Partnering with the Trucking, Bus, and Energy Industries to Combat Human Trafficking

Liz Williamson is a Training Specialist for Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) and a survivor of human trafficking. Located in Northern California, Williamson shares her trafficking story at casino/bus Coalition Builds and other TAT events and is responsible for some administrative duties.

A survivor advocate, she has done direct service work with survivors at the local, regional, and national levels. For the past decade, she has trained and spoken nationally to audiences regarding her survival of familial trafficking to help dispel the myths surrounding this topic and to empower individuals to help make a difference.

Williamson has also trained medical professionals with Dignity Health to identify victims seeking medical services, with special attention given to what the medical community missed or was unable to assist her with during her trafficking experience. She is a member of the Survivor Leadership Institute through GEMS. She is a member of the NJ Coalition to End Human Trafficking and recently invited to the NJ Chapter of American Pediatrics Task Force on Human Trafficking.

With a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a flair for all things creative, Ms. Williamson enjoys communicating and creating. She passionately believes survivors deserve the opportunity to use their experiences to rewrite their stories and their futures.

Maggie Dawson is a Public Sector Engagement Specialist with Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT). TAT is a 501(c)(3) organization that exists to educate, equip, empower, and mobilize members of the trucking, bus, and energy industries to combat human trafficking. Before working with TAT, Ms. Dawson worked for a child advocacy organization that periodically served youth victims of human trafficking. She also worked in a juvenile treatment center that served males ages 13 to 19 who had committed felonies. Ms. Dawson received her bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Denver in 2011. She received her master’s degree from Salve Regina University in 2014 where she wrote her thesis on the importance of cross-sector collaboration in combating child sexual exploitation. She lives with her husband and daughter in the Denver, Colorado Metro Area

Ms. Anderson is a certified Criminal Specialist and Senior Deputy District Attorney at the Fresno County (CA) District Attorney’s Office. As a specialty unit prosecutor, she prosecutes gang, domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking cases. She has taken complex cases to jury trial and gained convictions and lengthy sentences on some of Fresno County’s most violent offenders.
Ms. Anderson is also an adjunct law professor, President of the Black Lawyers Association of Central California, and serves on the Board of Directors for Breaking the Chains. This non-profit organization provides resources to survivors of human trafficking. She has received multiple awards for her tireless efforts to prosecute some of the most challenging cases in Fresno County.
In April 2023, Ms. Anderson was awarded the Suzanne McDaniel Memorial Award for Public Awareness as part of the Congressional Crime Survivors and Justice Caucus. She received this prestigious congressional award for her work with Crime Victims and Survivors.

Carolyn Meissner joined the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2021. She currently serves as a Project Coordinator for multiple anti-human trafficking projects, including Building Agency Capacity: A Toolkit for Human Trafficking Investigations and the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program for Enhanced Collaborative Model (ECM) Task Forces. She was previously on the Mental Health/Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities team where she worked to enhance law enforcement response to individuals with mental health crises and to reduce the number of deaths and injuries of individuals with forms of dementia or developmental disabilities who may wander due to their condition.
Prior to joining the IACP, Ms. Meissner interned at the Arlington County (VA) Police Department in the Homicide/Robbery Unit and the Madison (WI) Police Department in the Burglary Crime Unit. She also was a Research Assistant in the Child Emotion Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Weisman Center where she worked on research related to children who have been abused and their response to emotional stimuli.
Ms. Meissner has a master’s degree in forensic and legal psychology from Marymount University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a certificate in criminal justice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.