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00:00:01
The Hidden Data Behind Human Trafficking in America
24 Plays10 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire sits down with John Nehme, President and CEO of Allies Against Slavery, to explore how data, technology, and strategic partnerships are transforming the fight against human trafficking. John shares the personal experiences that led him into this mission, how his nonprofit is scaling state-by-state through data infrastructure, and why AI may become one of the most powerful tools for preventing trafficking before it happens. Along the way, they unpack lessons on scaling a purpose-driven organization, navigating long enterprise sales cycles, and building a business that creates lasting impact.
Resources Mentioned
- Allies Against Slavery – https://alliesagainstslavery.org/
- BEST (Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking) – https://www.bestalliance.org/
- National Human Trafficking Hotline – https://humantraffickinghotline.org/
- AnnieCannons – https://www.anniecannons.org/
- University of South Florida – https://www.usf.edu/
- University of Alabama – https://www.ua.edu/
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise – https://www.hpe.com/
- Tim Tebow Foundation – https://www.timtebowfoundation.org/
Timestamps
- 00:01 – Why data is the missing weapon in the fight against human trafficking.
- 06:20 – John's personal journey and the experiences that led him into this work.
- 10:42 – The shocking scale of trafficking in the U.S. and why better data is essential.
- 13:58 – Practical ways business owners can help combat trafficking through culture, partnerships, and supply chain awareness.
- 18:20 – Scaling a nonprofit like a startup: systems, repeatability, leadership, and sustainable revenue.
- 22:30 – Selling to state governments and navigating 12–24 month enterprise sales cycles.
- 27:15 – How partnerships and AI are reshaping anti-trafficking technology and accelerating impact.
- 41:20 – Rapid-fire questions on AI, leadership, the future of prevention, and the legacy John hopes to leave.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Solo Scale Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Ken Freire
Welcome back to another episode of the Solo Scale Podcast. I am your host, Ken Freire, and today I'm here with John. Oh my gosh, John, I did not ask how to say your last name. How do you say your last name?
00:00:13
John Nehme
Namey.
00:00:14
Ken Freire
Naomi. I was going to say Neem, but you see, I knew I was going to butcher it. Naomi. John, I'm excited to have you on the podcast, man.
00:00:21
John Nehme
Thanks, Ken. I respond to just about anything. So it's great to be here today and really appreciate the invitation and what you're doing here and the chance to share little bit more of the story.
00:00:30
Ken Freire
I love it. And we were just talking before the show and I was really excited. You're like, out of all the guests that I have, there's probably like top five that I'm like super excited to talk You are on the top. I'm like, you're top three, to be honest. And it's because you are doing something that a lot of people are aware that it's happening, but they don't know what to do. And if we're honest,
00:00:53
Ken Freire
try to sometimes have a blind eye to it because if they really pay attention to the darkness that's out there, it could kind of overwhelm them.
00:00:55
John Nehme
Thank you.
00:01:02
Ken Freire
So today's podcast, while we're going to talk about business growth a little bit, we're going to kind of get into some deep stuff here at the beginning because you are doing what I would call a purpose-driven business and you're trying to do something that's going to impact so many lives when this thing grows. And you heard me say, didn't say if it grows, when it grows, because I truly believe you're doing something amazing. So John, walk us through what is it that you're doing?
00:01:26
John Nehme
Thanks, Ken.
Role and Mission of Allies Against Slavery
00:01:27
John Nehme
I'm the president and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Allies Against Slavery. We are purpose-driven entity, but so much of our work is grounded in lot of the same types of challenges and realities that a lot of businesses go through. So even though we have that nonprofit status and wrapper, so much of our organizational reality thinking about growth and serving our partners and customers and revenue and all those things are part of the organizational reality.
00:01:58
John Nehme
But our mission at Allies is to use data to illuminate and ultimately eradicate human trafficking. We have a vision that one day every community in the country would have all the data that it needs to effectively combat this problem and hopefully move upstream. We wanna get in front of it before it's happening because we have a deep belief that no one should be a victim of trafficking, that people have inherent dignity and value And I think what a lot of people don't realize, Ken, is just the sheer scale of the problem, right? It's a global issue, one of the most significant problems that society faces today, but it's not just something that happens to someone else somewhere else far away. It's something that also happens in the United States and in most communities that many of your listeners are probably sitting in and tuning in from today. So that's really where allies comes into play. We realized pretty quickly that
00:02:50
John Nehme
We could never solve a problem that we couldn't see or measure. Oftentimes people will say that human trafficking is a problem that's hidden in plain sight. So it's all around us, but seems to be invisible and is misunderstood a lot of misconceptions around it.
Building Data Infrastructure to Combat Trafficking
00:03:05
John Nehme
And so what we try to do is bring data to this fight, build essentially the data infrastructure, the data layer that all of the other organizations need in order to do their work even better. So folks that are on the front lines with law enforcement, people that are doing direct service work, outreach to victims and survivors, people that are doing policy advocacy, leaders of government agencies that need to think about strategy and solutions and budgets and grants, all of those folks that are in this ecosystem trying to solve this gnarly complex problem need better data to be more effective in their work. that's really where we come into play with allies.
00:03:43
Ken Freire
John, I want to highlight what you said that it's a global problem, but it hits us locally so much and we don't realize it. I don't know if you saw it, but Tim Tebow was on a show recently and he showed how much child sex trafficking was happening in New York City.
