Rochelle Keyhan

Rochelle Keyhan is the chief executive officer of Collective Liberty and the 2018 Thomson Reuters Foundation Stop Slavery Hero. Keyhan offers 10 years of experience in government and nonprofit organizations as an advocate for vulnerable populations, leveraging in-depth experience in gender-based violence issues, including domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking. The Washington Post’s March 2020 feature of Collective Liberty describes her innovative, tech driven solutions to fighting human trafficking a “21st century solution to an age old problem." Her work has achieved finalist status at SXSW’s 2020 Pitch event, won MassChallenge and Innovate4Good competitions, and is pioneering the nation’s approach toward data-collection around human trafficking.

She is called on as an expert on combatting human trafficking for government officials, financial institutions, and other for-profit and non-profit corporations across the United States. She has also provided technical assistance to organizations across Europe and the Middle East. She is routinely quoted in television, print, and radio media, including NBC Nightly News, local NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox news channels, and countless print magazines and newspapers.

As CEO at Collective Liberty, she develops and executes the organization's strategic direction and collaborations focused on disrupting specific types of human trafficking, including recruiting and maintaining robust collaborative networks of law enforcement, agency stakeholders, and service providers. She forges collaborative relationships and builds coalitions with diverse stakeholders to advance public policy initiatives to drive strategic, systems-level change. This work has supported the passage of over 30 laws across the United States, trained nearly 10,000 police officers, detectives, and financial crimes investigators, and supported the arrest of hundreds of traffickers and closure of over 1,000 trafficking venues.

She speaks at national and international conference and advises on global policies and criminal justice best practices for supporting survivors of human trafficking while stopping their traffickers. Her team analyzes national trends and best practices, creating comprehensive trainings and resources to help facilitate the effective and systemic eradication of trafficking in the United States.

Before starting Collective Liberty, Keyhan spent six years as a prosecutor of gender-based violence crimes in Philadelphia, where she is bar certified to practice law. She has a proven record prosecuting 20 felony jury trials; more than 100 rape, human trafficking, and domestic violence felony bench trials, and over 10,000 domestic violence misdemeanor hearings. As an Assistant District Attorney, Keyhan championed the need for increased investigation and prosecution of human trafficking in Philadelphia, successfully prosecuting the first two trials herself. Her approach to prosecution involves a perpetrator-focused process that centers the victims, limiting added trauma while maximizing survivor empowerment.

Her non-profit work on gender-based violence emphasized systemic approaches toward sustainable culture shifts to end gender-based violence and insecurity. This work spanned multiple national and international organizations. She was formerly the director of disruption strategies, at Polaris, a department she created to shift systems to disrupt trafficking in the United States. She also previously served as director of the non-profits Feminist Public Works and HollabackPHILLY (while a founding board member of Hollaback!).