Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Speed.
Hi Lindsey, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was sitting in a Starbucks on a summer night across from a woman I had just met when I first learned about teens being sold for sex right here in Dallas/Fort Worth. At that time, I had a comfortable life working in the corporate world. Sitting there that night, she opened up her laptop and began to share with me the reality of sex trafficking locally, and I could have never planned the journey that would unfold before me.
I was marked.
I went home that night, called my mom, and said “I can’t un-know what I just learned. I wish I could, but I can’t. And I have to do something.” So, I joined the handful of people beginning a grassroots movement at Traffick911 in 2010. Anytime I wasn’t working, I was volunteering, helping with awareness events, speaking at community groups, training more volunteers, leading outreaches, learning everything I could, and helping grow this small non-profit.
In 2012, I went on a mission trip to Nicaragua, and something clicked inside. Serving people in those villages made me come alive unlike anything ever had. At the end of that trip, I laid in bed and thought – I can’t stay in my job. I reasoned my corporate retail marketing job down to this thought – I am spending 50+ hours a week convincing people to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have. I can’t do this. I want to spend my life with purpose.
It just so happened that also in 2012, Traffick911 received a large donation which enabled us to hire staff for the first time, and after much prayer and deliberation, I quit my comfortable corporate job and ventured into the unknown. Not knowing if we’d have the finances to secure my salary much longer than a year. Mind you – I had no formal training in the nonprofit world or serving trafficking victims.
I’ve literally worn every hat possible within the organization, and now ten years later, I am the Executive Director at Traffick911, leading a $2.5 million dollar operation and a team of 25 full-time staff who serve around 275 child sex trafficking survivors every year.
It has taken a while to reconcile – why me? Why am I qualified to lead a team in social justice work, journeying with broken souls and communities? I have a college degree in horticulture, and people. (I know some of you are going to go google that now!) Oh, and don’t get me started on the subject of leadership. I was the shy, peacemaker middle child. Probably the least likely to lead. A few years ago, a person I barely know spoke something profound over me. She said – “You studied the art of cultivating and nurturing plant life and now you get to nurture and grow human lives.” It hit me hard: Nothing in our lives is wasted.
I firmly believe that anyone can do anything if they put their minds to it. We are our own worst enemy and typically, we are the ones holding ourselves back. I believe I have grown into the position I have today because I have made a fiercely conscious choice to be a lifelong learner. Always staying curious and never resolving to know it all. Reading every book and listening to every podcast I can get my hands on regarding leadership, non-profits, and serving abused/marginalized communities. And surrounding myself with counselors, mentors, safe community, and people much smarter than me who can help me become all I’m meant to be.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
“The greatest stories of your life won’t be told from your comfort zone.” – Dr. Joni Stepp.
If I have learned anything over the past several years, it has been the theme of this quote. That leaning into discomfort, pressure, and challenges is the greatest agent toward positive growth.
There has been a different challenge every week, if not every day since I started on this journey nine years ago.
The most obvious challenge is the sheer difficulty, weightiness, and trauma of working with trafficking survivors – they are often broken, abused, hurting, distrusting, and in survival mode. We’ve navigated the death of eight survivors just in the past two years. We’ve lost a lot of sleep responding to crisis after crisis, recovery after recovery, and it’s been life-altering in more ways than I can count. We have learned more than we ever wanted to know about healthy boundaries – how helping can hurt and why caring for those in the helping profession is vital. We have discovered that understanding the difference between enablement and empowerment is crucial to this work. And that this work takes its toll on our personal friends and family.
The nonprofit world can certainly feel like a ‘grind’ of its own due to the never-ending nature of fundraising. It can seem as if there is never enough money to get us where we want to go. There were many months where donations weren’t coming like we thought they would, and it felt hopeless – that we weren’t going to be able to pay our bills and payroll. Yet time and time again, something miraculous would happen and God would see us through to the next month.
This road has been anything but smooth. Yet through it all, it’s been a beautiful journey of leaning into what is hard and trusting God.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Traffick911 was founded in 2009 as a grassroots movement. We exist to free youth from sex trafficking by building trust-based relationships. Because we know sex trafficking is only a symptom of a much deeper-rooted issue, we have a larger vision of seeing communities free from relational brokenness. Research continues to illustrate that relational brokenness is at the core of each of the three primary roles in trafficking: a victim, a trafficker (supply), and a sex buyer (demand).
Over the past twelve years, we have served countless survivors, and our work – in partnership with local, state, and federal law enforcement and community partners – has led to multiple state and felony arrests and convictions.
What we do best is building trust-based relationships with child sex trafficking survivors here in North Texas. We had our hands in a lot of different efforts over the years, but now we’ve streamlined our ‘how’ in order to do one thing and do it really well. What that looks like is this: Each time a victim is recovered, law enforcement is able to call Traffick911 for 24-hour crisis response to begin relational advocacy and case management services with the youth. Our advocates walk alongside survivors and their families for the long-haul, with an experienced trauma-informed lens, empowering them to fully utilize their voice and their choice while pointing them toward healthy living.
What makes us different? Firstly, we’re field-based. Our entire team delivers services to survivors out in the community, wherever they are – we go to them. Second and most importantly, it’s not what we do, but how we do it that makes us different. We call it Free People Free People. Free people free people is an expression of Traffick911’s belief that true change starts with us. We believe we are able to help others be free only to the extent each of us embraces and journey on our own road to healing. It’s our heartbeat and posture from which we endeavor to serve. It’s the recognition that we are not ‘helpers’ helping those in need, but that we are no less broken than the person sitting next to us, no matter our story. Practically, this means each of us choose to be on a continual journey toward freedom, embracing our own stories of brokenness and growing in understanding of what it looks like to lean into the full unique expression of who we are designed to be on this earth. It is then that we are able to effectively partner with and advocate for others seeking freedom.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Personally, I measure success by regularly asking myself – “Am I living out my values?” At the end of the day, I want to steward my time, resources, and relationships in a way that aligns with my values. At Traffick911, defining success looks different than you might think. Our goal is to build trust-based relationships as we empower survivors toward a healthy future – every relationship looks a little different and every person is unique. Thus, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to success. Success day to day looks like celebrating every small win along the way. One way we define success more quantitatively is measuring goals achieved. We work with each survivor to create goals they want to achieve and internally, we measure and monitor those goals along the way – in the last twelve months, 72% of goals survivors made were achieved!
Contact Info:
- Email: info@traffick911.com
- Website: www.traffick911.com
- Instagram: @traffick911
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/traffick911
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/traffick911
Image Credits
NOVOAPHOTO