00:03:56
John Nehme
Mm-hmm.
00:03:57
Ken Freire
And it was like, I mean, it brought tears to my eyes because I was born and raised in New York City.
00:04:01
Ken Freire
And he was just like, these are all of the predators out there. And everybody's like, why are we not doing anything about this? And it's like, most people don't know or don't have that data.
00:04:13
Ken Freire
And that's where you kind of come in and you're like saying, hey, let's bring that data alive.
00:04:17
John Nehme
I love what Tim is doing to make this issue proximate, to really bring it to people's front door.
00:04:20
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:04:23
John Nehme
And I do think that's where it's hard for folks to grapple with the reality to face the darkness. It's a heavy topic. You're looking evil in the face.
00:04:34
John Nehme
But if we don't, that's where essentially evil is allowed to thrive. I think it's one of those truths where in order to sanitize, in order to bring light, we have to bring it out of the darkness.
00:04:45
John Nehme
We have to shine a light on it. And so that's only going to happen if people are aware of it. So Tim's doing some great work and many others. And I think one of the things that, you know, sometimes people ask me on this theme of it's so dark, the question is, how do you do this work?
00:04:58
John Nehme
Right. And I mean, there's a few answers to that can, but first, you know, for me, there's a deep personal faith that is grounded in the belief that there's inherent value and dignity.
00:04:59
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:05:08
John Nehme
And so every, person who's being abused, every person that's being trafficked deserves to be sought after, found, seen, helped, that that's not their destiny, right? And then also that I think I know the end of the story, that there's hope at the end of the story, there's light at the end of the tunnel. And then just seeing those the stories of resilience of survivors overcoming, it's one of the things that keeps getting me out of bed every day and facing this issue. So there's hope. It's dark, but it's going to take all of us. And I think the more of us that can come to the table and more of us realize it is on our doorstep and kind like what Tim is helping people understand, think that's when we can actually start to make some real traction on this thing.
00:05:48
Ken Freire
And John, and that's why I said it like, and I could talk about this for hours, you know, because it's a deep passion of mine too, to be like, man, people, like you said, are created with inherent dignity and value. And we want to make that shine.
00:06:03
Ken Freire
But I'm curious from you, man, out of all the things that you could have gotten into, know, especially data, some businesses love data. They're like, oh, my gosh, create a scorecard for us and dashboards and we'll give you millions. But you were like, no, no, no, no. I want to help fight human sex trafficking or human trafficking.
Personal Motivation and Challenges in Data Collection
00:06:22
Ken Freire
Why? Like why this role and not anything else?
00:06:26
John Nehme
It depends on how far back you want to go, Ken. I think, you know, it's easy to look back on our lives and begin to see where things that might have felt like serendipity actually were intentional, parts of kind of my call into this work. I grew up with a strong sense of justice and I attribute a lot of that to my mom and dad, especially my mom. Some of that is just the way I'm wired. So I think even from an early age, the sense of there's a way the world ought to be and human trafficking is not a part of the way the world ought to be. But I think step beyond that,
00:07:01
John Nehme
my family has walked through experience of sexual violence, not an experience of trafficking, but sexual violence hit close to home. And I think I didn't realize it at the time, but walking through that with this family member for me was like on the job training at being an ally with somebody, being friend with and family with and loving someone who had experienced sexual violence, trying to figure out how to do that well, feeling quite frankly, like I didn't have the right resources and support to do that well, but sort of stumbling through it and ultimately learning how to sit with, grieve with, walk with, love somebody who had experienced that and come out the other side of that. So I think for me, there were these puzzle pieces that were being put together from an early age. And so when the opportunity to join a project in Austin, Texas, that was a documentary film looking at this topic of sex trafficking,
00:07:56
John Nehme
and the team had filmed the very first meeting of this group of 25 volunteers in a public library on the east side of Austin who are calling themselves Allies Against Slavery, I was compelled to jump into that.
00:08:07
John Nehme
And at first it was just supposed to be a year, like raised my hand and said, like, let's do that for a year. was newly married four months into this thing and so signed up for a job in Austin without health care or insurance or even a stable salary, but just had this sense like at the age of 25 the time, like, yes, this is the right thing to do.
00:08:12
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:08:29
John Nehme
And my role was to connect the story we were trying to tell to the on the ground reality and make sure that we were helping people learn how to take action. So, you know, to come back to your original question, Ken, like, why did I jump into this? Some of it was just personal wiring. think the way I've been made, some of it was personal experience or what my family's been through. And then some of it was what I light up around
00:08:55
John Nehme
building teams and gathering people around vision for what should be and what can be in the world and casting vision and then helping us kind like think through how do we get there? How do we build that kind of world where more people can flourish? And so this opportunity to connect those dots, it sort of all came together. and feel incredibly blessed to get to work on something that hits close to home, that's a personal passion, but is also intellectually and strategically stimulating on so many levels. It's a complex challenge to try to solve for. Human trafficking is
00:09:27
John Nehme
deeply entrenched in so many of our realities of our culture. Business is a contributor, there's economic factors of supply and demand. And so how do we solve this problem? It's a complex problem, but one that's also deeply intellectually stimulating as well, requires you bringing a lot of different kinds of people to the table. So my skills and giftings aligned well with jumping into that. And then, you know, we didn't have the sophisticated view that data was going to be the mission when allies was first formed.
