SURVIVOR-LED, TRANSFORMATIVE KEYNOTES
ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING, EXPLOITATION,
AND SURVIVOR-CENTERED RESPONSE
Aytia Tarpley is an internationally recognized human trafficking expert, consultant, speaker, and survivor advocate who helps professionals, organizations, and communities think differently about human trafficking so they can respond differently.
Drawing from professional expertise, lived experience, and years of work across child welfare, social services, survivor support, and anti-trafficking systems, Aytia brings audiences beyond traditional conversations about warning signs and statistics. Her approach examines the psychological, relational, cultural, and systemic factors that can create vulnerability to exploitation, shape the survivor experience, and influence how survivors engage with the people and systems intended to support them.
Through ATC, Aytia equips audiences with a deeper understanding of human trafficking through survivor-centered education, compelling storytelling, and practical strategies that challenge assumptions and transform response.
Her keynotes are ideal for universities, conferences, government agencies, law enforcement, child welfare systems, courts, nonprofits, and organizations seeking a grounded yet transformative approach to conversations about human trafficking, exploitation, vulnerability, and survivor engagement.
EVERY KEYNOTE INCLUDES:
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SURVIVOR-LED INSIGHT that brings audiences beyond textbook definitions and into a deeper understanding of the survivor experience.
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COMPELLING STORYTELLING and professional expertise that connect human trafficking to real-world psychological, cultural, relational, and systemic dynamics.
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PRACTICAL STRATEGIES audiences can apply to recognize vulnerability, challenge bias, engage survivors, and respond with dignity, wisdom, and care.
FORMER CLIENTS:
CHOOSE YOUR EXPERIENCE
Signature Workshops
From focused 45-minute sessions to immersive one-day and three-day workshops, Aytia engages audiences through survivor-led education, interactive learning, real-world scenarios, guided discussion, and Q&A. Each workshop is customized to the audience and designed to strengthen participants’ understanding of human trafficking while building practical skills they can apply within their roles, organizations, and communities.
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Through Their Eyes: Understanding the Survivor Experience
Explore trafficking through the survivor’s perspective and transform
the way professionals engage and serve.
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Human Trafficking 101: Understanding the Fundamentals
Build a foundational understanding of human trafficking, including terminology,
trafficking types, indicators, and common misconceptions.
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Understanding the Healing Journey: Supporting Survivors as Foster, Adoptive, and Familial Caregivers
Learn how caregivers and families can better understand survivor behavior,
healing, trust, and trauma-informed support.
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Understanding the Trafficking Pipeline: Pre-Trafficking Vulnerabilities in Music, Movies, and Culture
Examine how cultural messages, media, and normalized behaviors
can shape vulnerability to grooming and exploitation.
Signature Keynotes & Panel Discussions
In these 45–60-minute talks, Aytia delivers survivor-led insight, compelling storytelling, and practical strategies that deepen audiences’ understanding of human trafficking and the survivor experience. Each keynote is designed for universities, conferences, government agencies, law enforcement, child welfare systems, courts, nonprofits, and community organizations seeking to strengthen the way they understand, engage, and respond to human trafficking.
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Through Their Eyes: Understanding the Survivor Experience and Transforming the Way We Serve
Explore the survivor experience and learn how to provide more informed,
survivor-centered support.
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The Trafficking Pipeline: How Vulnerability, Grooming, Culture,
and Systems Create Pathways to Exploitation
Examine how vulnerabilities and external influences can create
pathways into human trafficking.
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Beyond the Red Flags: Rethinking How We Identify, Engage,
and Respond to Survivors of Human Trafficking
Move beyond traditional warning signs to strengthen survivor
identification, engagement, and response.
Specialized Peer Support Services
ATC provides individualized, survivor-centered peer support for human trafficking survivors and youth who may be vulnerable to exploitation. These services are intentionally limited and accepted on a case-by-case basis to ensure ATC can appropriately meet the needs of each individual.
Peer support is not therapy and does not replace clinical mental health treatment. For ongoing individual peer support, participants are required to be actively engaged in therapy.
Referrals are accepted from DSS and child welfare agencies, community organizations, nonprofits, residential programs, caregivers, and other approved referral sources.
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Individual Peer Support
Sometimes healing requires more than having resources. It also helps to have someone who understands how to walk beside you while you learn how to use them.
ATC provides specialized one-on-one peer support for survivors of human trafficking and individuals who may be vulnerable to exploitation.
Sessions are held once weekly for approximately 45–60 minutes and may be provided virtually or in person throughout the Charlotte area.
Peer support may include conversations around confidence, healthy relationships, boundaries, communication, decision-making, self-advocacy, identifying needs, navigating systems, and connecting to appropriate community resources.
The purpose is not to direct someone's healing or replace their therapist. It is to provide consistent mentorship, encouragement, lived-experience-informed perspective, and practical support while the individual continues their own healing journey.
Important: Individual peer support is offered only in approved cases following an initial assessment of needs and fit. Participants receiving ongoing peer support must also be actively engaged in therapy.
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Bridge & Reconnection Support
Sometimes the problem isn't that people don't care about one another.
They simply aren't hearing one another anymore.
ATC's Bridge & Reconnection Support is a short-term, five-visit service designed for situations where communication has significantly broken down between a survivor or vulnerable youth and parent or guardian, residential provider, group home, shelter, or other support system.
Rather than immediately bringing everyone into the same room, ATC first takes time to understand both perspectives and establish trust with the young person.
Visit 1: Individual consultation with the caregiver, guardian, organization, or requesting adult to understand concerns, communication barriers, and desired outcomes.
Visits 2–4: Individual rapport-building sessions with the peer. When appropriate and authorized, sessions may occur outside the individual's usual environment to create space for conversation, relationship building, and understanding the peer's perspective.
Visit 5: A facilitated communication session bringing the appropriate parties together.
The goal is not to determine who is “right” or “wrong.” The goal is to help both sides communicate more effectively, understand one another's perspective, identify where communication has broken down, and determine healthier ways to move forward.
This is a survivor-centered communication service and is not legal mediation, family therapy, or clinical treatment.
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Specialized Group Support
ATC provides limited, request-based group programming for group homes, residential programs, and other approved organizations serving survivors of human trafficking and girls who may be vulnerable to exploitation.
Programs are structured as an intensive two-month experience combining facilitated discussions, peer-centered activities, and selected weekend experiences.
Topics may include:
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Confidence and identity
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Healthy communication
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Personal boundaries
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Self-advocacy
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Healthy relationships
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Decision-making
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Recognizing vulnerability and exploitation
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Building trusted support systems
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Navigating conflict
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Goal setting and personal development
Programming is customized according to the needs, ages, circumstances, and environment of the participants.
Because maintaining appropriate professional boundaries is essential, ATC reviews potential conflicts of interest before accepting a group engagement. Existing individual peer-support relationships within the requesting program may affect whether ATC can appropriately provide group services.
Specialized group programming is offered by request and subject to availability, program fit, participant needs, and ATC approval.