that served as the basis for “Trade,” a feature length drama based on real cases of international sex trafficking and starring Kevin Kline.

Over the past fifteen years she worked extensively with survivors of human trafficking to document their experiences with first responders, particularly in health care.  She is the primary investigator and author of a landmark study entitled, “The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking,” published in the University of Loyola Chicago Annals of Health Law, in which she interviewed domestic survivors of sex trafficking about their physical and mental health problems.  In 2014 she testified in the House of Representatives at a hearing for the passage of a bill to address training, referral, reporting, rescue issues for health providers. This testimony led to the drafting and passage of Title VII of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015.

She is the author of numerous articles on trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation including “Sold for Sex; the Link Between Street Gangs and Human Trafficking,” “Addressing Demand: Why and How Policymakers Should Utilize Law and Law Enforcement to Target Customers of Commercial Sexual Exploitation,” and “Is There Justice in Johns Schools?”  During the course of her work, she has spoken at over 500 governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental events.

Her most recent book is Modern Slavery: A Documentary and Reference Guide to the Development of the 21^st Anti-Trafficking Movement, published in 2018 by Greenwood Publishing Company.  The book tells the story of the modern day anti-slavery movement through a primary source materials including documents, speeches, pamphlets, treaties, laws, and articles spanning more than 300 years, and tracks a rising consciousness about the many forms of modern-day slavery and the people and organizations that worked and are working to combat it.