Mary David is a human rights professional and performance artist with ten years of experience working on issues related to human trafficking, domestic violence, and crimes against women. Formerly the United Nations Advisor on women and children for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Mary now serves as Vision Director for Priceless, an organization utilizing arts and media to counter human trafficking and sexual exploitation. She helped to draft some of the first laws in Maryland against human trafficking and was named one of the Top 99 Foreign Policy Leaders in the World by the Diplomatic Courier.
Mary is the former Deputy Chair of Public Awareness for the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, where she led state-wide trainings for emergency first responders and developed awareness campaigns to assist others in identifying victims of trafficking. For her work against slavery and domestic violence, Mary has been featured by the National Press Club, the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, and Georgetown University, as well as major news and media outlets including WUSA9, CBS Radio, and Fox News.
Aware of the transformative power of the arts, Mary also uses spoken word, theater, and dance to highlight global injustice. In this vein, she recently began producing her own television series, Free to Be You, to engage audiences about societal challenges through discussion and performance. It is her hope that these conversations would become global in scope and inspire audiences to become their own strongest advocates for change.
A graduate of the George Washington University Law School, Mary is also motivational speaker and blogs for the Huffington Post.
Episode Details:
In this episode, we featured Mary David, who talked to us about the topic of human trafficking. Mary explained what some of the common misconceptions of human trafficking are and how close this problem may be to us all. We discussed Mary’s various ways in which she is trying to spread awareness and help prevent human trafficking through the Priceless campaign, her series, “Free to Be You,” as well as through her involvement in the political side of the fight to end human trafficking. Mary also tells us how anyone can help to cut out their “footprint” of trafficking.
