https://youtu.be/NLM4TP2d_lQ

Diana Mao joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how economic empowerment serves as a frontline defense against human trafficking, revealing why desperation—not just deception—drives vulnerable families into exploitation.

Diana Mao

Diana Mao is a dynamic leader at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking and workforce development. As the President and Co-Founder of Nomi Network, she’s helped raise and mobilize over 30 million dollars to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk. Her work has brought together corporate leaders, government agencies, and social impact partners to build pathways to freedom and stability. She’s a Presidential Leadership Scholar and a New York Academy of Medicine Fellow, and her innovative approach has earned her awards like the NYU Alumni Changemaker Award and the Texas Women’s Foundation Young Leader Award. She’s advised Congress on key policy issues, and her voice is regularly heard on some of the world’s biggest stages, including the United Nations, the Bush Presidential Center, and the Clinton Presidential Center. With degrees in Business Economics and Chinese from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Public Administration from NYU Wagner, Diana blends academic rigor with hands-on leadership.

Key Points

• Economic vulnerability drives trafficking more than deception alone—when families face starvation and earn less than 75 cents a day, they may knowingly take dangerous jobs because desperation outweighs risk assessment.


• Nomi Network operates 42 training sites across India, Cambodia, and the United States, providing trauma-informed workforce training, job placement, and micro-enterprise support that creates sustainable alternatives to exploitative labor.


• Building capacity within existing community organizations—rather than disqualifying partners who don’t meet predetermined standards—creates more sustainable and culturally contextualized anti-trafficking interventions.


• Living immersively in the communities being served allows organizations to co-design programs with survivors and understand the daily realities that shape vulnerability, from gathering water at 5 AM to facing harassment after 6 PM.


• Successful prevention requires creating bridges between vulnerable communities and the private sector, as demonstrated by Nomi Network’s partnerships with major employers like India’s largest manufacturers and Toyota subsidiaries that provide direct job pipelines.


• Youth in Dallas County’s detention system who complete Nomi Network’s apprenticeship programs secure jobs earning $18 per hour—more than double the minimum wage—fundamentally changing their economic trajectories and reducing trafficking vulnerability.


• The anti-trafficking movement is increasingly leveraging technology and AI as tools for prevention and intervention, recognizing that criminal networks are already using these technologies at exponential rates to target vulnerable populations.


• Self-care practices including morning exercise routines, faith-based reflection, and intentional rest enable sustained leadership in emotionally demanding anti-trafficking work, helping leaders operate from inspiration rather than obligation.

Resources

• Nomi Network


• Invisible Children


• World Vision


• International Justice Mission (IJM)


• Hagar International


• Vanguard University


• Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Transcript

[00:00:00 ] Diana Mao: And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing.

[00:00:11 ] Delaney: When your children sleep on bare ground and you earn 75 cents a day, risk management isn’t just about losing your car. It’s about facing the decision to take a job that might cost you everything or watching your family starve. Today’s conversation is about why economic empowerment isn’t just a nice idea, but it’s a frontline of prevention.

[00:00:32 ] Hi, I’m Delaney and I’m a student here at Vanguard University. I help produce this show. Today, Dr. Morgan talks with Diana Mao, president and co-founder of Nomi Network. Diana has mobilized over $30 million to create workforce pathways for survivors and at-risk women across 42 training sites in India, Cambodia, and the us.

[00:00:53 ] And now here’s their conversation.

[00:01:00 ] Sandie Morgan: I am so happy to be with you, Diana Mao Kelly for the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. Welcome.

[00:01:10 ] Diana Mao: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here this morning.

[00:01:13 ] Sandie Morgan: I met you through the Public Private Partnership Advisory Council to end human trafficking. We were both presidential appointees and we served for two years. And part of that was during the pandemic, so we haven’t ever had a lot of in-person time, but I feel like I know you so well because of your very strategic contributions to the team during that season.

[00:01:49 ] And I learned a little about your history during that time as I tried to get to know everybody on the council, and I was really struck by your heritage and how that impacted your personal mission formation. Can you talk a little bit about your family history?

[00:02:14 ] Diana Mao: Yeah, didn’t really discover family history really until after the fight against human trafficking. I started Nomi Network in 2009 and so over the course of time I learned more and more about some of the intergenerational trauma that my father faced. He was actually in labor camp.

[00:02:36 ] so really all I knew was growing up in Southern California. ’cause my parents had met and gotten married there, but he definitely has trauma and PTSD from that. And so more and more, as I researched labor camp, connected the dots with the issue I was fighting against human trafficking and what are some of the lingering effects of someone that is in slavery.

[00:03:02 ] Sandie Morgan: And when did you learn about human trafficking?

[00:03:07 ] Diana Mao: I learned about it actually in college. I know Sandie, you work with really bright and brilliant college students. so in college I learned about the issue of child soldiers in Northern Uganda through invisible children. And so as a young person, I was touched by their film and I started raising funds for invisible children and for World Vision.

[00:03:36 ] At the time, they had children’s villages in some of these volatile areas, and so that’s when I first became aware of the issue of human trafficking.

[00:03:45 ] Sandie Morgan: And you led, or you were part of a research trip in Cambodia.

[00:03:51 ] Diana Mao: Yeah, so fast forward when I was in graduate school, getting my master’s, I learned intensely the issue on the front lines. I was there working for a microfinance bank and during that time I was charged with meeting with microfinance clients, some of whom lived in very remote areas, where it would take.

[00:04:16 ] A moped and walking through leach infested muck to get to the community.

[00:04:22 ] Sandie Morgan: Ooh.

[00:04:23 ] Diana Mao: The community was getting microfinance loans, so it was there I met a single father with seven children. He had lost his wife the year before to I think it was malaria, but some disease that is curable but they had no access to healthcare, potable water, electricity.

[00:04:42 ] And so after we surveyed him, asked him about a hundred questions related to his loan and what he was doing with his loan, I learned that he was still earning less than 75 cents a day. Still reliant on low yield agriculture, still living in a mud hut with his children on the floor sleeping without a mattress or any mat.

[00:05:05 ] And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing. And my colleague and I looked at each other in horror and very uncomfortably left his hut.

[00:05:25 ] But his daughter, I still remember her face. I remember her long hair, remember her big brown eyes. And I just, really shook me because in the more urban areas, I would see really young girls like her on the street or in restaurant bars with old foreign men. so at the time in that period, there is high.

[00:05:51 ] Cases of human trafficking is very and apparent during that time and you could literally see children being trafficked in Cambodia. So that’s what really led me to investigate and dedicate my resources and time to fighting the issue.

[00:06:09 ] Sandie Morgan: And you have done exactly that and one of the hallmarks of Nomi Network is how it works at the intersection of economic development as well as social justice. So how do you balance those domains?

[00:06:29 ] Diana Mao: Yeah, would say, we, I look at it as people that we work with are either deceived, they migrate haphazardly. Like in the case where we work in Cambodia, many times they are living in abject poverty, and so they migrate to Thailand or other places within Southeast Asia