Named one of the top 30 most influ­en­tial social work­ers alive, Dr. Celia Williamson has over 25 years of anti-traf­fick­ing expe­ri­ence. She is a pro­fes­sor of social work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tole­do where she has received 13 years of fed­er­al fund­ing to study sex traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion and hosts the old­est and largest inter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic human traf­fick­ing con­fer­ence in the world.

Dr. Williamson’s research focus has been in the area of human traf­fick­ing with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to domes­tic minor sex traf­fick­ing. She has pub­lished numer­ous arti­cles on the sub­ject and has deliv­ered over 200 pre­sen­ta­tions and been the keynote speak­er at more than 20 con­fer­ences. She also stud­ies pros­ti­tu­tion, vul­ner­a­ble women, and drug abuse. She teach­es social work prac­tice cours­es and a human traf­fick­ing course. She found­ed the first anti-traf­fick­ing pro­gram in Ohio in 1993. She has com­plet­ed 9 stud­ies, 19 articles/reports, and edit­ed 2 books on sex traf­fick­ing; & she has received fed­er­al fund­ing from 2002 to 2012 to con­duct research in this area. Addi­tion­al accom­plish­ments include: found­ing the annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Human Traf­fick­ing and Social Jus­tice Con­fer­ence in Tole­do; found­ing the Lucas Coun­ty Human Traf­fick­ing Coali­tion; she sits as chair of the Research & Analy­sis Sub­com­mit­tee for the Ohio Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s Human Traf­fick­ing Com­mis­sion; and is an Edi­to­r­i­al Man­ag­er for the Jour­nal of Human Traf­fick­ing. And most recent­ly, she opened the Human Traf­fick­ing and Social Jus­tice Insti­tute in 2015 to fur­ther the mis­sion of com­bat­ing human traf­fick­ing & sup­port­ing vic­tims of this crime through research, edu­ca­tion, and engagement.

Celia grew up in north Tole­do, a high-crime, low-income area of Tole­do, Ohio. After dri­ving into work see­ing drug-addict­ed and abused women on the streets, Celia had an epiphany about who she real­ly was as a social work­er and a spir­i­tu­al fol­low­er. Not find­ing any mean­ing­ful infor­ma­tion at the library, in 1993 Celia took to the streets and spent 6 months, 3 times a week on the street learn­ing about pros­ti­tu­tion, drugs, and the cul­ture of the street. She went into crack hous­es, and a broth­el to con­nect with women and walk beside them into free­dom and recov­ery. She lat­er learned that three of her child­hood friends were caught up as sex traf­fick­ing vic­tims. One was mur­dered by a cus­tomer. The oth­er strug­gled with life-long trau­ma and addiction.
 
Celia spent over 28 years work­ing on behalf of youth and adult sex traf­fick­ing vic­tims. She com­plet­ed 10 years of fed­er­al­ly fund­ed research on the issue, found­ed sev­er­al pro­grams, con­duct­ed a few hun­dred pre­sen­ta­tions, pub­lished sev­er­al peer-reviewed arti­cles, book chap­ters, state lev­el reports, and cur­rent­ly serves as the Direc­tor of a Human Traf­fick­ing & Social Jus­tice Insti­tute at Uni­ver­si­ty of Tole­do. Today she is named the 26th most influ­en­tial social work­er alive.
 
Hav­ing reached the heights of her career, Celia decid­ed to devote the rest of her career to equip­ping prac­ti­tion­ers and those pas­sion­ate and com­mit­ted to end­ing human traf­fick­ing with the knowl­edge and skills to be the most effec­tive they can be.
To show you that you can indeed by effec­tive and make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence in the lives of human traf­fick­ing sur­vivors, Celia is offer­ing this free webi­nar that talks about trau­ma and is offer­ing to train you to become a group facil­i­ta­tor or coach and imple­ment the TNT Sur­vivor’s Jour­ney groups for any­one that has suf­fered emo­tion­al or phys­i­cal vio­lence and has also been involved in the com­mer­cial sex trade.