The FAST Team

Alice Eckstein is the Project Director of the FAST initiative. She was previously a Programme Manager for the Modern Slavery (Delta 8.7) Programme at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. Previously, Alice was the Executive Director at New York University’s School of Professional Studies’ Center for Global Affairs. There, she managed external relations, public events, and special programs to complement the Center’s graduate and noncredit education in global affairs. Before joining NYU, she was the manager of regional alumnae programmes for Barnard College. Before that, she was the coordinator for professional development programs for teachers at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.

Andy Shen is the Government & Multilateral Organizations Lead for the FAST initiative. Mr Shen has nearly a decade of experience in forced labour, human trafficking, and labour migration and is an internationally recognized expert on human rights in industrial fisheries, with extensive experience on business & human rights and international labour standards. Mr Shen previously worked with the International Labour Organization and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) as a legal and policy adviser. He has also served as a legal consultant at a Cambodian anti-trafficking organization where he supported Cambodian lawyers who represented hundreds of survivors of labour trafficking.

Dr Leona Vaughn is the Vulnerable Populations Lead for the FAST initiative. Dr Vaughn is a sociologist with over 25 years of experience working as an equalities and social justice expert, including as Chief Executive of the UK hate crime charity Anthony Walker Foundation and Non-Executive Director of the Liverpool FC Charitable Foundation. She worked on the first-ever public prosecution policy on race hate crimes as National Policy Advisor at the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales and pioneered an award-winning positive action scholarship scheme with the UK Attorney General’s office to address the persistent underrepresentation of Black prosecutors. More recently, at the University of Liverpool, Dr Vaughn has worked on a number of interdisciplinary international projects with academic, civil society and community-based partners researching risk, vulnerability and labour exploitation globally, and the impacts on racialized and minoritized populations, especially women and children.

Maha Khan is Financial Sector Lead with the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative, a project based at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. Hailing from Pakistan, Maha has over 15 years of experience spearheading and managing multimillion dollar research and strategic operations programmes in 15 countries across Asia and Africa, focusing on inclusive finance and technology for good. Prior to joining UNU-CPR, Maha led Accion, Center for Financial Inclusion’s (CFI) FinTech data initiatives that bridge the information gap between financial service providers, investors, and donors. Prior to CFI, Maha was the Director of Insights for the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation Programme (M4H) and Senior Manager for the Mastercard Foundation Partnership for Finance in a Digital Africa at Caribou Digital. In 2015, Maha designed a USD 4 million digital cash transfer programme for the UN World Food Programme in Ethiopia. Before that, she served as the Domain Lead of Business Analytics for the Helix Institute of Digital Finance at MicroSave Africa.

Dr Frank Haberstroh is the AML and Sanctions Lead for the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative. Prior to this, he was the Financial Sanctions Specialist for FAST. Before joining FAST, he worked for three years at a Private and Commercial Bank as Compliance Officer for Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) and Sanctions Compliance and two years as a consultant for AFC and Capital Market Compliance at a Big Four consulting firm. Alongside his work, he has initiated the creation of a project to identify and combat financial flows of human trafficking within the framework of the Anti-Financial Crime Alliance (AFCA), a German public-private partnership. Under Dr. Haberstroh's leadership, this project brought together the expertise of several international banks, the German Federal Police, and other public sector institutions and has been recognized internationally as a best practice model for such collaborations. Dr. Haberstroh holds a Doctorate in Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (summa cum laude). Furthermore, he holds a Law Degree from the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany, a qualification to practice as a magistrate, and a Masters degree in Defense, Security, and Geostrategy from Madrid Open University.

Nadine Kambriss is an Anti-Money Laundering Specialist for the FAST initiative. She is a lawyer specializing in AML/CFT and an anti-corruption expert. For over two decades she has worked with various international organizations and UN agencies, including UNODC and UNDP, assuming leadership, technical, and advisory positions in various countries across the MENA region. Nadine has a track record of actively engaging policymakers in dialogue and capacity-building workshops and training. She has drafted multiple documents on AML/CFT and anti-corruption worldwide and provided technical support on governance and public and private sector development to various governments. Nadine is a certified anti-money laundering specialist and holds an advanced certification in AML-Audit from the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS). She holds a master’s degree in banking and financial markets law from Université Saint Joseph, Beirut.

Dr Loria-Mae Heywood is the Research Associate for the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative. She is a child trafficking specialist with over ten years of experience in work central to children, human trafficking, and development. She has done socio-legal and comparative doctoral research and writing on child trafficking within the context of Vietnam, Albania, and Nigeria; engaged in outreach work with children from 'at risk' communities in Guyana, as well as raised funds in support of child literacy, and contributed to NGO research on conflict-affected least developed countries, and a human rights brief that was presented at a United Nations Human Rights Council session in Geneva. Other highlights of her professional life include her UN consultancy work across UNICEF, the ILO, UNDP, the UNODC, and UN Women; her research support to a project focused on assessing the degree to which obligations to victims of crime under the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales were being met by criminal justice agencies in the Humberside region; and her co-management of the ILO's Skills for Employment Global Public-Private Knowledge Sharing Platform (Global KSP).

Jill Huinder is the Operations Manager for the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) initiative, and has several years of experience supporting the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She has held progressively responsible roles focusing on sustainable development's economic, social, and environmental dimensions, often working with indigenous-led organizations and vulnerable populations. She has a Bachelor's degree in Humanities from the University of Amsterdam, a Master's degree in Social Sciences with a specific focus on Tourism for Development, and a second Master's degree from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, with a concentration on multilateral policies and laws to prevent human trafficking in the travel and tourism industry. She has experience working with NGOs, the private sector, philanthropy networks, municipal governments, ministries of foreign affairs, and academic institutions. She is driven to support evidence-based initiatives through multilateral diplomacy and intercultural approaches that help foster global understanding, peaceful interaction, and effective solutions to critical global issues such as human trafficking.

Dr Jack Durrell is Head of Communications at United Nations University Centre for Policy Research. Prior to joining UNU-CPR, he was a Senior Communications Specialist for Scriptoria Sustainable Development Solutions where he managed communications projects and strategies for a range of clients. He previously founded Science for Development (Sci4D), an international non-profit that helps organizations synthesize and promote their knowledge. Jack brings over 15 years of experience in providing strategic research and communications support to international development organizations, including the Red Cross, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, and several CGIAR research programmes and centers. He has worked as a journalist and freelance writer and editor covering a wide range of development-related issues, including public health, agriculture, climate change, and migration. He holds a Doctorate in Geography from Kings College London, in which investigated transnational migration and the migration-development nexus in Mexico and El Salvador.

Sina Alavi is the Legal Adviser at the Permanent Mission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations. Mr Alavi has worked on the front line of issues shaping international law, including Liechtenstein‘s successful efforts to establish the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria, activate the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, and convene a group of experts to elaborate how the Rome Statute applies to cyberwarfare. Previously, Mr Alavi worked as a Legal and Advocacy Fellow at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a global civil society network of over 2,500 member organizations in 150 countries. Mr Alavi has also worked as a Research Associate at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, a German development agency headquartered in Bonn, Germany that provides services in the field of international development cooperation.