Empowering Survivors: A Conversation with Brook Bello on Human Trafficking and Healing

Samantha Wellington: Hello, everyone. I am super pleased to be here today. I'm going to bring on the stage to join me, Dr. Brook Bello. Aside from her role at More Too Life, which is an anti-sexual violence and human trafficking service and prevention foundation that she founded, Dr. Bello also serves as an expert for HHS, the FBI, she's a Google fellow and a U.S. patent holder with a new mental health fitness AI gaming company, which was born out of working with those in trauma. Dr. Bello, please welcome me on the stage. We are so pleased to have you here.

Welcome!

Brook Parker-Bello PhD.: Hi, thank you.

Samantha: Indeed. Now, I am fortunate enough to already know a little bit about your background, but for some of those in the audience who may not be, could you share a little bit about your background, about how you found yourself founding More Too Life, and maybe a little bit about what More Too Life does?

Dr. Bello: Yeah, absolutely, Samantha. I love your accent, by the way.

Samantha: Thank you.

Dr. Bello: Well TriNet, thanks for having me, Michael and Burton. I appreciate being here and having a company that uses TriNet. I am a survivor of human trafficking. And so, I can't go into the whole story now, but it started when I was 11. And all of that abuse leads to this sort of undulating lack of possibilities, potential meeting opportunity. And I became an actor after I was rescued, but there was a lot of challenges in my own skin and discovering identity. So I started rescuing kids all around Hollywood and I thought to myself, "there must be more to life." And so, since my apartment wasn't big enough, we decided to incorporate and become a nonprofit and do it. And so, my life shifted from this childhood dream of going into science and going into theater and acting and doing this work.

Samantha: It's really quite powerful. So in addition to being a founder and a CEO and an activist and an actor and a survivor, you're also an author and a teacher. You've talked about the legacy of fatherhood and you've written a curriculum that is designed to help men understand how powerful they are in curbing human trafficking. Could you talk a little bit about that, please?

Dr. Bello: Yeah. You know, human action is an expression of value, and so the things we do moment to moment are predicated upon either a false identity, or if it's not a false identity, it's something placed upon us by those around us, or it could be authentic. But in the work, working with the White House and working with federal agencies and rescuing kids, we've rescued close to 11, 000 now. Next year is our 20th year anniversary as a nonprofit.

Samantha: Yay!

Dr. Bello: And I think that men are the biggest part of the issue in a patriarchal society of different types of violence, especially sexual violence. And men will be the biggest part of the solution. So I've always felt, Samantha, that the legacy of fatherhood and that men, if they understood prevention, if they understood their power, then we can prevent issues of sexual violence against boys and girls and women. And so the legacy of fatherhood, restorative justice, is a program online that started in Sarasota in Miami, Florida, that teaches men that are coming out of incarcerated processes, or paying for purchasing, or other men in the community and with large organizations about the power of who they are.

Samantha: Of who they are and the power that they have to be part of the solution.

Dr. Bello: Absolutely. It goes through a whole history of the mental health aspects of what happens to them when they're addicted, what happens to children and families and community and the whole breakdown of family and society when men are the violators, when they typically want to be someone that actually supports and helps community.

Samantha: And helping folk to understand how to be that and do that, which I think requires empathy.

Dr. Bello: And I see it as a type of victim services, as a part of direct services. Because I haven't met a victim that didn't love a boy or love a man or love an uncle.

Samantha: Yeah.

Dr. Bello: And so when they discover the power of who they are, everything changes. Everything changes.

Samantha: Is the power of standing in someone else's shoes, right, the power of sort of understanding and seeking first to understand, and seeking first to understand why you're doing the thing?

Dr. Bello: Absolutely. I think when you've been in a room like I have with more than two handfuls of men purchasing me and harming me to go through this undulating aspects of mental health to start a nonprofit and to heal through that process and therapy, it's very telling of the power that I've learned, even my connection to my own dad before he died two years ago, and my brothers who are surrounding me. There's this extraordinary aspect of fatherhood and connectedness so that I could actually believe that I could come out of all of that demise, that men did not see me, and it happens in the workspace too, where women feel less valued.

Samantha: Yeah. I love that. Thank you. As I was preparing for our chat, I did come across another discussion that you had, where you talked through the interplay of mental health, IQ, EQ and AQ.

Dr. Bello: Yes.

Samantha: And I think most folks have probably heard of, understand IQ and EQ, but AQ was new for me. I hadn't heard about it before. Could you talk a little bit about AQ, the adaptability question?

Dr. Bello: Yes, Sam. And so when you're coming out of trauma, regardless of the trauma, especially human trafficking and this type of trauma, you're often foggy brain. So your propensity and ability to understand your IQ can be difficult and even to test. But one thing that is really high is emotional quotient, EQ. And then AQ, your ability to adapt to changing environments. We all need a really high AQ to live in the world today, especially coming out of the pandemic, dealing with ChatGPT and a bunch of different new modalities, working remotely as well.

And so survivors have been told how to behave, where to go, what to do, and they've had to adapt to variants of people, couples, men, cultures, demographics, United States and around the world. And so that AQ is actually high and so when we rescue victims, we just did a huge bust and it connected to about 200 victims that More Too Life was a part of rescuing. I think that teaching the underlying tools about AQ really sets survivors apart into developing certain aspects of their character that would be good as they move forward in life.

Samantha: And I love it so much because we talk about, a couple of years ago, there was a lot of conversation about grit and the value of grit in a human and how that's the thing that you seek when you're looking for sort of strong employees, strong folk to work for you. And what I think is very interesting about the story of a survivor is that AQ element and how useful it is, frankly, in getting through life in general, because it caused you to be a survivor. That adaptability caused you to be able to survive. But it's also the thing that I actually think can help you thrive, frankly, in corporate America.

Dr. Bello: Yes.

Samantha: So, I think what I'm saying is that survivors represent incredibly good employees, in the event that you find yourself in an occasion to hire one.

Dr. Bello: Absolutely. At More Too Life, we say "victim to survivor, survivor to thriver, thriver to champion." And champion is when you're other-centered and you take all of that passion and that drive and it's no longer only about you, but you're paying it forward and you do that in a workplace setting that's very healthy.

Samantha: Yes. Yes. And you're teaching the skillset to do that, which is wonderful. So with your work in the anti-human trafficking movement and victim care, AI machine learning and digital video games isn't the first thing that comes to mind as the next thing you might do. So could you talk about how that happened and what that is?

Dr. Bello: I think because of the abuse I suffered, my husband and I, who's this beautiful Irish Italian man—hi, Teddy—I just got that in, we couldn't have children, but I have like hundreds and hundreds of children. But what I learned is that you end up living life later in life when you're coming out of trauma.

And I think that the issues of human traffic and sexual violence and the numbers of how they globally tend to lead to this idea of mental fitness. And the foundation that most people didn't realize that their own child was a victim of trafficking. They thought somehow it was their fault. That means that the balance and the archetype and structure of who we are was off balance, mentally.

And so when Google reached out to say, we want you to be a Google Fellow in 2017 through 2024, I was like, "yes, of course." And so I began to learn about technology as a saw for social impact, social justice, and other aspects of human existence. And that's when I got my first U.S. patent in dividing a digital therapeutics, mobile app and CRM system. Then I partnered with the guys from Avalon and those that created Call of Duty, Atlantic Council, Rosemary Mann, and some incredible people from the CDC and World Health Organization in an AI enabled SaaS model that is prescription gaming and VR experiences for mental health. So immersive experiences with sound baths and games for workplace experiences and anywhere in the world meeting your therapist via avatar.

And that's powerful because as a woman of color, small business is difficult. We are the last on the totem pole to be able to be funded. We are less than 2%. We are minus 1% in some demographics. And so this, I think if there's mental balance and equity and fairness, this is what will move our communities and businesses and our world forward when we all have a leveling playing field. And I think that mental health is a part of that.

Samantha: I love that. And I also love that you're taking it well. I am in no way an expert in what I'm about to say, so you feel free to tell me that I'm completely wrong. There is a general perception that gaming and video gaming can contribute to violent behaviors in society and particularly in young men. And I think it's interesting that you're taking that vehicle and turning it into...

Dr. Bello: It's tech for good. Yeah. Money, fiat, cash. I'm really into cryptocurrencies as well as fiat can be used for bad. It's stuffed in suitcases and sent all around the world, especially in the foundation of the issue of trafficking. Household glue at one time was used as a drug, and it's something for arts and craft. Gaming and AI have these propensities to really move us along and to create a fairness and equity in our world. But it can also be used for negativity. We're just speaking about that. Yes, a viper in the back.

Samantha: All right. So let's switch gears a little bit. You have a book that came out in October, called Shame, or will come out. Oh, sorry. I apologize. Cause we're not at October yet. Yeah. It's September. It will come out in October.

Dr. Bello: It's been a year.

Samantha: We're all a little, yeah. I'm mostly confused, but at least you know what month it is. So how has Shame played a role? And what would you ask of the businesses out there—so we're speaking to a group of small businesses in the audience—to help maximize support, to help prevent.

Dr. Bello: Absolutely. First, I want to thank Irene Gamble, our board chair, who is a businesswoman and starting a new huge, massive business from Ukraine, is here with me. Shame is this thing that the men that I've worked with and that I mentor, even former human traffickers, sort of go down the rabbit hole. And we all feel shame in different undulating aspects, so I'm really excited about the book. I think that workplace mental health programs need to really enlarge themselves. We're doing a project with a friend of mine, David Arkless, in Africa.

And when I started thinking about it, they were going to release a bunch of different type of technologies to a village there. And they were going to give equal pay and equal jobs to males and females, boys and girls, not necessarily realizing, in my thesis, that when those girls go home, there could be this issue of being violated or hurt or bullied because she's making the same as a young man her same age.

And I think that with the issue of human trafficking, dead bondage, workplace challenges, if there's not a safe space and transparency around mental fitness within the workplace, if the HR is not diving deep into the KYC and educational and identities of workers, especially foreign nationals that have come to the United States that are less experienced and educated on their rights, on their human rights and workplace rights, we have a lot of challenges because we have rescued victims from hotels that worked, and I won't name those hotels, but very large chains, and those HR departments had no idea that that was taking place. So I think that every for-profit company should connect with an anti-trafficking agency within their community and be educated to the red flags in their jurisdiction, in their area and do prevention programs.

Samantha: Interesting. Thank you. So, thank you so much. Thank you for the work that you do. We have done other work with Dr. Brook Bello. There's a podcast, as well as a video on the TriNet Rise platform. You can also go to moretoolife.org to learn more about the organization and the work that they do. You've heard a really fabulous idea for what you can be doing to help.

If you were in my session yesterday, you know, I love a good call to action. So call to action. Contact the anti-trafficking organization in your local jurisdiction and work out what the red flags are in your local jurisdiction. If you're a TriNet client, please reach out to your contact at TriNet.

We do have mental health services, education services available that you can be utilizing through TriNet. And if you've heard another great idea on the stage here today that you can be part of a solution, please put it into place. Do something different tomorrow to what you did today, write it down, do it and help be part of the solution.

So thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Bello: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Samantha: We so much appreciate it. Thank you.