Alison Boak

Alison Boak is Co-founder and President of the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA), an independent non-governmental organization advancing the health and well-being of adolescents throughout the world.  Ms. Boak began her work as an advocate for adolescent health when she served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Latvia from 1994-1996.  In 1997, she was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in public health and assisted the Latvian Ministry of Health in establishing 12 youth health centers. In 1999, she formed IOFA and served as its Executive Director from 1999-2006.  Currently, Ms. Boak Chair’s IOFA’s Board of Directors and is active in program development, fundraising, and building strategic partnerships.   Ms. Boak has been working globally to address the problem of human trafficking for more than a decade.  She is a founding member of the Freedom Network USA for Trafficked and Enslaved Persons (co-chair 2004-2006), the New York City Task Force against Sexual Exploitation of Youth (co-chair 2000-2003), and the New York City Human Trafficking Task Force (co-chair 2002-2004).  Additionally, she has served on several anti-trafficking advisory committees including the Catholic Charities USA Advisory Task Force on Domestic Child Trafficking and the National Child Welfare Advisory Board organized by U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), and the Advisory Committee of the New York City Anti-Trafficking Network where she chairs the Law Enforcement Liaison Committee.   Ms. Boak has authored several innovative training tools and curricula and has conducted hundreds of trainings on human trafficking for advocates who assist trafficked persons, police, prosecutors, judges, border guards, government leaders, and media representatives from more than twenty countries.   Ms. Boak is the author of “Dimensions of Human Trafficking” in Human Trafficking:  Basic Tools for an Effective Response and the editor of Smooth Flight:  A guide to preventing youth trafficking.  She is a founding member of the Freedom Network Training Institute on Human Trafficking and a co-author of Human Trafficking and Slavery:  Tools for an Effective Response and Human Trafficking and Slavery: Law Enforcement Tools for an Effective Response.   She served as the executive producer of Smooth Flight, a documentary training film that explores young people’s experience going abroad to work. She was also responsible for designing and implementing the training for the Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline, the first nation-wide anti-trafficking hotline in the United States.   Alison’s work has been recognized by New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for her contributions to the anti-trafficking effort in New York City.  Ms. Boak served as a U.S. State Department delegate to the WoMen and Democracy conferences and has presented her work at several international conferences. She has also addressed international bodies such as the United Nations Committee on Children’s Rights and the OSCE’s Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe and has provided expert testimony to the New York State Assembly Standing Committees on Codes, Children and Family, and Labor regarding human trafficking in New York State. Ms. Boak graduated Magna Cum Laude from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in English and Political Science and received her graduate training in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, the Division for Population and Family Health.  She has served as an adjunct professor at City University of New York, York College.  Ms. Boak is an avid traveler, yoga practitioner, and writer.  She currently resides with her husband and their four children in Pound Ridge, New York.