Siddharth Kara

Siddharth Kara is an author, screenwriter, researcher and activist on modern slavery, child labor and related human rights issues. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kara is the author of three books and several reports and articles on modern slavery and child labor. His first book, "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery," was co-winner of the prestigious Frederick Douglass Award (2010) at Yale University for the best non-fiction book on slavery. The book has since been adapted by Kara into a Hollywood feature film, called "Trafficked." Kara's second book, "Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia" was released in October, 2012. Just as "Sex Trafficking" provided the first comprehensive overview of the global sex trafficking industry, "Bonded Labor" provides the first comprehensive overview of the system of debt bondage endemic to South Asia. Kara's third book, "Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective" is Kara's culminating work on slavery and was launched at the United Nations in October 2017. The book provides a foundational overview of the key manifestations of slavery around the world.

Since first encountering human trafficking in a Bosnian refugee camp in the 1990's, Kara has traveled to more than fifty countries across six continents to research modern slavery, personally documenting the cases of several thousand former and current slaves of all kinds, witnessing firsthand the sale of humans into slavery, and confronting some of those who trafficked and exploited them. During the course of his research, Kara has meticulously mapped global human trafficking networks, explored the perilous underground of trafficked sex slaves, delved into the inner workings of organized crime groups that traffic in human organs, and traced global supply chains of numerous commodities tainted by slavery and child labor. In addition to self-funding most of his research, Kara has received support from Humanity United, the C&A Foundation and Google.org.

Kara currently advises the United Nations, International Labour Organisation, the U.S. Government, and several other governments on human rights policy. Kara has testified before the U.S. Congress and several foreign Parliaments on his research. Kara has also appeared extensively in the media as an expert on modern slavery, including on CNN, the BBC, the Guardian, CNBC, National Geographic, and numerous documentary films.

Previously, Kara was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, then ran his own finance and M&A consulting firm. He holds a Law degree from England, MBA from Columbia University, and BA from Duke University.