Sex Trafficking
in America’s
Finest City

Stacey Williams joined PCI, a Global Communities Partner, in July 2020 as the Director of the Human Trafficking Prevention Team. Stacey is a native New Yorker but spent a great many years living and working in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Her first career highlight was service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, which was the jumping off point to her work in social justice, focusing on health and human rights for women and girls.

After receiving her Masters in Public Health from Columbia University, Stacey moved to post-conflict Kosovo and managed shelters for survivors of human trafficking, providing and coordinating survivor-focused service and advocacy activities. During this time, Stacey was also the Balkans point-person on Human Trafficking. She moved between Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia as hotbeds for human trafficking while working for UMCOR, Mercy Corps, and IOM.

When Stacey’s first child was 2 months old, she relocated to Guinea, West Africa, and worked with The IRC unaccompanied minor program, supporting youth who had fled the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Two additional children later, Stacey was living between a small village in Umbria, Italy and Kenya, working on various human rights-based projects. Stacey’s work the lead her to Sierra Leone post-Ebola outbreak, ensuring education, health, and safe family options for young girls orphaned by Ebola who were targets for human trafficking.

Stacey moved back to the US nine years ago to continue work on social justice issues in the communities where she resides. Her experience has provided an understanding of the vastness of global human trafficking; as well as an awareness of how human trafficking operates in the US, and the lack of awareness from those failing to recognize the exploitation happening in their own backyards.

In July 2020 Stacey and her three teen children relocated from the East Coast to San Diego to join the local efforts to combat human trafficking. In addition to her human rights work, Stacey is also a certified Kundalini Yoga + Meditation instructor and Holistic Wellness Coach which have been instrumental daily practices in her personal and professional life.

Hannah Allen officially joined PCI in December 2018 as the Sr. Program Manager to support the design and implementation of E3 Alliance: Employers Ending Exploitation. Hannah has an extensive corporate background in the hospitality and casino industry and recognizes the opportunities businesses have in combatting sex trafficking and protecting vulnerable populations. She is passionate about activating the business sector as leaders in the fight against human trafficking through education and community engagement.

Marissa Cardwell began her experience as a Girls Only! facilitator and the Program Coordinator for PCI’s Human Trafficking Prevention Programs. Marissa found her passion and drive to empower… girls, working at the Boys and Girls Club in the neighborhood where she grew up, after noticing that many of her childhood peers later became victimized by the sex industry and trafficking. As a result, Marissa made it her mission to help create a “village” to mentor and support youth to take a healthier path. Marissa learned early on the importance of positive representation and engaged local community members to join the village by participating in events such as career day, clothing and school supply drives and safe school walking programs. In an effort to “practice what she preached”, Marissa left PCI to finish school in 2014. In true PCI “boomerang” fashion, Marissa later came back as an intern with PCI’s Healthy Start Program as she completed her thesis to earn her MPH, with an emphasis on Global Health. Marissa was hired as a PCI Healthy Start Perinatal Navigator in 2019 and has recently transitioned back to her ROOTS as the Program Officer for both Project ROOTS and E3 Alliance with Global Communities.