Bekah Charleston: Turning trauma into empowerment

Bekah Charleston is a nationally recognized subject-matter expert, executive-level trainer and strategic consultant specializing in trauma-informed systems, workforce education and survivor-informed program design. Her work has informed trainings and initiatives across the U.S. and has been featured by outlets including NPR, USA Today and the Dallas Morning News.

She currently serves as business development director at HC Solutions Training & Consulting, where she leads strategic growth and partnership development for evidence-informed training programs, including Multichannel Eye Movement Integration (MEMI). In this role, Charleston collaborates with public, private and nonprofit partners to expand scalable education models that strengthen workforce awareness, resilience and victim-centered outcomes.

Charleston is the founder of Bekah Speaks Out and brings executive leadership experience from nonprofit service delivery, along with academic training in criminal justice and criminology. She also serves as national engagement specialist with the Sex Trade Survivor Caucus (STSC), supporting survivor-informed research, professional education and systems-level collaboration. Charleston is a founding member of the Street Grace National Survivor Advisory Council and a TEDx speaker known for translating complex trauma dynamics into practical, actionable insights for professional audiences.

ACAMS Today (AT): What was the turning point that motivated you to transform your experience into a mission of empowerment for others?

Bekah Charleston (BC): The true turning point for me was becoming a mother. Until then, survival had been my primary objective. When my son was born, survival was no longer enough. I needed to choose life in a way that would not pass my trauma forward. For the first time, I had a strong enough reason to confront what I had endured and imagine a future beyond it.

Motherhood gave me the courage to begin again. It forced clarity. I could not protect my child without first reclaiming myself. As I rebuilt my life, I began to understand the systems, financial mechanisms and power structures that had enabled my exploitation. That understanding sparked purpose.

What was meant to destroy me ultimately became the foundation of my work. I didn’t set out to build a career from trauma—but as I healed, I realized my lived experience, combined with education and systems of knowledge, could translate into impact. I learned how exploitation hides in plain sight, how money moves through harm and how institutions unintentionally enable abuse when they don’t understand it.

Turning pain into purpose wasn’t a single decision—it was a series of choices to live, to lead and to ensure others have pathways that I did not.

AT: Through Bekah Speaks Out, you work closely with law enforcement (LE) and community leaders. What do you believe is the most critical change needed in how human trafficking is addressed?

BC: Through Bekah Speaks Out I spend a significant amount of time training and collaborating with LE, which still makes me smile. I was conditioned by my trafficker to believe LE was the enemy, so the irony is not lost on me. Now, I genuinely enjoy working alongside the very people I was once taught to fear.

The most critical change needed right now is funding—full stop. Across the country, anti-trafficking units and even entire offices of the Department of Justice have been downsized or eliminated. The result is a constant reset. Just as teams begin to build expertise, people retire, positions are cut or priorities shift and we’re back to trafficking 101.

That perpetual loss of institutional knowledge has real consequences. It slows investigations, weakens prosecutions and places an unfair burden on survivors to fill the gaps through education, testimony and unpaid expertise. We cannot build sophisticated responses to organized exploitation when we’re always rebuilding the basics.

Equally important, trafficking must be treated consistently as a financial crime. It is driven by profit, sustained by money movement and enabled by systems that fail to connect human harm to financial indicators. When we fund and integrate anti-trafficking work with anti-financial crime infrastructure, we move from awareness to actual disruption and that’s where real change happens.

AT: Through your work with Bekah Speaks Out and your collaboration across public- and private-sector systems, how do you envision survivor-led initiatives creating long-term economic independence and stability?

BC: Through Bekah Speaks Out, my focus has shifted toward systems that either expand or restrict opportunity. One of the most consequential developments right now is the pending passage of the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA). Its importance cannot be overstated. For many survivors, criminal records tied directly to their exploitation have functioned as lifelong barriers, blocking employment, housing, professional licensing and financial stability.

Economic independence requires more than services; it requires access. TSRA removes structural barriers that have historically forced survivors into narrow, predefined roles, often limited to the anti-trafficking field. While that work is meaningful, survivors should not be pigeonholed into advocacy as their only acceptable future.

Survivors deserve the same freedom as anyone else—to pursue careers aligned with their skills, interests and ambitions, whether that’s finance, technology, entrepreneurship, health care or public service. When systems recognize survivors as capable professionals rather than permanent victims, the economic outcomes change.

Long-term stability comes from real options: the ability to work, build credit, own property, start businesses and participate fully in the economy without stigma or artificial constraints. When we remove punitive barriers and invest in access, survivors don’t just recover, they thrive and the entire system becomes stronger because of it.

AT: What is the best career advice you have received?

BC: The best career advice I ever received was this: Don’t let your past determine the ceiling of your future but don’t hide it either.

Early on, I was encouraged to either erase my history to be “professional” or let it define me entirely. Neither approach was sustainable. The real lesson was learning how to translate lived experience into strategic value without being trapped by it.

That advice taught me to pursue excellence first. Education, competence and credibility matter. When you lead with skill and results, your story becomes an asset rather than a liability. It also gave me permission to outgrow spaces that only valued me for my trauma and to step into rooms where I was expected to contribute at the highest level.

Careers are built on alignment, not gratitude. You don’t owe permanence to organizations simply because they gave you a start. Growth requires discernment, knowing when to stay, when to lead and when to move on. That mindset has allowed me to build a career rooted in purpose but not limited by it and to pursue opportunities based on capability, not permission.

Interviewed by Karla Monterrosa-Yancey, CAMS, editor-in-chief, ACAMS, editor@acams.org and Ben Bahner, CAMS, editor, bbahner@acams.org