Moderator:
Renée Callender is a Public Affairs Specialist in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office). She has previously worked in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, and the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and done overseas tours in Lagos, Nigeria and Mumbai, India.
Panelists:
Cindy Dyer serves as the United States Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and leads the Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. In December 2022, the Senate unanimously confirmed her, and President Biden appointed her, to lead the United States’ global engagement to combat human trafficking and support the coordination of anti-trafficking efforts across the U.S. government.
Ambassador Dyer is a human rights advocate and lawyer with three decades of experience working at the local, national, and international levels to prevent and respond to human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence. In 2021, she was appointed to serve on the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military (IRC) that was ordered by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, III, at the direction of President Biden, to take bold action to address sexual assault and harassment in the military. Her appointment was extended to assist the Department of Defense with the implementation and oversight of the IRC recommendations.
For 12 years, she was the Vice President for Human Rights at Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO advancing women’s leadership. While at Vital Voices, she worked with local governmental and civil society leaders in more than 25 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe to develop and deliver multi-disciplinary trainings and to assess, improve, and implement laws and policies related to human trafficking and gender-based violence.
Prior to joining Vital Voices, she served in a presidential appointment as the Director of the Office on Violence Against Women within the U.S. Department of Justice where she served as the liaison between the Department of Justice and federal, state, tribal, and international governments on matters involving violence against women. She was responsible for developing the Department’s legal and policy positions regarding the implementation of the Violence Against Women Act and overseeing an annual budget of almost $400 million.
Ambassador Dyer began her career at the local level serving as a specialized domestic and sexual violence prosecutor in Dallas, Texas for more than 13 years where she prosecuted high profile, complex cases including capital murder, murder, aggravated assault, sexual assault, retaliation, and stalking. She assisted in creating Dallas County’s specialized Family Violence Courts in 1995 and the county’s specialized Protective Order Court in 1999, which were the first of their kind in the state of Texas. Ambassador Dyer also served as a weekly hotline volunteer for nine years at a local women’s shelter. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M and her J.D. from Baylor Law School.
Mark Forstrom serves in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking (TIP Office) as a Deputy Senior Coordinator for the International Programs (IP) Team with broad oversight of the office’ bilateral programs, Child Protection Compact Partnerships, a more than $55.0 million (USD) investment, and the Program to End Modern Slavery, a $200.0 million (USD) initiative, which aims to support transformational programs that seek to achieve a measurable and substantial reduction of the prevalence of modern slavery in targeted populations in specific countries or regions. In his role as the Deputy Senior Coordinator Mark also works closely with others, including other USG funders, to shape and develop the TIP Office’s overall funding strategy, including the oversight of more than $240.0 million (USD) in active foreign assistance funding in 2023.
Immediately prior to joining the TIP Office (in 2007), Mark work as Congressional aide on Capitol Hill. And before that he worked for several years as an attorney in private practice in the State of Washington.
Mark received a B.A. in Politics and Government from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington, USA). He also received a Law Degree (J.D.) from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington, USA).
Desirée Suo Weymont joined the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons in 2010. In 2020, Ms. Weymont was named Senior Coordinator for the Reports and Political Affairs team, where she oversees the compilation of country assessments and diplomatic engagement surrounding the Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report. This follows nearly six years as one of the Reports and Political Affairs team’s Deputy Senior Coordinators, where she oversaw the work of several analysts monitoring trafficking in persons trends in Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia. Prior to that, Ms. Weymont was an analyst on the team and completed a Presidential Management Fellowship. Before joining the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Ms. Weymont worked as an Immigration Officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Ms. Weymont graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in History and Italian Studies from NYU and received an M.A. in Politics from the Transatlantic Masters Program at UNC after completing coursework and research at the Università degli Studi di Siena in Italy. In 2018, Ms. Weymont received a certificate in Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery from the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and Harvard Medical School.