This year marks the centenary of the Slavery Convention, when the international community committed to end slavery in all its forms. Yet, 100 years on, exploitation thrives around the world. The purpose of the Freedom Fund is to change that.
This year also marks my last as CEO. I will be leaving in December with enormous gratitude for my colleagues, our frontline partners and our supporters. Difficult though it is to leave, I will do so knowing the organisation is in peak health, with a powerful new strategy in place, robust finances and an outstanding team.
Since 2014 we have directly reached nearly 1.8 million people across 12 countries and strengthened the resilience of 12 million more against exploitation. Those numbers matter. But it is the deeper, systems‑level change of which I am most proud: more than 300 organisations made more sustainable, connected and effective — nearly half led by survivors; a growing commitment to evidence‑based research and interventions; laws that better protect vulnerable workers and deliver justice; and new donors funding the fight against modern slavery.
With a big second gift from MacKenzie Scott in November 2025, we are primed to deliver even greater impact. Against a backdrop of shrinking funding and rising threats to human rights work, Scott’s generosity is both an endorsement of the collaborative funding model and a powerful vote of confidence in our results.
It also carries enormous responsibility. We believe the best way to honour her gift, and those of our other generous funders, is to put these resources into the hands of frontline leaders too often overlooked by philanthropy. That means deepening support for survivor‑led organisations and giving our partners more flexibility and autonomy in how they use funding. It allows us to continue to grow key programs in Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh and elsewhere, launch a new child marriage‑focused hotspot in Uganda and recommit to advocacy and legal strategies addressing forced labour in supply chains — even as other funders have withdrawn from the corporate accountability space.
The Freedom Fund rests on a conviction that modern slavery is not intractable — that with the right resources, knowledge and leadership, communities exploited for generations can experience freedom. Our partners demonstrate this every day, dismantling systems of exploitation that many assumed were permanent. That work continues. I’m honoured to have played a part in it and will be cheering the Freedom Fund and its partners on as they drive ever greater change in the years ahead.
