Melanie Thompson is the Outreach and Advocacy Coordinator at the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and is separately a speaker, activist, and leader in the global fight to end prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficked and sold into prostitution in New York at the age of 12, she was later arrested and placed into foster care. She became an activist at age 14. Ms. Thompson has testified before numerous legislatures about the need to pass strong anti-trafficking laws and ending the arrests of sex trafficked and prostituted children and people in the sex trade. Additionally, she is a consultant on prostitution, trafficking and foster care issues, and speaks avidly to the intersectionality of race, child welfare and other systems of oppression.