Our Speaker
Sabrina Stratford
– Human Trafficking Abolitionist
Sabrina, a former President of Colorado Springs Downtown Toastmasters, obtained the Impromptu Speakers and Distinguished Toastmasters Awards. She spent 25 years traveling the world building partnerships as a Global Business Development Manager for software companies including Microsoft and IBM. Building team agreement and success is part of her professional DNA. Her corporate presentations expanded to Improv Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Stand-Up Comedy in the Roaring Fork Valley, Colorado, and local theater. In 2021 her attention to the atrocities of modern slavery consumed her focus. She left the IT world to become the first domestic Project Manager to fight human trafficking with the non-profit, Love Justice International. She went to Anchorage Alaska to fight sex trafficking, boots-on-the-ground, and became the Property Manager for the transitional housing at Anchorage’s women’s emergency shelter, The Downtown Hope Center. This experience put her toe-to-toe with traffickers and introduced her to victims and survivors. She trained to be a Human Trafficking Transit Monitor at Alaska’s Ted Stevens International Airport and managed a team of 16 volunteers to join the fight. She gained deeper insights at The Alaska Department of Public Safety in the Sex Offender Registration Unit where she provided advanced paraprofessional support reviewing the criminal backgrounds of sex offenders working with law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, in Alaska and nationwide. Today, she empowers people in the fight against the greatest atrocity of our time, sex trafficking.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)
About TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago, TED has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes or less. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.
The annual TED Conference takes place each spring in Vancouver, British Columbia. TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TED Talks are posted daily; TED Translators, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from volunteers worldwide; the educational initiative TED-Ed. TED has established The Audacious Project that takes a collaborative approach to funding ideas with the potential to create change at thrilling scale; TEDx, which supports individuals or groups in hosting local, self- organized TED-style events around the world, and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.
Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED.