Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak invite Sara Catalan, deputy chief of staff, to the show. They discuss women in government and how that impacts human trafficking. As well as how women can take steps to get more engaged with politics.

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 178, How to Champion Advocacy in Government.

Production Credits: [00:00:08] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:28] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:33] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:36] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, longtime listeners of this show even listeners who have just come to the show will recall and remember how much we talk about partnership, partnership at every level of organization and in government. And today’s guest I know is going to be helpful to us in really some of the perspective on how to advocate especially in government.

Sandie: [00:01:04] Absolutely. We are so happy to welcome Sara Catalan, deputy chief of staff to Representative Ed Royce to our show. Sarah, thank you for joining us.

Sara: [00:01:17] I’m excited to join you.

Sandie: [00:01:19] Well when I first met you through Congressman Royce’s office you were leading and directing and setting up all kinds of exciting opportunities for our community to engage with your office. And even though the congressman spent most of his time in Washington D.C. and I began to understand the role that you have as very influential and very significant to the issues that your office supports. And it reminded me a few years ago when our U.N. general secretary on International Women’s Day. And I’ve never told you this, Erin I’ve known you now for years, but when he’s said General Ban Ki-Moon said that countries with gender equality with women leaders perform better. I thought of you because you are such a presence in the congressman’s office, and locally in Orange County, and then by extension to Washington D.C. You’ve been a leader in policy advocacy on anti-human trafficking, so kudos to you. How many years have you been in this role?

Sara: [00:02:44] Well thank you, Sandie. That was very nice of you. I’ve worked for the congressman for 16 years.

Sandie: [00:02:49] Wow, that’s pretty outstanding. And when I think about some of the major accomplishments just in anti-human trafficking, I think you are the organizer and maintainer of the advisory committee. Can you talk about that just for a moment?

Sara: [00:03:11] Sure. I think the way that our office approaches human trafficking is a little bit different than some other local representatives and that’s because as you know Congressman Ed Royce is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. So, in our perspective we always have that kind of international angle, so we focus a little bit more on international trafficking than we do on domestic. But the reason that we decided to kind of jump in this unique way was as I was getting more engaged with the issue of human trafficking I was getting overwhelmed because it’s such a diverse issue from labor trafficking, to sex trafficking, to minors, adults, foreign nationals, native-born, every single subset has their own issues, their own struggles. So, we really kind of grappled with this idea of like how do we get a holistic view of what the problem actually is. So, my solution was to develop a human trafficking congressional advisory committee and so I pulled this board together. And thank you, Dr. Morgan, for sitting on it, you are a critical member to have on the board with your knowledge and your expertise. And the model is just very unique in that we have members from law enforcement, we have social workers, caseworkers. We have members of the nonprofit community that come alongside the county services to provide a lot of services to our survivors of human trafficking. And then we also have the prosecutors and the federal law enforcement represented on the committee as well. And this committee meets with the congressman personally, regularly to keep him abreast of all the issues and all the challenges we’re facing with human trafficking. And as you’ve seen in some of our committee meetings, there are times when the congressman is able to solve a problem there at the meeting.

Sandie: [00:05:01] It’s amazing. We start talking about this problem, and he’s like, “Sara, can we do something about that.” And Sara says, “Well yes.” And the next thing you know someone is making a call and there we have a solution right on the table.

Sara: [00:05:17] Yeah. So, it’s a really unique model but it’s worked very well for us. And I think the other benefit is law enforcement and the non-profit community rarely speaks to one another. So, at these roundtable meetings in addition to communicating with the congressman, as you’ve seen Sandie, they communicate with each other. And there are times when I adjourn the meeting and people will sit in my office for another 30 minutes just to kind of you know catch up with one another because you just don’t have that opportunity when you’re in this full time.

Sandie: [00:05:51] Well and I have to tell you before the meeting starts in the little waiting area as we arrive, I’ve gotten in the habit of getting there as early as I can because that’s a chance to see people I don’t ordinarily see and find out what’s going on in their world. So yeah, congratulations on such a good job on that. You know the other thing that has always stood out to me is how you’ve used your position to educate in the community and to extend advocacy on behalf of women. And you know I’m a professor at a university, so I have a lot of young women and you’ve been on campus and I mean they look at me and I’m you know I have grandchildren they look at you in there like I want to be that. And so, I kind of want to start back from the beginning of how you prepared to do somethin...