Allow Me to
Introduce Myself...
Lobbyist | International Human Trafficking Expert & Consultant | Certified Survivor Peer Support | Author | Speaker
I’m Aytia Tarpley, Founder of Aytia Tarpley Consulting, a human trafficking education and consulting company committed to changing the way professionals and communities understand trafficking and the people impacted by it.
For more than a decade, I have built a career spanning advocacy, social services, survivor support, child welfare, professional education, consulting, and public speaking.
Today, I have the privilege of using both professional expertise and lived experience to contribute to a field that is deeply personal to me.
But getting here required a journey of my own.
My Story Started Long Before
My Career!
I entered Florida’s foster care system at just two years old after experiencing a severe burn injury.
What followed were years spent navigating foster homes, group homes, institutions, facilities, sibling separation, abuse, molestation, instability, and eventually human trafficking.
Those experiences shaped my childhood, but growing into adulthood required me to determine what they would mean for the rest of my life.
I had survived a great deal.
Now I had to learn how to heal from it.
Learning the Language for
What I Survived...
Healing required more than simply moving forward.
I needed to understand what I had experienced, how those experiences had affected me, and what I needed in order to become whole.
Through faith, therapy, personal development, education, and a great deal of self reflection, I began finding language for experiences I had carried for years.
I learned about trauma. I learned about behavior. I learned about relationships, vulnerability, boundaries, systems, healing, and myself.
And while I was still doing my own internal work, I was advocating.
Sometimes that meant advocating for myself. Other times it meant using my voice for young people experiencing the same systems I knew personally.
At the same time, I continued pursuing my education and ultimately graduated from college.
Slowly, the things I was learning personally began intersecting with the work I was being called to do professionally.
Finding My Voice in Advocacy.
About ten years ago, I began lobbying for improvements within Florida’s child welfare system.
I had spent years being affected by policies and systems. Now, I was learning how to advocate within them.
My advocacy contributed to efforts surrounding two pieces of legislation, but it also exposed me to a much larger conversation about the vulnerabilities facing children in care.
Human trafficking quickly became one of the issues I could not ignore.
I understood the issue personally, but I wanted to understand it professionally too.
That desire pushed me beyond simply telling my story and into studying the complexities of exploitation, learning from professionals, listening to other survivors, examining research, and understanding how trafficking intersects with the systems and communities around us.
Turning Experience Into
Professional Expertise.
After graduating from college in the medical field, I pivoted and continued building my career within social services.
Working directly with young people, families, survivors, and professionals gave me an entirely different perspective on the systems I once experienced only as a recipient of services.
Over time, my work expanded across survivor mentorship, peer support, case management, child welfare leadership, advocacy, training, consulting, and professional education.
Each experience added another layer to my understanding.
I was no longer looking at human trafficking solely through the lens of something I survived. I was examining it as a professional, studying patterns, listening to other experiences, working within systems, and learning what effective support can look like in practice.
That distinction became incredibly important to me.
My lived experience gave me a perspective.
My professional development taught me how to responsibly use it.
How Aytia Tarpley Consulting Began:
As my work grew, so did the opportunities to educate others.
What began through advocacy and community conversations developed into speaking engagements, trainings, media interviews, public service campaigns, professional collaborations, and consulting.
Eventually, Aytia Tarpley Consulting became the vehicle through which I could bring those experiences together.
ATC allowed me to combine what I had learned personally, academically, and professionally to address human trafficking from a perspective I believed was often missing.
The work began locally in Florida and continued expanding.
Over the years, I have had opportunities to engage professionals and organizations across law enforcement, courts, child welfare, education, government, nonprofits, and survivor serving systems. My work has also grown into national and international conversations with professionals and communities from around the world.
Seeing What Traditional Training
Can Miss!
The more I worked in this field, the more interested I became in the questions that happen beyond identification.
What happened before the trafficking? What made someone vulnerable? What happens psychologically during exploitation? How might trauma influence behavior? What happens when a survivor enters services?
And perhaps most importantly, what does all of this look like from their perspective?
Those questions helped shape what has become a central philosophy of my work: Through Their Eyes.
I believe professionals need more than the ability to recognize trafficking.
We also need the capacity to understand the human being experiencing it.
That means looking beyond labels and asking deeper questions about trauma, culture, environment, relationships, systems, behavior, healing, and the many factors that can shape a survivor’s experience.
From My Story to Something Bigger.
Today, I can look back and see a thread connecting parts of my life that once seemed completely disconnected.
I went from being a child within the system, to a young woman trying to understand what happened to her, to an advocate challenging those systems, to a professional working within them, and eventually to an entrepreneur helping others think differently about the people they serve.
I am proud to be a survivor, but survival is not the entirety of my professional identity.
My story explains part of why I care so deeply!
My education, professional experience, continued learning, research, and years of working alongside survivors and professionals have shaped what I am able to contribute today.
My vision for ATC has never been limited to building a successful company.
I want to build a legacy.
I want the information shared through my work to continue moving long after a training ends or I leave a room.
If one professional learns something that changes how they engage the next survivor, that knowledge travels.
If that person teaches another person, it travels again.
That is how one flame can light many.
I do not want what I survived to simply make me a token in important rooms. I want what I have survived, learned, studied, and professionally developed to make me a tool and a resource within them.
That is what Aytia Tarpley Consulting represents to me.
A life transformed into purpose.
Experience developed into expertise.
And expertise used to help others see human trafficking, and the people impacted by it, Through Their Eyes!
