Centering Safety in Human Trafficking Storytelling with Preston Goff

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In This Episode

Storytelling in the anti-trafficking space carries a particular weight, where the urgency to communicate impact can pull against the responsibility to protect the very people whose stories are being told. Many nonprofit communicators working in this space are asking how to tell stories that move people to action without exploiting pain or compromising survivor safety.

In this conversation, Preston Goff, Vice President of Global Communications at The Exodus Road, helps us explore what that balance looks like in practice. We discuss the organization's red lines around consent, why some of their most powerful stories involve months or years of waiting, and how holding firm boundaries with media partners can actually build deeper trust rather than cost opportunities. Preston shares real examples from this work, including a survivor's story that took shape only after she chose, unprompted, to share it herself.

This episode is a grounded and honest look at what it means to communicate urgency without sensationalism, and what nonprofit storytellers can learn from an organization that has chosen protection over exposure, again and again.

About Preston Goff

As the Vice President of Global Communications at The Exodus Road, Preston Goff is an expert storyteller in the anti-trafficking space. During his five-year tenure at the organization, The Exodus Road's media efforts have expanded substantially, most recently with the launch of Influenced — a cutting-edge digital safety curriculum for youth and their caregivers. Preston Goff resides in Colorado Springs with his wife and two young children.

Connect with Exodus Road and Preston Goff

Exodus Road Website | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube

Preston Goff Website | Instagram | Linkedin 

Connect with Maria

Speaking & Training | LinkedIn | Email 

Transcript

Maria: Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Preston Goff, Vice President of Global Communications at The Exodus Road. Preston leads storytelling in an incredibly sensitive space, anti-trafficking work. The organization's work spans intervention, prevention education, aftercare, and cyber investigation, which gives Preston a unique insight into what it means to communicate urgency without exploitation. In this conversation, we're exploring a question so many nonprofit storytellers have: How do you tell stories about profound harm in a way that is ethical, trauma-informed, human, and yet still effective? We'll talk about survivor dignity, audience care, digital safety, and what it takes to create storytelling that moves people to action without reducing anyone to their worst moments. Preston, welcome to the show. I'm so grateful to have you on.

Preston: Hey, thank you, Maria. I'm so excited to be here.

Maria: Yeah, and we were chatting just a little bit before this, and this conversation does feel a little serendipitous because I've been getting a lot of questions about how we tell stories ethically and in a trauma-informed way. Are we just watering down our message? Are we still reaching people? Are we still tugging at hearts? And there's just a lot for us to explore there. But let's start with this. I would love to know your story. Can you tell us about your journey and what brought you to The Exodus Road before we jump into what it means to tell impactful, ethical stories?

Preston: Yes, absolutely. I think my journey to this work really is as a creative's creative in some ways. I joined The Exodus Road six years ago as creative director and really had the responsibility and the expectation that I would come in and help to up-level the standard of our visual and creative excellence and bring some uniformity to how the brand is being presented. All paramount good things of what running good nonprofit communications looks like. And I did that really as someone whose first love was carrying a camera, telling compelling stories, creating beautiful design, and not just for the sake of the medium itself, but because of this belief that if you can create something impactful, you will actually inspire and move people to change the world around them. And so that really was my pathway. Professionally, I was in the church world for a while, and I don't have any professional educational experience as it relates to nonprofit marketing or fundraising. I would imagine, like many people, you kind of just find yourself in that world and take the next right step forward.

Maria: Working in ministry or faith-based spaces and then moving into this niche of anti-trafficking, how has this shaped your understanding of what it means to tell stories ethically?

Preston: I think early on as a storyteller, it feels like everything that you see and learn from online and everything that is the north star is: How can you find the most interesting angle? How can you tell a story that is the most compelling and offers the most raw, vulnerable glimpse into the story that you're trying to share? And I think that's true. It was true in the church world at times. It's definitely true in the nonprofit world, where perhaps you think in order for people to understand at their core and to trust your organization and the work that you're doing, they need to be able to see it all.

And the reality as I stepped into this work is that in the nonprofit world, anti-trafficking is perhaps one of the most difficult areas to actually storytell for a variety of reasons, and I didn't realize that when I stepped in. I was like, "Hey, I'll come in and use my creative skill set to shine this light." And I didn't think about all the human things that had to be considered at the start. It was a great learning journey from that point on where, suddenly, it's, "Hey, actually, you can't share the name of that person, or you can't share their face, or let's talk about story agency and whose story this actually is." Is it the nonprofit's story, or is it the subject's story? And what does that mean for your willingness as a creative to even let projects die sometimes?

All of that has been a bit of an interesting journey for me. One of the things, and we can get into this in detail, is that in the early years of the nonprofit, the success stories were really built on these raw glimpses into the actual programmatic impact that was being made possible. So for us, at times, that looked like, "Here's a photo from an intervention where law enforcement is actually removing someone from trafficking." But if you pause and ask yourself, "Hey, what honors that person in this moment?" then you choose different images and you tell that story in a very different way. And we've entered into a big journey to say, "Hey, we're actually going to stop using that kind of imagery. We're going to stop telling those kinds of stories in those ways because we want our audience to value survivor-informed, trauma-informed storytelling and to come to expect that from us." And that's been a great journey too.

Maria: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about hooks. It's what gets people's attention, but it does so much more psychologically to the audience. It anchors the reality of how we see issues and how we see these people. So if we're anchoring a story in a young woman or a young man at probably one of the scariest moments of their life, even if it's a turning point, that's where we're anchoring them. And how do you move through this story? Even if at the end of the story they are now thriving, you'll always go back to that anchor of the worst moment of their life. And that's hard because things just keep getting noisier, right? It's easy to lean into urgency and sensationalism, even if it's the reality, right?

What's the hook and the urgency that you're working with? Another layer to this is that so many folks in your organization are going to be abundantly protective of these folks because of what they've been through, right? And then, somehow, there's a little bit of separation when we get into marketing and fundraising, where we say, "For the sake of fundraising, the lines get blurry on completely protecting, and we decide to use that difficult photo because we think it's going to have a bigger impact on hearts and minds and wallets." So yeah, I'd love to know, how are you and your team wading through that? And what kind of anchors are working in your stories?

Preston: I would say one starting point is that we started several years ago really asking ourselves: How do we define consent in storytelling? And what even are the parameters and the guardrails that we want to put on ourselves in terms of chasing that consent? For instance, one of the things that we've said is we will never ask for consent from a minor to share their image. That is just a red line that we don't cross over. We will not ask a minor to share an unblurred, non-anonymized image of themselves. We will not share their real names, so we always use representative names.

We hide details of cases. In the same breath, we have different policies and guiding measures for the more urgent, news-breaking programmatic impact stories and the longer-term restorative aftercare healing stories. Programmatically, our teams are involved often in helping law enforcement in what feel like urgent moments where someone is actually removed from exploitation, and we want to be able to say, "Hey, community, we're doing what we said we'd do. What you are donating toward is really happening." That's valuable. We need to be able to say that in the world, and actually, we really believe that it disrupts human trafficking when we say, "Hey, we did this thing. We're making trafficking more dangerous, so if you're thinking about trafficking someone, just know there are organizations and law enforcement out here that are actively working to disrupt that."

Storytelling and communications become a function of the actual disruption itself. So there's value there. But we don't have to say, "And here's the name of the person, and here's where they're from, and here's the photo of them," in what is one of the most traumatic moments of their life. We can say so much about that case and yet not expose or commodify or oversensationalize the emotion and the trauma that is experienced in that moment because it's altogether unhelpful. It doesn't actually help the donor. It's just sensationalism for sensationalism's sake at that point, I think.

That said, on the flip side, I was in Thailand last week and we recorded a story for a major global news network. We had them in with the survivor, and it was one of those moments where this is a survivor who has walked through years of healing work with us. And yeah, the story involves that anchor point moment, like you mentioned, where, of course, to understand the full arc of her story, you need to understand where she came from and where she is now. But trauma-informed storytelling looks like, in that moment, enforcing that, "I know you're a journalist, but you have to give me all the questions in advance, and I get to vet them. And you actually can't bring a male videographer to our aftercare facility because we have red lines there. And you actually can't ask that question. And I need to be present the whole time." There are things in place where, sometimes frankly, you lose out on opportunities because you hold that line, but it's so worth it. And as a nonprofit, you have to maintain that value and that virtue despite the opportunity that's in front of you.

Maria: Thistle Farms is an organization that also works more with... Are you familiar?

Preston: Thistle Farms. Yeah.

Maria: So they actually have journalists sign a consent form, just like you would with the person being interviewed, saying all the things that you've talked about. Someone will be present. If they need to skip a question, they can skip a question. We want to see it in advance. We want to see it before it goes live. And I love that, and I think we can do this because folks can get in front of people without earned media. And I love this shift, and I'm a former journalist. My background is in journalism. But to know that we're in a space where we can say, "Actually, this is our story, and it's precious, and it's sacred, and if we're going to work together, this is what we expect."

So thank you for modeling that. Listeners are going to be really excited to hear that because not only are you protecting this young woman or young man, you're modeling to these other storytellers what it takes to interview in a way that is trauma-informed, and that's powerful for storytelling as a whole.

Preston: And I think, too, you change the industry.

Maria: Yes.

Preston: You start to normalize so that the next time that team goes to interview someone who has experienced human trafficking trauma, they think, "Oh, we should be cognizant of these concerns because of this past experience interviewing another survivor." That's how you change the relationship with earned media in some ways for these kinds of stories, which is really valuable.

And two, I will just say, on the other side of that, I do think you're right. Nonprofits, especially for big opportunities, are like, "How much can we let go of what we value so that we don't lose this opportunity?" And ultimately, I think what you have to ask yourself is: Does that cause more problems for you than benefits long term? If you hold your line, speaking from experience in the last few weeks, we're walking out organizationally with a relationship with a two-time Emmy award-winning journalist who has respect for our organization, understands the relationship, and is interested in ongoing stories with us. That's now a trusted media contact that any nonprofit would be so excited for, and here we are with it. And it's because we held our line and we didn't cave.

Maria: And people are paying attention. People who are following you are paying attention. I love when a nonprofit actually says, "Hey, we were about to go on this show or do this interview, and we just didn't feel good about it." I don't like call-out culture, but to just say, "Hey, we turned down this opportunity because we want to protect our community." The more that we give anonymous disclaimers that aren't just saying we're anonymizing, but the reason why, or, "We turned down this earned media opportunity, and this is the reason why," it builds trust with our audience, which is what we want to be doing with our storytelling anyway.

Before we go on, I just want to double tap something that you said earlier, and that is we don't ask our minors for consent. I think this is such an important trauma-informed practice because sometimes we think that if we give abundant agency and choice, that means that we're being trauma-informed. But there are a few things. One is that we forget about the power dynamic between us, especially with youth. So giving them abundant agency and choice, why are they saying yes? Do they have a full understanding of what this means 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now when this story is still out there, right?

And so I like when nonprofit communicators and storytellers actually set boundaries, especially when it comes to minors. But there are other kinds of groups of folks and demographics where what you call just the red line can be just as trauma-informed to me. It's so hard, and I hear time and time again folks say, "They agreed to show the picture. They agreed to tell their story." And I wonder what point of their story you asked them. Because are they still going to feel this way two months from now? If they're sitting in the hospital bed and they're so grateful for your services, and you're asking them, "Hey, can we show the image of what you looked like when you came in?" What are the power dynamics at play? There's so much vulnerability in there. I so appreciate that sometimes we set these boundaries with our story owners not to strip them of agency, but really to prevent power dynamics.

Preston: Ultimately, we are the professionals who have the best forecast or preview or ability to anticipate the ramifications of those choices. And if we're not bringing those into the conversation and considering those, even in a consent conversation, then we're not operating in a trauma-informed way with our subject.

Maria: Okay, let's get to the down and dirty. What to you, because you're telling stories a little bit differently, is an impactful story? Or what is a story that converts to you? What does that look like?

Preston: Yeah, that's a tricky question. Sometimes stories are told just for the sake of driving a conversion that really looks like driving inspiration, nurturing, stewardship, that kind of thing. So if we just strip away the fundraising kind of element of conversion, we just think about: What do you want an audience to do? For me, the number one kind of conversion that we're chasing is we want people to engage a story, recognize their role to be able to take part in a vision of hope and restoration in that story and in the issue at scale, and then take action.

And that action looks different. Sometimes it's, "Become an advocate for this. Share this widely so that you actually are another megaphone for this issue." Sometimes it does look like a financial conversion, right? Ultimately, of course, as a nonprofit, our goal is to be able to be in a financial relationship with our donors so that we can continue to sustain and do the work as much as we can. But obviously, there's so much content that we put out that is really just about nurturing and stewardship and building that confidence and making the individual feel like they are already on The Exodus Road's team when they become a donor. So yeah, happy to dive in on any of that. But I think conversion obviously is not just type your credit card information, or debit card information, into this form.

Maria: Your response has me thinking a little bit about our audiences too. What does this mean for audiences who are so fatigued from all the bad news, who are experiencing either re-traumatization or vicarious trauma? Because even if not all of your audiences have been trafficked, one in four women have experienced some kind of sexual violence, right? And the rate for men is not much lower. How do we frame this in a way that engages and inspires? And I specifically think about the long-term associations that we make. You can watch an Exodus Road story and feel really engaged, but then every time you go back to that website, you don't even understand this trauma response that you're having. Where's the balance of getting people to understand the realities of the work, but still be engaged from a trauma-informed perspective?

Preston: Yeah. I was with my team this week talking about just how difficult it is to even talk about human trafficking in any space right now because it feels like, "Oh my gosh, here comes more bad news," on my feed or in my email. And I think you layer in with that the reality that you said, which is that probably at minimum 25% of your audience is engaging this with lived experience that runs parallel to the story that we're telling.

Audience care is a paramount thing that we're sensitive to. I do think one of the real identifiers and pathways forward in the midst of that reality is: How do you steer away from the sensationalized, heart-wrenching elements of the story, and how do you lead with hope? How do you lead with relationship? You'll find on our feed a lot of stories that are really centered on this: how human relationships empower resilience and hope in the midst of what is a really tragic starting point. And I think that universally, in really every topic, is a great path forward. Human relationship creates resilience and the ability to endure trauma, and so I think that's one thing that we try to really key in on.

Anecdotally, some of the best-performing content on our feed is literally good news content. So just taking a pause and saying, "Hey, take this as a deep breath. Here's a bunch of good news for you as it relates to anti-trafficking work. We know this is hard." Sometimes also just naming it really does a lot. So, "Hey, I know this is really heavy. If you processed this, thank you. Thanks for doing that. I know you might feel shattered by this, but when we bear witness to it together, it actually allows us to step forward, to bring light into a dark space, to make an actual difference. Just you bearing witness to this actually made a difference." Reminding people of that is something that we're really passionate about.

Maria: Can you give an example of a story where you feel like you took more of a hopeful approach, or where this was ethically done and had really great results that you and your team are proud of?

Preston: Yes, absolutely. There's a story that we told last year about a survivor, and she is a young mom who lives in Latin America. Just to give you a quick origin of her story, she was lured by a job offer in Central America that turned out to be commercial sexual exploitation. It was a classic story of international trafficking in the sense that she came from a very unstable home life. She was just looking for the next pathway forward to be able to take care of aging grandparents and did, honestly, what we celebrate in the West. She almost picked herself up by her own bootstraps, and here's this job offer, and I'm going to go and do this thing. Time and again, that is the story that we encounter.

But we were put into contact with her through Interpol, who received a tip from her family saying, "Hey, she's in trouble." And it's a pretty dramatic story because our team actually first made contact on a Zoom call, on a webcam where she was actually being forced to webcam model. Our team was holding up whiteboards saying, "Hey, we're not here to hurt you. We're not here for the reason that you expect." And it set off a several-week process that involved us getting her out.

And I remember for her story, it's an amazing story at that point, right? And it's one where you're tempted to be like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy. International trafficking, she's back home, repatriation, all the things. Let's tell the story now." But instead we waited, and we said, "Hey, she's going to be in relationship with aftercare. This is a wild story, and it needs to be told because we can help prevent future stories like this by telling this story. But we want to wait." So we hit pause on it and walked through months and months of aftercare.

What she did is she actually emerged on the other side saying, "I want to extend a hand back, and I'm going to open up my phone book, and here are all the contacts of the trafficking network that exploited me." And it actually resulted in a case that unfolded where 26 others were freed from trafficking from that network in this Caribbean country. And as she's healing, she's becoming this emboldened, courageous survivor who is like, "The world is mine to conquer," in some ways. It was so beautiful. She becomes a new mom and continues to walk forward with our team and gets to this place where she comes to us and says, "The world needs to hear my story."

And we didn't even ask. I think that's this ideal moment where, "The world needs to hear of the injustice done to me, but not for the sake of just consuming the injustice done to me. It is so that their eyes are open, so that other young girls' eyes are open, so that what was done wrong to me and what those perpetrators did is out in the light and isn't hidden forever."