00:09:55
John Nehme
As I mentioned, it was 25 volunteers meeting in a public library. I was part of the co-founding team that helped establish the 501 in 2014.
00:10:04
John Nehme
And to bridge to what we do today, Ken, I think what was true for me then was that I was banging my head against the wall with the inability to answer the question, are we getting any closer?
00:10:15
John Nehme
I couldn't answer that for our funders or for survivors or partners with any kind of integrity because we didn't have the data to answer that question. And so that set us on this journey. Initially, two year study with the University of Texas that found that on any given day, about 79,000 children and youth in the state of Texas would raise their hand and say, I'm a victim of some form of sex trafficking.
00:10:40
John Nehme
costing the state $6.6 billion. And at the same time, we found that on any given day, about 234,000 adults are victims of some form of labor trafficking in the state of Texas.
00:10:52
John Nehme
So just this massive number, right, that exceeded even our expectations of what we would find. Many, many more people being exploited than we thought, fewer being helped, identified, connected to care than we hoped.
00:11:06
John Nehme
And so that was where we realized we had to focus. Like we have to get more data, bring more data to the table, and we have to focus on delivering tools that help identify victims and help people better serve them.
00:11:16
Ken Freire
Yeah. Well, for those who are listening to this, you know, you used two terms, and I don't want them get lost in it. You talked about human trafficking and then labor trafficking. What's the difference between those?
00:11:28
John Nehme
So human trafficking is the umbrella term. That's what we have a Trafficking Victims Protection Act at the federal level. That's the legislation that legally outlines what this crime type looks like. Right. We've had human trafficking for hundreds of years. Right. We've had people forced into prostitution for thousands of years.
00:11:47
John Nehme
But the TVPA is what brings the modern definition human trafficking. into play and it further breaks down into sex trafficking and labor trafficking.
00:11:58
John Nehme
So those are the two subtypes of human trafficking. You also have organ trafficking and some other subtypes of trafficking, but the two predominant types are sex trafficking and labor.
00:12:09
John Nehme
trafficking and the difference being what's the purpose of the trafficking is the purpose exploitation for sex a commercial sex act or is the purpose exploitation of And that gets into things like exploitation on farms in agricultural industry or modern day sweatshops, right? And our big urban centers or can look like folks that are part of housekeeping or groundskeeping crews within the hospitality industry, right? So you name any major industry in the US and we probably have some form of sex trafficking or labor trafficking that's the dark underbelly of that industry. So that's the distinction. Both count as human trafficking. Some folks focus more on sex trafficking. Some focus more on labor trafficking. Sometimes there's instances where both are connected as part of the same case.
00:13:01
Ken Freire
Yeah, so for the people who listen to this, they're like, and we promise we'll talk about business here in a minute, guys, right? But I want to shed light on this for a reason.
00:13:11
Ken Freire
You mentioned a lot of things where it's like, hey, you became an ally, you started to help them, you started to help them process this stuff. There are some expert-led business owners here who are coaches, and this stuff might come up in their conversations, or they may see things where they might be a consultant, and they may see things in businesses where there might be some labor trafficking happening.
00:13:34
Ken Freire
How do they, one, support the victim, and two, how do they bring attention for the most viable way for success to occur?
00:13:45
John Nehme
I love that question. think there's so many things we could get into here. So to focus it, would say a couple of things. One, there are some amazing resources that we can link to around businesses who are engaged to stop trafficking. One is called Best.
00:14:01
John Nehme
There are many, many resources that have come to bear that are helping companies think about supply chain transparency or how to ensure their values are sustained through contractor relationships, sort of all the policies and procedures. So there's some practical things that business owners can do. very specifically.
00:14:21
John Nehme
And then I would also say this relates to things like whistleblower policies or kind of the cultural reality and expectation that you're setting within your company. But you can create a culture where people feel safe to be able to report or to talk about this, right?
00:14:36
John Nehme
If there might be cases of sexual harassment or other things like that that might be happening, like those are ways that that reporting system and structure needs to be really clear and in place. I would say as far as providing direct support, where business is best set up is to be able to, I think, provide dignified work for folks, but not necessarily provide care for people who are victims or survivors.
00:14:58
Ken Freire
Bye.
00:15:01
John Nehme
And so that's why I would say look for partnerships in your community. There are coalitions of service providers, counselors, therapists who are likely not too far from where your headquarters are, your offices are, who would love to be activated and support staff that have been identified. There's a national human trafficking hotline that we can post and link to as well that folks can call. And then of course, if it's an emergency situation you think there's an active case of trafficking, I would engage law enforcement and get law enforcement involved pretty quickly.
00:15:32
John Nehme
large metro areas have dedicated human trafficking units that would respond to these kinds of cases. But I think that what folks are realizing is like, this is not good for business, even if there's short term savings to exploit people, long term, it's not good for business.
00:15:44
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:15:47
John Nehme
It's not values aligned. It's also undermining healthy competitive marketplace, right? The more that businesses can come to the table, Hewlett Packard Enterprise actually has been a huge leader on this. They're a supporter of allies, and they've taken a real stand globally around, hey, modern slavery is going to be an issue that we're going focus on. We're going to try to eradicate our supply chains. We're going to take a lead on.
