Celia grew up in north Toledo, a high-crime, low-income area of Toledo, Ohio. After driving into work seeing drug-addicted and abused women on the streets, Celia had an epiphany about who she really was as a social worker and a spiritual follower. Not finding any meaningful information at the library, in 1993 Celia took to the streets and spent 6 months, 3 times a week on the street learning about prostitution, drugs, and the culture of the street. She went into crack houses, and a brothel to connect with women and walk beside them into freedom and recovery. She later learned that three of her childhood friends were caught up as sex trafficking victims. One was murdered by a customer. The other struggled with life-long trauma and addiction.

Celia spent over 28 years working on behalf of youth and adult sex trafficking victims. She completed 10 years of federally funded research on the issue, founded several programs, conducted a few hundred presentations, published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, state level reports, and currently serves as the Director of a Human Trafficking & Social Justice Institute at University of Toledo. Today she is named the 26th most influential social worker alive.

Having reached the heights of her career, Celia decided to devote the rest of her career to equipping practitioners and those passionate and committed to ending human trafficking with the knowledge and skills to be the most effective they can be.

To show you that you can indeed by effective and make a meaningful difference in the lives of human trafficking survivors, Celia is offering this free webinar that talks about trauma and is offering to train you to become a group facilitator or coach and implement the TNT Survivor's Journey groups for anyone that has suffered emotional or physical violence and has also been involved in the commercial sex trade.