Kelly Schuler - Executive Director, Educator, Speaker Coach, Producer

Kelly Schuler is the Executive Director and Founder of BRAVE Education for Trafficking Prevention. Kelly's vision is to ensure that every child has access to empowering, life - saving prevention education, prior to the average age of recruitment in Canada, w hich has been shown to be 12 - 14 years old. Through BRAVE, Kelly and team deliver this education in an upbeat, culturally - relevant and age - appropriate way that provides the tools children need to stay safe, while protecting their innocence at the same time.

With expertise in research, behavioural change, cross - cultural communications and education, as well as direct experience with trafficked youth, Kelly was driven to develop research and programming to address what is needed to help prevent children from b eing recruited into trafficking in the first place, as exploiters or exploited persons. Kelly and her team have been delivering culturally relevant youth empowerment programming in urban, rural and Indigenous communities together with local leaders and rol e models over the past decade.

Kelly is a strategic and creative director, presentation coach, publisher and producer of tools to empower individuals, communities and organizations. Kelly is passionate about inspiring leadership, research and finding new ways to do what, to others, may seem like 'the impossible'. Using research combined with visionary talents, she surrounds herself with brilliant disruptive types and helps to collectively combine brilliance to shine light on ‘the who, what, when, where, wh y, how and really?’ around prevention education.

Kelly leads research currently underway, with an interdisciplinary academic team. The research is for the development of a survivor and research - informed program to empower and protect elementary school - age d children, supported by University of Calgary.

Ajwang’ Warria’

Ajwang’ is an Associate Professor of Social Work at University of Calgary, working in partnership with BRAVE Education to prevent child trafficking in Canada. Prior to joining academia, Ajwang’ worked in the counter-human trafficking field in southern Africa and practiced as a social worker with migrant children and their families and with children living and working on the streets. As a child rights-based development advocate, she was part of working groups (coordinated South African government departments), which were instrumental in creating counter-trafficking and child protection legislation and policies. She continues to provide her expertise as an advisory board member on a project spearheaded by the International Rescue Committee and UNICEF and as a Think Tank member with the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF).

Ena Lucia

Ena Lucia is a trauma-Informed and survivor-informed professional in human security, specialized in child abuse and human trafficking.

Ena Lucia earned two bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and a master’s degree at Royal Roads University in Human Security and Peacebuilding.

She has worked for three Members of the Canadian Parliament, where she conducted statistical research, policy writing, and human rights advocacy work. During her time working with Member of Parliament Joy Smith, Ena Lucia built a database to track human trafficking cases and to provide supporting data for Bill C-310, a piece of legislation that enhanced the definition of exploitation in the criminal offence of human trafficking. Using information from this database, Bill C-310 also enabled the prosecution of Canadians who committed crimes against children and human trafficking offenses outside of Canada’s borders.

Ena Lucia has also assisted vulnerable communities and victims of human trafficking as a volunteer with NGOs in trafficking hotspots. In the non-profit sector, she worked with CARE Canada to coordinate workshops for country directors in support of humanitarian aid and development projects. Ena Lucia moved to France to pursue an internship with INTERPOL where her work centered on victims of human trafficking, people smuggling, and crimes against children. She later joined INTERPOL as a staff member in the Communications Office until early 2020, and then again in 2022 in the Organized and Emerging Crime Directorate, for Illicit Markets.

Ena Lucia has presented her research at the Global INTERPOL Human Trafficking Expert Group Meeting, the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and at the University of Toledo. She was interviewed for a South African Radio show "Voice of Change" on male victims of human trafficking and abuse in South Africa, and on Rogers TV Freedom Fighters: Code Gray. Additionally, her research on male victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and human trafficking for sexual exploitation, is published in the Child Abuse and Neglect Journal special edition on boys winter of 2022.

Michelle Abel

Advocate & Founder of Bridge2Future

Bridge2Future is a non-profit that the primary mission is research, advocacy and policy advice against Generational Trauma, Intimate Partner Violence and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children. Michelle is a survivor of Familial Trafficking and Abuse and a staunch advocate for the exploited, marginalized and oppressed. She has been working in providing direct support to victims and survivors, speaking at conferences and facilitates training on Familial Trafficking.

Michelle has submitted Briefs to different Committees in the Canadian House of Commons.

In June 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police invited Michelle as a guest speaker on "Familial Abuse and Human Trafficking: A Crime Against Children". During the training webinar presentation, Michelle integrated her lived experience with the Adverse Childhood Experiences, Neurobiology of Trauma and Coercive Control according to the Biderman's Chart of Coercion.

Michelle submitted an Affidavit to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, on a constitutional challenge to Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act by the Canadian Alliance for Sex work law reform.

She has committed much of her life to fight for those who are trauma-bonded and ending all forms of sexual exploitation of women and children.