00:16:08
John Nehme
So it's actually encouraging to see more and more companies come into the table, Ken, and the power of business to fund solutions, the power of business to do redemptive work markets or industries where there may have been historically a tendency towards exploitative work.
00:16:23
John Nehme
All of that is really important. So we'll link to some of those resources, but those would be a few of the things I would commend to business owners.
00:16:29
Ken Freire
Yeah. And those are fantastic resources. So appreciate that, John, for those who are listening to this. And, you know, like we said earlier, we're exposing the darkness, but sometimes people feel overwhelmed because what we do? And you just gave them some practical tips. I want to shift gears here because as you're growing, and I mentioned this to you before we got on the call,
00:16:49
Ken Freire
I want to see Allies Against Slavery grow because of the mission. I'm deeply passionate about the mission and what you're trying to do. So from a business standpoint, let's walk us through, like, how are you growing? What are you doing to get this thing off the ground and aware for people? And off the ground might not be the right word because you've been doing it for 15 years now. But, you know, getting people aware and getting business so that you guys can keep flourishing.
00:17:16
Ken Freire
have.
Scaling Impact and Technical Solutions
00:17:17
John Nehme
I think, Ken, what's so interesting is we have been on a journey, I would say, especially the last five years in which we have realized doing things the way we've done things are not going to get us to the next level.
00:17:31
John Nehme
And we've been in now, especially I would say the last two years, very concentrated season of more deeply understanding what it's going to take to scale our solution. So I'll just, I'll step back and talk a little bit practically about what we do and then relate it back to how we're thinking about growth. It's the data piece, but specifically help states build data platforms for their human trafficking data. So we've started in Texas, we have a tool called Lighthouse Screening. It's a software tool that helps frontline professionals identify victims more rapidly. And then we have an aggregate platform called Lighthouse Data that the governor's office in Texas, attorney general's office and other state agencies, state leaders can use.
00:18:14
John Nehme
to see multiple sources of data in one place. Think of it like a business intelligence dashboard related to trafficking for leaders who are set up to combat trafficking. So we've done that in Texas now for seven years, going on eight.
00:18:28
John Nehme
We expanded that model into Louisiana about six years ago. And then most recently, we've expanded that model into Florida. So we partner in Louisiana with the governor's office there. And then Florida is with the University of South Florida.
00:18:50
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:18:52
John Nehme
So it was like, okay, how do we replicate ourselves without building a custom platform for every state? And so there was a list of sort of technical questions that we had to walk through and an innovation our processes there and really an investment we needed to make in our architecture and infrastructure to be able to basically turn the switch on for the next state much more quickly.
00:19:16
John Nehme
So there's a whole like technical component of this. But I would venture to say in some ways technical challenges that we've faced have been the easiest.
00:19:26
John Nehme
The hardest challenges in other ways have been the human challenges, right? It's hard to scale trust, you know, building relationships in new markets with new state governments. Like those take time. Some of those conversations have been two plus years in the making. Internally, even my own growth that's been needed as a leader to move from leading two people to leading 12 to then having to go through a season where we lost some funding and faced, you know, a stressful year, especially in 2025 financially and had to work through that team shrinking, right? Letting people go and the reality and hardship of that and the challenge challenge of carrying the weight of that when you're a small team and then to stabilize and to kind of build back up. So I think in many ways, we still feel like we are in the middle of that process.
00:20:13
John Nehme
And I don't have all the answers. In fact, I feel like I learn often mostly through some of the trial and error. Right.
00:20:20
Ken Freire
Yep.
00:20:20
John Nehme
But I do think some of what has been helpful for us has recognizing that scale is really about repeatability. And so we've had to build better systems that allow us to have visibility into our daily and weekly work and repeatability. So what are we accountable for on our teams?
00:20:39
John Nehme
What are we working towards? Are we checking in around that and accountable to that? And then also working on the revenue model side. So as a nonprofit, we raise money from individuals, donors, foundations, corporations, but then we also have an earned revenue component where states are paying us for the data platform.
00:20:51
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:20:59
John Nehme
And so we're constantly kind of working on like, what's that revenue mix on like, how do we keep mission front and center, but also sustain that? So those are some of the major questions and we can dig into any of that more.
00:21:12
Ken Freire
Yeah. you know, when it comes to the large sales cycle, because if I hear you correctly, you have to connect with, I say I live in Tennessee, right? You're like, okay, I got to connect with the people in Tennessee, which who would those people be? I'm just curious.
00:21:27
John Nehme
Yeah, typically we're looking for champions in governor's offices, attorney general's offices, or other major state agencies like child welfare, juvenile justice.
00:21:37
John Nehme
Typically what you see in our space can is like a task force or a coalition that include some of those key leaders at those agencies.
00:21:42
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:21:46
John Nehme
And then we're also while we're building those relationships, we're actually working with state legislators, so policymakers, right? Because sometimes you may make progress on the product side or the platform side or the data side.
00:21:59
John Nehme
Other times you actually have to make some progress on the policy side. So states are beginning to pass legislation requiring data collection on human trafficking. And then if a state passes a law that requires data collection, we're able to serve them more effectively.
00:22:12
John Nehme
So we kind of work both strategies, a policy strategy and a product strategy.
00:22:15
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:22:18
John Nehme
And then typically funding comes through state grants or you're looking at line items and state budgets. And so there's pulling in contracting and legal and yeah, government is already kind of a slower sales cycle. And then when you have all of these other stakeholders that need to be engaged for the success of the project long term.
00:22:38
John Nehme
It just takes time. So 12 to 18 month cycles are sort of on like the low end and some of those conversations have been up to 24 months.
00:22:47
Ken Freire
What is making the, you know, if you look at the sales cycle, you're saying it could be 12 to 24 months. What's typically prohibiting it? Is it like just meeting the people, getting in the door with them? Is it the legislation?
00:23:02
Ken Freire
What seems to be the trend that you find?
00:23:05
John Nehme
Great questions. love that you dig it in so deep. What we have found typically comes down objections around systems
Stakeholder Alignment and Policy Changes
00:23:15
John Nehme
change. So getting multiple stakeholders aligned and involved, right? So you might have one champion who's excited,
00:23:22
John Nehme
They might sit within governor's office or the attorney general's office or coordinating council, but typically they're gonna wanna move forward by building buy-in. So they're gonna pull in the head of a child welfare agency in the state or the head of the juvenile justice agency for the state or the head of licensing regulation for a state.
00:23:31
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:23:41
John Nehme
And so sometimes that just is the practicalities of aligning schedules. Other times there might be different agendas or goals that those stakeholders have. So some really prioritize data. Some others might say, well, we've got these other two solutions in place, strategies in play, data, like not a short term priority, right? It's a long term priority, not a short term priority.
00:24:03
John Nehme
Other times it's the mandate. So the policy mandate, if it's not in place, there's the question of will people contribute their data? Can we actually require people to share this data?
00:24:19
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:24:21
John Nehme
Our solution is not a exorbitant solutions where, know, we're not in the business of making money as a nonprofit where we exist to serve these partners well in a sustainable manner. But there's a cost structure associated with the platform, the data, our services and support of that. And so sometimes agencies, especially in lean budget years, a lot of those resources already spoken for. And so they're having to get creative. Maybe they're looking for where there might be money that could be earmarked in the next legislative cycle, or maybe they're looking for mix of public private funding.
00:25:11
John Nehme
And University of South Florida is our main partner in Florida. So we get creative. We don't want budget to be a barrier.
00:25:14
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:25:16
John Nehme
But sometimes, especially in government and public sector, right, there is resources, but you got to get creative about where those are.
00:25:22
Ken Freire
Yeah. So you got a lot of creativity going on in trying to get, quote unquote, the client, but like your customer base for your stuff. But you mentioned something that I find fascinating because it sounds like two massive hills to climb.
00:25:38
Ken Freire
The first one is the product climb, right?
00:25:40
John Nehme
Thank you.
00:25:42
Ken Freire
Like getting the product in the door, but then it's the policy. Like, you know, you might have to be advocates for a certain policy, pushing policies. How do you manage that? Like those two massive hills in a business?
00:25:57
John Nehme
We constantly feel the tension of, quite frankly, as a small nonprofit, being under-resourced in that capacity, right? We are not a major tech company that has unlimited resources to throw at this. So partnerships are key for us, Ken. Again, comes back to the name, Allies Against Slavery. We don't go alone on this. And so we've had an amazing partnership with an organization called Annie Cannons.
00:26:22
John Nehme
Annie Cannons is another nonprofit that trains survivors of trafficking as software engineers and helps them find high paying work in the tech sector after that training.
00:26:27
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:26:35
John Nehme
And so Annie Cannons has been our dev shop on the Lighthouse data platform. We have a head of engineering internally, data scientist, a couple other team members that work on the product side, and then we work with Annie Cannons.
00:26:50
John Nehme
And so it's been an amazing relationship last eight years. And we've been able to do much more together than we could have done if we had tried to do everything in-house ourselves from the beginning.
00:27:00
John Nehme
So comes down to partnership. That's one way we get creative. Another way is like, we're not sourcing all the data ourselves. So a lot of the data that flows into the platform comes to us again through partnerships.
00:27:11
John Nehme
For instance, one of our data sets looks at what we call demand, right? The number of ads for commercial sex that are posted on the internet any given day across the country. That's one of the data sets we have access to.
00:27:25
John Nehme
We get that data through a partnership with the University Alabama. And so they've developed a sophisticated machine learning model They're able to pull down that data from the internet and they share that. And your listeners might be shocked to know we've got nearly six million ads for commercial sex across the country on a quarterly basis right now.
00:27:47
John Nehme
So it's a lot of people that are, lot of ads for sex that are being posted online, which tells us sort of a proxy for how many people are going online to buy, right?
00:27:57
John Nehme
Now, not all of those ads represent an instance of human trafficking, right? But it gives us a sense like, what's the volume of activity around commercial sex in the country just through that one channel.
00:28:09
John Nehme
We get that data though, as I mentioned, we're not building all the capacity to try mine that data, bring it in-house. We work with a partner to do that. So we get creative on the product side.
00:28:19
John Nehme
Even then, part of our roadmap, when we think about the investments we're making over the next several months, it's in more capacity around the data and the product.
00:28:25
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:28:26
John Nehme
We want to reduce time to insights. We want to build new features. want to get more value into the hands of our partners. And to do all that, we're to to make continued investments there. So that's the product side. And then the policy side comes back to partnerships. Typically, what you'll find is in state houses, like take Tennessee, for instance, Representative Mary Littleton, huge champion in the state. And so you'll find champions that want to carry trafficking legislation each session. And we've worked with other states to develop model legislation. And so we can basically hand over that language and help a state
00:29:02
John Nehme
quick start their own human trafficking data bill, right? And hand off some language, say customize this for Tennessee.
00:29:07
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:29:09
John Nehme
And then that state coalition, local champions, stakeholders rally around that. And we're just empowering and supporting them. don't have to have a huge on the ground footprint in that state to make that happen.
00:29:22
John Nehme
So partnerships is a big part of it. We run lean. And then have a chief impact officer who heads our policy work and then a head of engineering that heads our product work.
00:29:31
Ken Freire
Yeah. What are you doing to get like the word out there from a marketing perspective? Maybe you don't use the word marketing. You use the word communications, you know?
00:29:42
John Nehme
Yeah. We have a go-to-market strategy. We have marketing work. My wife still jokes that even 15 years in, we're still one of the best kept secrets out there. And she's like, you got to up the marketing game.
00:29:51
John Nehme
And I think, you know, Ken, especially when resources are tight, you look at like, what is going to keep the mission focused and delivering, you know, for our partners that we have to keep delivering for?
00:29:52
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:30:01
John Nehme
How do we have to keep showing up for victims and survivors and our data users? And Marketing is one of the ones that sometimes gets pushed down the list, right? I think AI is changing a lot of that, though, with how quickly we can turn around high quality content and get it out to more people. But we think about marketing in a couple of ways. There's product marketing. So how do we help tell our kind of core partners or customers at the state level about the product and the value there and the value proposition and make the case.
00:30:35
John Nehme
And a lot of that would be maybe what would be considered account-based marketing. It's high touch,
00:30:40
John Nehme
I'm the lead there along with my head of growth who's kind of leading our go to market. And the two of us are building relationships with state leaders because even at the end of the day, comes down a lot of personal trust. And then we have sort of a marketing arm that does more of your traditional nonprofit marketing. That's like, hey, donors, here's impact stories.
00:30:40
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:31:00
John Nehme
Here's what we've accomplished. Here's why data matters and helping to sort of connect the dots for folks there. What we have not done a lot of, but are thinking of experimenting around is more what we call like mass marketing or kind of like that broader shout to really generate more awareness. And we're looking at targeting a couple of states where instead of top down, we go more bottom up, like thinking about like, hey, you mentioned Tim earlier and showing New York City and how that impacted you. coming into a state with data to help illuminate, hey, this is down the street.
00:31:31
Ken Freire
Thank
00:31:33
John Nehme
This is what it looks like. The number of ads for sex, that's posted in your community. The number of illicit massage businesses, they're in your neighborhood next to that school your kid goes to, right? The number of victims identified,
00:31:45
John Nehme
really small because nobody's screening. You don't have a safety net in place yet in your community. And not shaming communities, but helping to kind of make it feel proximate again to drive that bottom-up pressure, even as we work at the top of state government leadership and legislatures.
00:32:00
John Nehme
So we'll see if that sandwich theory works. We're going to test that some in 2026.
Driving Awareness and Future Plans
00:32:05
John Nehme
Excited that one.
00:32:07
Ken Freire
Nice. You know, as you were talking about the bottom up and all this stuff, I had this thought come to mind and it might be a really bad idea. now I'm just brainstorming here, but... You talk about getting the data to law enforcement and to all these people. What happens if you were to get that data to the regular person down the street?
00:32:24
Ken Freire
In essence, what I was thinking, if there was an app that told me all that information, that I can always be like, hey, this is the stuff that's going on. Maybe that's a bad idea. I don't know. I'm just trying to think.
00:32:36
Ken Freire
If the common Joe had that information, what would they do with it?
00:32:40
John Nehme
Yeah, I think there's a way to do that well. And then there's a way to probably do that where it would not maybe drive the outcomes that we would hope for.
00:32:48
Ken Freire
Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:48
John Nehme
I don't think it's a crazy idea. And it comes back to this. I've been using the term proximate a lot, right? people need to feel how close this is in order to care.
00:32:59
John Nehme
And the data is one of the ways to do that. One of our data sources documents when typically men would be going to illicit massage businesses and it shows that they're going largely in the afternoon hours.
00:33:15
John Nehme
So the story there is like getting off work, stopping by illicit massage business, probably on the way home before family dinner, right? And whatever the evening activities would be at home with the family. And so it's one of those moments where we do a demo and we talk about that data point, people like,
00:33:33
John Nehme
you know it's just it's visceral because it's you feel the weight that right and so we want to we want to do that in a way where we aren't sensationalizing and we're not using any victim stories in an exploitative way but we're making people feel how proximate it is so i do think there's ways to do that what we don't want is to create vigilante justice coalition people are
00:33:44
Ken Freire
Yeah,
00:33:55
Ken Freire
exactly. That's why was like, I don't know if it's a bad idea. Yeah.
00:33:57
John Nehme
Yeah, because that ultimately needs to be handled by enforcement, the professionals, because if the outcomes, number one, it can be dangerous for individuals. Number two, also, you want the outcomes of those cases to result in a successful prosecution and closure of that trafficking ring, arrest of the trafficker, care for the victim and survivor. And so That has to be handled in a pretty careful and sensitive way. So I think there's a way to strike the mix where people feel the reality, but perhaps you're not delivering like the address of that IMB, right? You're giving it more in general terms like, hey, in our city, right? We've got 25, 30 IMBs. Here's typically what happens. And then kind of opening people's eyes to the broader situation.
00:34:46
Ken Freire
So from a business standpoint, It sounds like you got several revenue streams. And right now, the thing that you're thinking through is how do I collapse that the length of the cycle? And how do I bring more people? And a lot of it is through partnerships.
00:34:59
Ken Freire
That's been your go-to seeing that grow. If you could wave a magic wand, I'd be curious, what would be the business move that you would make that you're like, this would help allies grow tremendously?
00:35:16
John Nehme
I pick two things?
00:35:18
Ken Freire
Sure.
00:35:18
John Nehme
Can I wave the magic wand at two things?
00:35:19
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:35:21
John Nehme
One of the things that we're working on is an effort right now at the national level, the federal level. It's called the National Human Trafficking Database Act. It's been introduced Senator Blackburn and Senator Klobuchar.
00:35:34
John Nehme
And functionally what it suggests is we need to at a national level what we've been doing at a state level. And so if I could wave the magic wand,
00:35:42
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:35:46
John Nehme
that bill would be designed in such a way that we would have the national infrastructure that allows states to plug into. So you'd have a national human trafficking database that provides this disparate information to these different stakeholders at a national level, and then states can plug in and enrich their own state views with their data.
00:36:07
John Nehme
That would allow us to sort of leapfrog the state by state approach. Right.
00:36:13
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:36:13
John Nehme
And I think that would would rapidly shorten the sales cycle and also rapidly increase and catalyze impact.
00:36:23
John Nehme
And so those are two things that we would love to see happen. I think the other would be, mean, every nonprofit exec would say this, but more resources to invest in our current capacity. think one of the things that's perpetually frustrating for me, Ken, is the distance between vision and capacity.
00:36:42
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:36:47
John Nehme
you've got this big dream for the way the world needs to be. And you're kind up against the limits of those resources to go achieve that dream. So another one would be, essentially two years of funding up front to go make those investments. Wouldn't be another one. And then I think the final, I'm going to pick a third, I'm not sticking in the lane here, but the third would be, we're also recognizing that we've been very product centric as an organization and we're making a shift to be more data centric. And that may not sound like a big shift. It may sound subtle, but
00:37:19
John Nehme
For us, it means essentially a core re-architecture of our data lake and APIs and access. And we're thinking more expansively about how to serve up data in a way that's infinitely more valuable to our partners.
00:37:36
John Nehme
And AI actually can play a big role in this, right? Now, instead of us having to deliver a product with a set of visualizations based on like, hey, I want to see this chart of how many victims were screened over this time and how many indicators they showed up with that were related to their victimization, we can deliver essentially the capability for a partner to come in and ask the data question, any question it wants.
00:37:39
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:38:21
John Nehme
And I think that's where the way that AI has changed the game so much in the last few years, it's really shaping, reshaping how we think about what we can do for our partners in this fight.
00:38:21
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:38:34
Ken Freire
John, man, I could ask you a thousand more questions because I just, I truly like, I'm excited for you. I'm excited for what you guys are doing and how to continue to make this aware, not just for awareness sake, but because we know there's hope at the end of the, at the end and trying to bring that hope to these individuals who are stuck in trafficking is one of the most beautiful things that we could ever see.
00:38:53
John Nehme
Thanks,
00:38:57
John Nehme
Keith.
00:38:57
Ken Freire
And that's what I'm excited for you, man. John, as we wrap up, I ask these same five questions to each individual. You take like 20 seconds on each question. But I want to get your perspective on it and see how you can best help other people. Now, you might have answered some of them along the way, you could just do a quick abbreviation. But question number one is this. What's something in your business you're experimenting with right now?
00:39:23
John Nehme
We're experimenting with that last piece I just talked about with the technical innovation.
00:39:26
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:39:27
John Nehme
So re-architecting data stack and making ourselves more nimble, bringing new AI technology in and thinking how we can...
00:39:38
John Nehme
use the data we have to drive predictive models of risk, right? That allow us to, again, try to preempt trafficking before it happens. So who's vulnerable, where, why, and what should we do about it?
00:39:51
John Nehme
If we can help communities answer those questions more rapidly and more efficiently with more fidelity, like
00:39:58
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:39:58
John Nehme
integrity, like this can't just ChatGPT and Claude generically answering these questions and needs to be trained on data that actually credible and trustworthy, then I think that perhaps the single greatest impact we can make on this movement the next five to 10 years.
00:40:14
Ken Freire
That's awesome, man. right. Question number two. What part of your business feels the most, would say, influx or that keeps you up at night?
00:40:23
John Nehme
I'll skip over revenue because I think, you know, again, nonprofit CEO is always going to say that. Right now, it's team. We're undergoing some changes with the team. have an amazing leadership team at Allies, an amazing team. We're only eight people, so we're tight knit. And there's going to be transitions on that team over the next few months. And so working with my board, working with the whole team really to be as transparent about those changes that are going be taking place.
00:40:53
John Nehme
But anytime you have a change like that, especially with somebody who's been a part organization for a while and just needs to transition, you start to have those questions and concerns around like, am I going to find someone else I can trust as much? Right. Like you've been the trenches together. So the honest answer is right now spending a lot time thinking about our team and and team culture and how the team. is going to evolve and mesh and how we retain some of the magic of what it means to be on the team and how we fill some of the gaps as well.
00:41:22
Ken Freire
Okay. Question number three, what's a goal you're building toward this year that you're really excited about?
00:41:47
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:41:48
John Nehme
We're trying to create something similar like standards around data collection, shared data sources, various access, clear governance. So we're looking at establishing a data institution. It's collaborative. We're looking at thinking about a data hub or multiple data hubs, whether that's us or others. And then also thinking about helping the movement create a taxonomy around like, here's the language, here's how we think about data. Let's measure it the same way. Let's look at it the same way.
00:42:15
John Nehme
That's a major project that also feels decentralized. Like I can't control the outcome of it because there's a lot of people that need to speak into it. So excited about it, little nervous to see how it goes, but think it's going to awesome.
00:42:25
Ken Freire
Okay. Last question number four. Where do you see the industry shifting and how are you preparing for it?
00:42:33
John Nehme
Oh, man.
00:42:37
John Nehme
That is not a 20 second answer question, Ken. I wrote like a mini treaty on this at the beginning the year, like had a SWOT analysis on where I feel like things are going. I think I'll name one thing I'm very encouraged by that I find ourselves, I'm probably biased here, but we're in the middle of this conversation now. 10 years ago, nobody was talking about data.
00:42:57
John Nehme
Five years ago, it was on the radar. Now it's something that people actually prioritizing and working on. So foundations are funding it, states want to put money behind it.
00:43:03
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:43:06
John Nehme
So our thesis was data is going to increasingly become central to combating human trafficking. And I'm just grateful and excited that we continue to be in the middle of that.
00:43:17
John Nehme
And that thesis is proving true. Where we need a lot more work is prevention. So there's a five piece framework or four piece framework that the anti-trafficking movement uses. Prevention, protection,
00:43:29
John Nehme
prosecution, and then we add a policy and partnerships P as well to that. And predictably, lot of the focus has been on enforcement, protection and prosecution, right? Like law enforcement, intervention, to identify victims, prosecuting cases.
00:43:46
John Nehme
we've done very little around prevention work. And we've got a generation that's being formed, or I should say malformed online right now. Like they're getting more of their education about relationships on roadblocks than they are in church or at school or in their families. And so,
00:44:05
John Nehme
I see kind of the perfect storm coming of a future generation that's been trained to devalue relationships, that's been trained to expect exploitation instead of flourishing and honoring people that's been taught what sex ed looks like from pornography.
00:44:27
John Nehme
And if we don't do more now, whether it's trafficking specific or not, to reach that generation, I think we're in for huge trouble down the road. We can't expect our digital spaces, our digital realities to be more ethical than our lived reality here. And so right now, those digital spaces ripe for exploitation.
00:44:49
Ken Freire
Yeah, they're the wild, wild west man. It's so sad to watch. Okay, last question. What's the legacy you want to leave behind?
00:44:57
John Nehme
Oh, man, love that question.
00:45:02
John Nehme
You know, there's a personal legacy and a professional legacy. And I think less about legacy specifically, and I think a lot about faithfulness.
00:45:12
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:45:12
John Nehme
It's hard to measure success in our line of work. And so my hope is that
00:45:20
John Nehme
allies will have left the world little brighter, little safer, will have given victims and survivors second chance at freedom and flourishing.
00:45:33
John Nehme
And personally, hope is that I've left people more hopeful and
00:45:39
John Nehme
that there's a sense that I have shown up to serve. And I can't control the outcomes. I'm less worried about the number of wins and losses on the board and more worried about just showing up and being faithful to that call and not giving up on the fight. So I think those are some of the pieces of what I might call legacy and my hope for where this goes.
00:46:01
Ken Freire
Yeah. John, thank you so much for being on the podcast and thank you for all that you're doing. For those who want to connect more with allies and with you, what's the best way to get in contact with you?
00:46:12
John Nehme
Yeah, our website's the best place to land first. So alliesagainstslavery.org. And then they can reach out there, learn more about the work. And I'm happy to connect with anybody on top of that as well. But that's the best place to start.
00:46:25
Ken Freire
Fantastic. For those of you are listening, you might be like, What does this all have to do with business? Well, two things. One, always remember your business is greater than just you.
00:46:36
Ken Freire
And there is going to be things that you are passionate about, things that you're excited about and things that you want to see demolished out there. And I think slavery, human trafficking is one of those things that should be demolished. So you're listening to this and your heart's been tugged like, I want to do something, go support allies.
00:46:53
Ken Freire
That's the first one. The second one is that even at the same time John mentioned earlier, a nonprofit, you still run a business. There's still things that are going on that need to help grow your business. And the way that they've been growing and shaping and pivoting is through partnerships. The biggest thing you can do right now for your business is figure out how do I build strategic partners and get creative with your offerings? Like those things right there can drastically change the way you do business. So John, thank you so much for being on the show. And man, I'm praying blessings over your business, blessings over the things that guys are doing. And for all the staff members that are there, that you guys would just crush it in 2026.
00:47:32
John Nehme
Thanks again. Grateful.