Siddharth Kara

Siddharth Kara is an author, screenwriter, activist, and leading expert on modern slavery. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kara is the author of numerous books and reports on modern slavery. His first book, “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery,” was co-winner of the 2010 Frederick Douglass Award at Yale University for the best non-fiction book on slavery. Kara adapted this book into the feature film, “Trafficked.” Kara’s second book, “Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia” was released in October, 2012, and Kara’s third book, “Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective” was launched at the United Nations in October, 2017.

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 thousands of 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. Kara advises the United Nations, the U.S. Government, the International Labour Organisation, and several other governments on anti-trafficking policy and law. Kara has also appeared extensively in the media as an expert on human rights, 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.