Chris Croft Ash - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Chris Ash is an anti-violence advocate and educator whose movement-organizing work began in 1994 as a suicide hotline counselor and LGBTQ activist/organizer. Currently, they are the co-founder of Collective Threads Initiative – a cross-movement mobilization of grassroots efforts to address human trafficking and exploitation – and have a presidential commission to serve on the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, providing recommendations and guidance to federal agencies addressing human trafficking. As Survivor Leadership Program Manager at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast), they managed the National Survivor Network, taking it from a network of consultants to a collective-power-building group of community organizers and changemakers. While at Cast, Chris partnered on the development of the Meaningful Engagement of People with Lived Experience framework and assessment, spearheaded a project to foster repair for survivor leaders harmed by their anti-trafficking engagements drawing on a community accountability lens, co-authored a workbook to support empowered storytelling for social change, and developed educational materials to teach systems-based prevention of human trafficking. In addition to their community-based work they served as a federal policy leader, coordinating the first-ever entirely survivor-developed, all survivor Capitol Hill briefing for members of Congress. They served as a research consultant for the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre’s research into global promising practices for meaningful engagement of people with lived experience and are currently conducting research in partnership with Cast and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about the storytelling experiences of survivors.

Before coming to Cast, Ash was the Anti-Human Trafficking Specialist, and later the Prevention Education Program Manager, for the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCCASA). As coalition staff, Ash provided training and technical assistance (TTA) to rape crisis centers, dual domestic violence agencies, and human trafficking programs across the state, and was the primary Centers for Disease Control-funded Rape Prevention and Education TTA provider for the state of North Carolina’s Sexual Violence Primary Prevention Program. Before coming to NCCASA, Chris worked in sexual violence prevention and crisis response for a decade, answering hotlines, leading support groups, and providing hospital and legal accompaniment for survivors.

Ash’s current work brings together lived experience and years of direct service and community-based consent and prevention education work, as well as graduate study in social justice, human rights, and gender theory. Ash is a member of the speaker’s bureaus for both Freedom Network USA and HEAL Trafficking and is known as a dynamic speaker, trainer, and writer. Their clients and collaborative partners include the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre, the University of Liverpool Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, FreeFrom, Futures Without Violence, VALOR US, Survivors Agenda, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and the DHS Blue Campaign. They are passionate about violence prevention, harm reduction, and Full Frame Initiative’s Wellbeing Framework.
Address: Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

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