We're grateful for the opportunity to bring together survivor leaders, advocates, service providers, and community partners who share a commitment to supporting survivors and strengthening our collective work.
A Working Session to Transform How Organizations Engage Survivor Leaders
The Survivor Forum brings together survivor leaders, nonprofit leaders, advocates, communications professionals, and practitioners to address a critical question:
How can organizations move beyond simply including survivor voices to meaningfully sharing power with survivor leaders?
This is not a traditional conference. It is a facilitated working session designed to bring together diverse perspectives and translate them into practical standards, tools, and recommendations that organizations can implement.
Why This Matters
Survivor expertise is essential to building effective responses to human trafficking and exploitation. Yet organizations often lack clear standards for how to engage survivor leaders ethically, compensate lived expertise equitably, protect survivors from harm, and incorporate survivor perspectives into meaningful decision-making.
This forum creates space for survivors and professionals to work together—not in parallel—to develop solutions.
RSVP NowBy the end of the day, participants will work toward five tangible products
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Draft Governance Guidelines — Practical recommendations for organizations seeking to authentically share leadership and decision-making power with survivor leaders.
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Survivor Engagement Readiness Assessment — A tool to help organizations determine whether they have the structures, policies, culture, and resources necessary for ethical survivor engagement.
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Recommended Training Standards — Guidance for preparing organizations and professionals to work effectively and responsibly with survivor leaders.
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Ethical Communications Principles — Standards for representing survivor experiences with dignity, informed consent, autonomy, and authenticity.
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Trauma-Informed Participation Toolkit — Practical tools to help organizations create safer, more supportive environments for survivor participation and leadership.
Collaborative Workshops
Participants rotate through three facilitated working groups, ensuring that every participant has an opportunity to contribute to each topic.
Workshop 1
Organizational Readiness
Creating Trauma-Informed Environments for Survivor Leaders
What does an organization need to do before it is truly ready to engage survivor leaders?
Workshop 2
Survivor Voice in Communications
Ethical Storytelling, Media & Representation
How can organizations share survivor stories without exploiting the very people they seek to support?
Workshop 3
Measuring the Impact of Survivor Leadership
Shared Decision-Making & Organizational Change
How do we know when survivor leadership is actually changing an organization?
Agenda at a Glance
- 8:30–9:00 AM — Check-In
- Informal opportunity for participants to connect before the day's working sessions begin.
- 9:00–9:45 AM — Keynote
- 9:45–10:30 AM — Opening Conversation — Foundations of Survivor-Led Governance: Building Authentic Shared Leadership
Moderated by:
- Dr. Tina Valila, DSW, LICSW & Nikki Valila, MSW, LICSW, The Nest Collaborative LLC
- June Haskell, Director of Survivor Engagement
- Jackie Goldstein, VP of Survivor Care
Focus: Moving beyond tokenism toward authentic shared leadership.
Participants will explore:
- What survivor-led governance actually looks like
- Barriers to meaningful survivor leadership
- Models for sharing decision-making power
- Organizational accountability
- How lived experience can be meaningfully integrated into governance
The goal: Establish a shared foundation for the day's work and move the conversation from “How do we include survivor voices?” to “How do we share power with survivor leaders?”
- 10:30–10:45 AM — Break
- 10:45 AM–12:00 PM — Collaborative Workshops
- 12:00–1:00 PM — Lunch
- Working lunch and continued opportunities for cross-sector connection.
- 1:00–2:15 PM — Round 2 Workshops
- Participants continue the collaborative process, rotating to the next workshop topic.
- 2:15–3:30 PM — Round 3 Workshops
- Participants complete the final rotation, ensuring every participant contributes to all three areas of focus.
- 3:30–3:45 PM — Break
- 3:45–5:00 PM — Survivor–Law Enforcement Partnerships: Building Trust Through Collaboration
- Effective anti-trafficking responses require collaboration between survivor leaders and law enforcement. This facilitated conversation will include law enforcement and other industry partners to examine how those partnerships can be strengthened while protecting survivor safety, autonomy, confidentiality, and choice.
- 5:00 PM — Networking Reception — Connecting Survivor Leaders, Law Enforcement & Industry Partners
- A closing reception will provide an opportunity for participants, survivor leaders, law enforcement, advocates, practitioners, and industry partners to continue conversations and build relationships that can advance the work beyond the forum.
Event Details
- Date & Time
- Thursday, November 5, 2026, 9:00 AM–5:00 PM, followed by networking reception.
- Location
- Haynes & Boone, LLP — 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10112
- Food
- Sponsored by Haynes & Boone, LLP
- Accommodations
- Room blocks have been reserved under the group name Our Rescue at Home2 Suites by Hilton New York Times Square ($269/night plus taxes) and Hampton Inn by Hilton New York Times Square ($289/night plus tax).
The Intended Impact
The Survivor Forum is designed to create something that lasts beyond November 5, 2026. These proposed outcomes are designed to extend the impact of the forum well beyond the event itself.
