EMBODE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Executive Director
• Founder

Aarti Kapoor is the Founder and Executive Director of Embode. She is a qualified lawyer in both the UK (England and Wales) and the US (New York state). She also has Masters degrees in 'Law and Economics' as well as 'Systems Leadership and Organisational Analysis'. Aarti has over 25 years of professional experience, including 20 years working on human rights issues, with a focus on forced labour, human trafficking and child exploitation. She is also a trained Organisational Analyst and has worked in leadership positions in the UK and South East Asia across government, NGOs and corporate agencies as well as undertaken assignments in Eastern Europe and Africa. Since setting up Embode, Aarti has overseen the growth and strengthening of a broad client portfolio across Asia and Africa in the highly specialised areas of labour rights, child protection and migration. She has directly led Embode's seminal studies such as a series of published assessments called ‘Children at the Heart' which focused on sector wide issue of child labour in cocoa supply chains in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia. Aarti also led a comprehensive situational assessment of migrant labour vulnerabilities in the palm oil sector of Malaysia, analysing Nepal as a labour-sending country, resulting in the publication of ‘The Road to Worthy Work and Valuable Labour'. She has led countless other research studies and now focuses on supporting senior leadership teams across corporate business and UN/NGO programmes on effective strategic interventions protecting human rights in supply chains. Aarti sits on a number of expert advisory boards on business and human rights, and is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the NGO THIRST - The Roundtable on Sustainable Tea. Prior to establishing Embode, Aarti led Project Childhood, an Australian government regional initiative against child sexual exploitation in tourism across Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam for World Vision. This included directing an international child safe tourism campaign reaching over 15 million people and overseeing an education / awareness-raising programme on prevention of child sexual abuse to over 40,000 people, including children and parents. Previous to this, Aarti was the Chief Policy Advisor for the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP) where she headed up its Child Trafficking Unit after carrying out the first UK Government commissioned national assessment on child trafficking. In her position she also led police policy development on child trafficking on behalf of ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) Lead Mr Jim Gamble (QPM). Aarti is known in the sector for her analytical mind and capability to think strategically and systemically. She is passionately dedicated to helping organisations reach their highest potential and effectiveness.

Job Titles:

• Director of the Ophidian Research Institute
• Senior Advisor to

Dr David Feingold is a Senior Advisor to Embode and provides strategic advice in key technical and research related areas. This includes both overarching inputs into the organisational development of Embode, as well as specific projects relating to trafficking, forced labour, migration with a focus on methodological and research approaches. David is the Director of the Ophidian Research Institute and for fifteen years served as International Coordinator for Trafficking and HIV/AIDS in the Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture, UNESCO, Bangkok. He developed the UNESCO HIV/AIDS and Trafficking Programme with two mandates: intensive research and ethnic minority populations. Educated at Dartmouth, Yale and Columbia, he is a research anthropologist and an award-winning filmmaker. He has conducted extensive field research in Southeast Asia over four decades, particularly among the Akha and Shan peoples. He has represented UNESCO at numerous international fora on human trafficking, including as the representative to ICAT and chaired the Statelessness Working Group. David has served on the management board of UNIA and is a Visiting Professor at the American University of Paris, a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and a Fellow of the Centre d'Anthropologie de la Chine du Sud et de la Peninsule Indochinoise (CACSPI).

Job Titles:

• Associate Director

Erik is an Associate Director and a member of the Senior Management Team at Embode. In his role Erik works closely with the Executive Director in co-creating and leading business strategy and organisational development, and overseeing Embode's technical consulting portfolio. On a day-to-day basis, he is responsible for managing Embode's Associate and Senior Consultant teams across diverse projects on issues such as responsible business, gender and social protection. His work entails managing Embode's projects in Asia and Africa that are commissioned by clients from the private sector, UN agencies and civil society actors.

Job Titles:

• Senior Associate

Josh Bailey is a Senior Associate at Embode and works on various projects related to child rights, migrant rights, trafficking in persons and worker protection and wellbeing in supply chains. He has over 10 years' frontline experience developing and implementing projects focused on the protection of children and migrants in the United States and South East Asia with a particular emphasis on the protection of people on the move. Josh applies lessons learned from working on the frontlines of various human rights issues to provide a nuanced and contextualised approach to projects at Embode. His work has consistently sought to bridge the gap between governmental and community systems and marginalised groups most affected by those systems resulting in strengthened protection of particular groups rights such as incarcerated victims of trafficking and exploitation, undocumented migrant workers in the United States, women and children seeking asylum and Cambodian migrant workers. Josh has extensive experience working with a diverse range of stakeholders such as governments, UN agencies, INGOs, NGOs and private companies. Josh has advised governments and INGOs on legislation and policy, technical input on referral mechanisms, capacity building strategies, child protection and safeguarding and victim-centered approaches. He has sat on various government working groups and steering committees on issues of human trafficking and modern slavery. He currently sits on an advisory council for an Australia-based INGO addressing online sexual exploitation of children in Cambodia. Josh has often been sought out for his nuanced and balanced approach to confronting complex issues and approaches all aspects of his work with curiosity and rigor.

Job Titles:

• Consultant

Stéphane De Greef is a Consultant at Embode and focuses on environment, sustainable agriculture and human rights. He graduated in Agronomic Engineering in Gemboux, Belgium, with a specialisation in Environmental Management. Stéphane has over 18 years of combined experience in information management, research, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation for governmental, non-governmental and private entities.

Job Titles:

• Consultant
• Senior National Expert in Vietnam

Tran Ban Hung is a Consultant at Embode in Vietnam and works on projects relating to childrens's rights and protection, as well as trafficking and the justice sector. Hung is a senior national expert in Vietnam and has a variety of core competencies including sustainable development, facilitation, business development, research and assessments, national policies and government affairs. He has in-depth experience working across child protection, child participation, violence against children, positive discipline, child friendly consultation and documentation. Hung is also a certified trainer of Development Dimensions International (DDI). He has over 20 years experience working in the development sector on capacity building, and advocacy. His work covers grassroots to ministry level. Hung is committed to work with vulnerable groups and has extensive experience with cross-cultural working environments. He has consulted with UN agencies, INGOs and NGOs on country specific as well as regional multi-country projects, including UNICEF, IOM. ILO, UN Women, Save the Children, Plan International, ChildFund Vietnam , ASEAN ACT , MOLISA etc. on training, research, assessment, and facilitation for child forum at national and regional level. Hung is also an expert on child rights of national television and a writer on insight of VnExpress.