THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND SEXUAL EXPLOITATION PREVENTION WARRIOR

An international expert in the field of anti-human trafficking and sexual exploitation, Tiana Sharifi is the inaugural recipient of the 2022 KPU Alumni Excellence Award. This new award aims to honour alumni who are having a significant impact.

Sharifi is the founder of Sexual Exploitation Education (SEE), an agency which aims to prevent sexual exploitation and human trafficking through awareness, advocacy, education and consultation. Through her work, Sharifi has provided prevention education to thousands of students, parents and teachers for an increasingly common youth issue.

Sexual exploitation involves someone under the age of 18 exchanging a sexual act for something in return. It is the most common form of human trafficking in Canada, and Sharifi describes it as an epidemic. As SEE continues to expand its outreach, she hopes to raise awareness of the growing prevalence of this issue.

“It happens in every neighbourhood and, because so much of it is online, we don't necessarily hear about it,” she says. “But it is a very crucial issue for us to educate our youth on because they are experiencing various forms of sexual exploitation, especially digitally, these days.”

In addition to working with school districts, Sharifi provides training to social service providers, including law enforcement. She recently provided in-house training to hundreds of RCMP officers across Canada.

She also places importance on Indigenous education and has been an ally to agencies such as the Indigenous Perspective Society to educate workers who deal directly with Indigenous youth, parents and adults. Sharifi has made it a priority to educate groups working with Indigenous populations to prevent an Indigenous child or youth from becoming more vulnerable to exploitation, including running a full-day conference in partnership with Indigenous Training and Consulting Services.

“I feel very grateful for the contracts that I have with various agencies that I highly respect,” she says. “Every time I get a contract that's new where I'm targeting a different group or addressing a certain gap that was there before, I feel incredibly grateful.”

Sharifi became aware of the issues of sexual exploitation and human trafficking while considering her career options after graduating from KPU with a bachelor of arts in psychology in 2013.

“I knew that I wanted to be more than a counselor or to address a social issue and I wasn't sure what that was,” she explains.

Dr. Faith Auton-Cuff, her professor at the time, helped steer her towards a role providing education and facilitating workshops on sexual exploitation and human trafficking. From there she has worked effortlessly to address this topic by focusing specifically on the root issues versus simply providing basic awareness and knowledge.

Sharifi says her education at KPU helped provide the foundation for her career and credits her professors with helping further her personal growth and understanding of how her strengths could be best harnessed in her professional life.

“It was the best education and schooling environment I could have hoped for, especially for my personality type and my learning style,” she explains. “I was able to build relationships with my professors and engage more interactively in my classes and with my classmates. For me, it was very conducive to learning.”

Sharifi incorporates her knowledge from both her work experience and her educational background in counselling psychology, into new prevention approaches to sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Since founding SEE, Sharifi has been the first in the field to provide presentation "packages," where school districts receive more than just a one-time presentation. These student presentations have been strategically developed for a real shift in perspective in youth, alongside providing tools to address issues like consent, healthy boundaries and grooming — both online and in person.

“Preventing child abuse and sexual exploitation by addressing root causes is the most important for me,” she says. “Addressing our culture, legislation, social media trends, and the normalization of exploitation and contributing to the discourse that makes this issue so prevalent is what I'm most passionate about.”

Because of her consulting services, she is recognized as a reputable resource for research centre advisory as well as non-profit curriculum development. Sharifi previously was the co-executive director for the international non-profit The Breakfree Collective and was the co-author and consultant for first-ever B.C. research on the digital presence of human trafficking, completed in May 2022. Most recently, she released the first app on sexual exploitation prevention, called the SEE-App.

Her work and contributions have been recognized with numerous awards and accolades, including being named a "Change Maker" finalist for BC Business Women of the Year Awards.

She says receiving the 2022 KPU Alumni Excellence Award is particularly meaningful given the impact the KPU community has had on her success.

“I honestly feel incredibly honoured because to me it just shows that KPU values this issue and sees its importance. I feel very supported by the institution that I appreciated so much and that I received my education from. It's incredibly meaningful and, to me, probably the best award that I could receive, period.” 

Since 2007, the KPUAA and KPU have been recognizing exceptional individuals like Winston Sayson, recipient of the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award.

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