And so we walked forward in a storytelling process with her. What that looked like was prepping ahead of time, sitting down with her in interviews on Zoom ahead of time, then bringing a team down and spending several days just with her, getting comfortable before we ever sat down to record. We reminded her the whole time, "Hey, this is your story, and at any point now and in the future, if you want to pull it, it's yours to pull. Just let us know." We brought her into the edit process, let her see drafts, approved drafts, moved forward into final cuts, approved final cuts, and made sure that she had clarity and knowledge of when that story was going to hit at all points.

And I share this story because what it's created is this affinity and relationship between this survivor and our organization where she is one of us. And what it did is it created this story that allows us to start from this point of hope and, yes, look backward, but to start with our audience and say, "Hey, this courageous woman wanted you to hear her story. Here it is." And that is the story that we couldn't have imagined two years ago when she walked out of exploitation, but here we are, and I'm so grateful for the pause that we put in place in that moment.

Maria: Thank you, Preston, for sharing that. It just brings me back to what it means to fully allow for agency. The pause is a great opportunity for folks to find their agency. Instead of being asked, because we think just asking is what agency is, it's actually when folks are ready to tell their story and they know and trust that an organization is going to tell it well. You just modeled that from beginning to end. I don't even know if a red line for you is that you wait until they go through the aftercare, but that's just one of those things where it gives breathing room for someone to know or to reflect on whether they're ready to share their story.

Preston: Yeah, we do have those kinds of red lines. I will say aftercare looks very different in different contexts. For instance, in Southeast Asia, we have Freedom Home aftercare shelters that are live-in, and it's a very structured kind of program that meets individualized needs, but we also expect that residents are going to be there for a minimum of a year. And so we know we're not going to even engage in any storytelling conversation with them until after that.

It gets a little bit trickier in community-based care cases where, for instance, a year before we made her video, she was like, "I want to tell my whole story now. Use my face, use my name," all the things. And we actually were like, "Let's pause. Let's wait a little bit longer." And even to this day, when her story's out, we still chose to anonymize her face and pixelate and hide some details because we understand real ramifications of a criminal network that is probably not very happy that testimony resulted in their imprisonment. And that's our responsibility as a nonprofit. I'm not going to pretend those conversations are easy decisions. They're really hard, they're really complex, and they're also not templated. It's unique in almost every circumstance.

Maria: Yeah, and I appreciate that because folks will sometimes ask me for guidance that I just can't give because it's not only different per organization, but it's different per person. I think we do have a role and responsibility when folks say, "I want to tell my story fully," to say, "Actually, we're not going to do that and put you at risk to tell this story." And for me, at least one pillar of being trauma-informed is that we are here to protect your safety. That's paramount to us.

Preston: One of the reasons why we knew we were on the right path is because when we said, "Hey, we really think we shouldn't do that," she was like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of those things."

Maria: Let's have a conversation about it.

Preston: Yeah.

Maria: Yeah, it doesn't have to be a no. It can be a conversation, an exploratory one. What would it look like if your child saw this in 15 years? Would that still feel okay? How would that sit in your body? How would you feel if your future boss saw this? These are the kinds of conversations that we can have to guide people on whether or not we should do this story now.

Thank you so much, Preston. How can we learn more about The Exodus Road or connect with you?

Preston: Thank you. Yeah, I will just brag and say that for people who are wanting to step forward into this story and learn more about trafficking, we have one of the best content teams in the business. We publish so much good resourcing and educational materials to help make sense of what is a really complex topic. So check that out. Visit the Stories tab. Of course, Instagram, The Exodus Road, TikTok, all the major places. One of the things that I'll also share is that we have a massive prevention education program in the U.S., specifically as it relates to protecting children online.

There's tons of conversation right now, as there should be, around things like child sexual abuse material, AI-generated CSAM, and sextortion. We put together a nationally leading curriculum that's available for parents and youth in online courses there. It's called Influenced, so you can find that at influenced.org.

Maria: With two young children, I appreciate that. Thank you for the work you're doing. And what if they want to reach out to you, Preston? Where's a good place for them to find you?

Preston: Yeah. So Preston Goff on Instagram. I've got a website, prestongoff.com, and then LinkedIn is great. Any of those. Send a carrier pigeon, however you want to do it, I'll respond.

Maria: Thank you for being so generous with your time and your story, and for modeling what this can look like. We can tell stories differently. We can do it, and we can still do it and change hearts and minds. So we just appreciate what you're doing over at The Exodus Road.

Preston: Oh, thank you, Maria.