An exclusive interview with Jackie Shapiro

We had the opportunity to sit down with 2024 Freedom Awards Honoree, Jacqueline Shapiro, a passionate child protection and human rights advocate and philanthropist who now serves on PACT’s Emeritus Council.

As a child, Jacqueline Shapiro once envisioned herself becoming a diplomat and after graduating college she later went on to serve in the Peace Corps. She shared the following when asked when she developed her passion for service and humanitarian efforts:

I honestly wish I had a succinct answer to that question. 

At the close of World War II, I was two years olds, and my brothers were nine and ten years older than I, and our father was an automobile dealer in Toledo, Ohio. In this position, and in partnership with the government of India, my father was invited to go to India to establish the first automobile factory in the Far East. He accepted the position and moved my family (brothers, mother, and I) to California before he went off to India for a year.

He ended up remaining in India for more than a year, and I always thought that the country was so interesting and exotic. And my father was in the country around the time it gained independence. He arrived in a prop plane in the Bay of Bombay, and took a rickshaw cart to the parliament in New Delhi, laying witness to the revolution. 

My father’s partner in India was the Maharaja of Patiala, who was a Sikh living in New Delhi, and he told my father that “you haven’t seen India until you’ve seen Kashmir”; and my father was sent to Kashmir for a month.

Obviously all of this made a profound impression on me, that sort of exotic part of traveling and being aware of what’s going on in the world.

On my 40th birthday my husband and I along with another couple made a pilgrimage to India. I wanted to see India, walk in my father’s footsteps, and honor him; but I honestly found myself being more interested in China and Chinese philosophy. I always have been, so much so that I majored in Chinese studies and Chinese language in college.

Over her illustrious career Jacqueline has traveled to 70 countries mostly while working and/or advocating for the various organizations that she’s worked with. She has served as the former co-chair of the New York Committee for Oxfam America and the co-chair for the US El Salvador Sister Cities Committee, and she continues to represent PACT at The United Nations on the NGO committee for the stopping of trafficking in persons as well. Being an expert in international affairs, we asked Jacqueline why it is important for Americans to be aware of what's happening abroad and be a part of this global society:

A friend of mine once said to me that if you're a Girl Scout, or the same thing if you're a Peace Corps volunteer, you're always interested in international affairs and how you can make life better for people. It is important to be aware of what is occurring globally, because we are all connected. I have always found it interesting to connect the dots between people, and how we can help each other all over the world. 

When we discussed the fact that not one organization or country can solve any issue or social ill, Jacqueline shared the following comments:

I always thought that the United Nations had potential, and I still think that the United Nations has fabulous potential, because it has in its 75 years created international norms for human rights and standards of behavior. Now, not every country who signs on to these measures actually implements them, but at least they exist. I think that’s the greatest accomplishment of the United Nations.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the complexities and bad things that are part of the United Nations. Although the United Nations was founded with the goal of peace, it hasn’t proved possible for 193 nations with different political and economic interests, as well as different religions to actually agree on too many things in terms of peacekeeping. So, I think that the strength of the United Nations is its programmatic work. That is the work carried out by all of the UN agencies helping people all over the world.

We have to remember that the United Nations is trying to build and uphold this bridge of connection and collaboration. There's no international intergovernmental body other than the United Nations that's even making a shot at it.

Without a doubt, Jacqueline Shapiro brought many years of experience and expertise on humanitarian efforts and human rights causes when she joined PACT’s Board of Directors in 2010. She shared the following when asked what led her to join PACT (formerly ECPAT-USA):

Soon after I began working with the United Nations, I became the Chair of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, which works to promote the rights and development of women and girls around the world; and I was also quite active in the Working Group on Girls, which specifically promoted the underdeveloped rights of girls. That is where I met Carol Smolenski (PACT founder and former CEO) who was of course working with PACT at that time. During that time PACT had done a program on the prevalence of child trafficking in New York City, and I was very impressed with Carol. I absolutely love Carol. I would invite Carol to come speak at regional meetings with an organization that I was representing at the U.N, that was called Zonta International, which is an international professional women's service organization.

I remember one of these meetings in particular. It was a district meeting being held someplace in New Jersey, and it had much to do with PACT’s beginnings and history. Back then, people were certainly willing to believe that there was trafficking in places like Thailand or Colombia, but were not ready to accept that there was trafficking in the United States. Things like that couldn’t possibly occur in the U.S.. Anyhow, Carol Smolenski was a strong, and unfortunately unpopular voice of advocacy during that time. She would say, “There is trafficking in every community in the United States, including right here in the middle of New Jersey”. During that meeting she shared that one can go to bars, salons, and other less obvious places and find that there is human trafficking occurring. The problem was that this was a women’s organization, specializing in programming for girls, and they had Girl Scouts in the room, and many began to state that “these Girl Scouts should not hear this stuff”. We of course know that they are the very ones who needed to hear this information. 

Speaking about the reality of human trafficking in the United States was just not a popular message back then.

But, that is where it all started for me. I maintained a friendship with Carol and another member of the PACT Board was a colleague of mine at the U.N.. It was that colleague, Joan Levy, that asked me to consider joining the Board of Directors. So I joined thinking that it would be a wonderful place to put some of my energy to use.

The following question was asked of Jacqueline Shapiro; what would you say to someone who may say that they want to join this fight to address or eliminate human trafficking and the exploitation of children, but they are unsure where to start or what they can contribute? - and she shared the following response: 

I would begin by sharing that one really has to know something or enough about a topic before they begin speaking about it. My suggestion would be to do the leg work first and research what’s going on. 

Unfortunately, many people do not want to spend the time getting truly informed, and that is because trafficking tugs at people’s hearts. It’s such a terrible thing. People want to speak out, want to get involved, but are unwilling to spend the time to find out what the drivers of trafficking are, what the signs are. It's important to do that if you want to be a real advocate.

People have a lot of priorities in their life, and even though they want to do good, and this is an area that they feel passionate about, that doesn't mean that they want to or have the capacity to take the time to actually become a learned advocate.

When the discussion moved to the philanthropy sector’s role in supporting anti-trafficking efforts Jacqueline Shapiro shared the following:

One thing is clear. This work doesn’t get done if there is no money, no funding support. So, there is a desperate need for people who are willing to buy into the issue, are able to speak intelligently about it, and who are willing to use their contacts to expand anti-trafficking organizations like PACT’s capacity to do this work. 

Jacqueline also serves as the Vice President of the Thadhani Foundation, which has provided PACT with funding for an innovative project that focuses on prevention among migrant youth and their families, beginning with this piloting in the New York City area; and she shared how she got buy in for the project and why the Thadhani Foundation deemed that working with migrants is important at this time:

In speaking about this, I have to begin by saying that I’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of opportunities through my relationships with different groups to travel and participate in their philanthropic activities and programmatic work throughout the world. And my connection with Thadhani began when I was Chair of the United Nations NGO Committee for Status of Women. Many years ago while in this role, I met a woman from India who was a psychologist that had started a foundation and she wanted me to join the Board of Directors. Well, at the time, I was at full capacity and had 10,000 things that I was doing and wasn’t sure if I wanted to be on her Board. 

But, she shared with me that her parents had died and that she founded the foundation to honor them, and she continued to nag me. I eventually joined the Board and it turned out to be a really small Board consisting of her brother, herself, a man who was instrumental in founding the disabilities movement in the U.N., and me. She was committed to doing work in India and I was committed to the United Nations, but we were both interested in doing work that benefited women and children. 

I initially found a couple of organizations that would benefit from the Foundation’s funding. But then Sajni Thadhani, the Founder, retired to Florida and I didn’t hear from her for quite some time. After a year, I received a call from a lawyer who asked “Are you the Jacqueline Shapiro who was on the Thadhani Foundation Board? He informed me that Sajni had died and that I was the only Trustee left. Following that call and revelation, her nephew and his wife came to see me. They had no idea how to run a Foundation or engage in grantmaking, and there were other legal issues to sort out. But, we did it. Two years ago, we had our first year of funding. 

Last year was our second funding period, and I said to myself, why don't I ask Lori (Cohen - PACT CEO) if there are some projects that PACT might be doing that we might submit to the Thadhani Foundation? That’s how the project got started.

Lori provided me with summaries on three projects, but we found that the migrant project fit best. I am serving on the United Nations NGO Committee on the Working Group on Homelessness and the Annual Committee on Migration. With the understanding that homelessness/housing insecurity is a great risk factor for the trafficking of youth, the migrant project made sense, and brought together the different interests of the Foundation. It all fell in place.

We pivoted to the upcoming Freedom Awards and Jacqueline shared her initial reaction when she was informed that she was nominated for a 2024 Freedom Award: 

It's a great honor. I very much admire the fact that from the beginning the Freedom Awards have honored Survivors too, because Survivors are the people who are the best informed to educate us on our programs and how they can effectively move forward. The rest of us being honored simply have shown that we believe in or are committed to this work. 

I think what the event speaks to is the total legacy of PACT. PACT once was the only voice that dealt with the commercial sexual exploitation of children, and it's much more than that now. But, it has 33 years of history of building those programs, and prevention, and moving legislation forward. 

What Jacqueline is looking forward to most about attending the Freedom Awards this year:

I would certainly like to see some of my old friends. During my Chairmanship of the Board of Directors, we really built the Board out. Before we put forth this effort, the Board was just a group of people that met every now and then, and they barely kept minutes or anything. When it comes to nonprofit Boards, you can be a fundraising administrative Board, or you can be a working Board. At the time we were building a Board from basically nothing. We decided to be a working Board. We had to rewrite the bylaws, rewrite the governance, and we created a United Nations committee. The first few years that I was on the Board there were two or three committees, but they were sort of fuzzy and non-functional. We grew to have a really great working Board, and all of those people contributed to it. So if any of them are available and attend, I'll be happy to see all of them.

Jackie’s final thoughts: 

I think to me, the most important part is that the work is never done. The traffickers are out for money, and they keep finding new and creative ways to go after children. It's something that we have to continue to get all of us on board with, and continue to expand the networks so that they collaborate together instead of working in silos, to be able to address this problem and really end child trafficking.