Inspiring Others to Be Unabashed and Unafraid

Michael Mendenhall: Welcome to PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet. I'm your host, Michael Mendenhall. TriNet is a full-service HR solutions company committed to empowering small to medium-size businesses by supporting their growth and enabling their people. We work with some amazing small to medium-size businesses and I'm excited to bring their voices to life here. You can catch new episodes of PeopleForce Podcast every month on Apple, Spotify, YouTube and Rise.TriNet.com.

Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Brook Bello, founder and CEO of More Too Life. Over 20 years ago, Dr. Bello founded More Too Life, an anti-sexual violence and human trafficking service and prevention agency. Brook holds a PhD in Pastoral Clinical Counseling, as well as two honorary doctorates. She is the author of “Living Inside the Rainbow,” an accomplished actor, filmmaker, having screened her documentary in 2012 at Festival de Cannes, she has been honored with a lifetime achievement award by President Obama.

In 2018, she was chosen by Google as a Google Next Generation Fellow. She holds a U.S. patent in technology and is the creator of groundbreaking software in case management and virtual reality. She considers her greatest accomplishment to be the support she gives to the pained and violated survivors of all forms of sexual violence and human trafficking.

Brook, it's an honor to have you here and great to chat with you again. Brook, thank you for being here. It's great to see you again. And this will be an awesome podcast, I think, and very informative for a lot of people.

Brook: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Michael, from TriNet.

Michael: Yes. So, I wanna go all the way back. In the introduction, we talked about 20 years ago, you founded this. So many small to medium-size businesses, whether they're foundations, nonprofits or for-profit, struggle in the first five years to really get their business going. They have immense passion for what they're doing, but they're out trying to fundraise as well as build an organization.

Can you talk about your beginning and when you decided to do this, why, and what did you do to build this successful organization that you have today?

Brook: Yeah, absolutely, Michael. I always wanted to help others, to help victims, and thought that I would do it as a successful career as an actor, as an actress. At the Actor's Studio, we say actor. So, that's why I'm not saying actress, everyone. But when I started it, there were mental health issues that I had. Not anything profound, but depression, anxiety. Gifted as an actor, but I hadn't dealt with the trauma, which is very similar today.

A lot of young people and elders haven't always dealt with their mental health crises, their trauma, and haven't had an opportunity to deep dive on why that's the case, why they're having mental health issues. And sometimes it's because there were things that happened in one's childhood that were unresolved. Things that might seem minor to someone or things that are really profound, things like human trafficking.

But around Hollywood, it's a very difficult place to tame rebellion. When you are making tons of money, meeting tons of people, haven't always adopted the right type of etiquette and at the same time are not old enough or seasoned enough to be savvy to maneuver some of the responses as a young, pretty girl in Hollywood. And so there were many things that were triggering for me and for some of the others that I was around. And I saw it everywhere. And Hollywood's a really incredible place and I love everything about it, but every system, every city does have an issue with human trafficking whether people know it or not. And I saw it and I didn't know what to do with that. Because when I was rescued, I went into therapy, I went about my business and I tried not to look back. But I didn't have therapy for very long. And so I had to do something.

So with a bunch of actor friends, I started to rescue and to work with victims. And they were pretty much staying in my apartment in Hancock Park off of Sunset and Vine. If you keep going down, turns into Rossmore. And so Hancock Park, I had a really lovely apartment there, and I had all these kids living with me. And at some point, I thought, "It's gonna have to be the acting career, that I'm gonna keep going and just take care of these individuals, or I need to expand this work, which I think will help me heal even more. And I'll have to put my acting career on pause."

Michael: Brook, how old were you when you were housing these people and making those decisions?

Brook: It initially started in my mid-twenties or so, and eventually decided to incorporate.

Michael: So, if we go back, and we'll go back personally a little bit then to come back to this period, when were you trafficked? How old were you and how many years were you in that environment?

Brook: This is a difficult question, Michael, because like many survivors, overcomers, champions, we like to say, surviving is one thing, thriving is another. And then being a champion, I believe is being other-centered, is giving back. And also training other survivors like those that work on our staff as mentors. I was 11. Before 11 when I was violated in certain ways, being inappropriately touched. At 11, I was violently raped. And so to me at that point, because of the nature of the legalities around it is a form of human trafficking under federal law.

At that point, I ran away. Not at that point, but sometime after that I had challenges, and eventually I ran away. I didn't tell my parents, my mother, my brothers, as over 80% of victims don't tell. Whether you're a young boy or a young girl, you just don't. And so I ran away, and I was kidnapped off the street by traffickers that do this as a way of crime and an underground sort of network that stemmed from Los Angeles to New York to Las Vegas. And so I was trafficked from L.A. to Las Vegas to New York City.

Michael: And so now you get out, you're pursuing then the acting career.

Brook: When I was rescued, it was really difficult. I was estranged from my family. I should've been in high school finishing, completing high school in a normal way. Obviously, I missed my Sweet 16 birthday party, I missed my high school prom. I missed coming home. I missed all those things as a ribboned athlete and a straight A student. And so life was really, really difficult. So, I took a job at the Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills.

Michael: Oh yes, I remember that.

Brook: And the actor, Jon Voight, used to come in there for breakfast. Pancakes, crispy bacon and scrambled eggs. Which he still has to this day. He's still a close friend. I call him Uncle Jon. And we started to talking after a while when I realized through friends that I worked with there at the Hamburger Hamlet, that he was safe. 'Cause I was very afraid. At that same time, I took a part-time job assisting a really well-known hairstylist at Umberto's on Canon. And so I was a workaholic then and I still am pretty much.

But Uncle Jon, he said, "There's something special about you." I was in acting school. And he said, "But you're really shy." I was really nervous. And so he took me under his wing. He ended up taking me to Whoopi Goldberg's house for a birthday party. I was invited to his house often for gatherings. I would sing, we would do scene study.

He sponsored and produced a play that I was in. And I really started to work a lot as an actor. He connected me to another coach, Raymond Barry, and then to another, David Legrant. I was studying at Santa Monica College, and then also working with Natalija Nogulich, an Eastern European acting coach. And I booked my first job at Warner Brothers Film. And it was pretty epic.

And I went from sort of making money as an actor and assisting a well-known hairdresser, a male and a female, to making the type of funds that I never thought a human being could make at that age doing something that you loved. And I'll say this, Michael, in this last part of this question, is that I thought that when you're achieving a dream that everything would be better and everything would be perfect and life would be great. But within the dream, I could get on stage and I could work on a set.

One of my first films was Angela Bassett's sister in the film, "Strange Days." Obviously, my first film was called, "The Silencer." And they thought that I'd knocked this role out of the park. And I was a method actor and the character in that film was a victim of rape. And so as a method actor, you use real life experiences. I didn't use the rape, I used other pain, but I'm sure there was a transliteration of the type of emotion. And so as a young girl, I wanted to be an actor, a scientist, a nurse and do all kinds of stuff to help people.

Michael: But you're doing a multitude of things, which we're gonna get into.

Brook: Yeah. I guess that's how it all came about. And I had a really successful, thriving career until one day I decided that I needed to do something else.

Michael: Well, it's so important because now you're at that period where you're gonna be building an organization around this service that you're providing. How difficult was that? How difficult was it to find the funds? How difficult was it to find the right people to surround yourself with?

I mean, we talk a lot about small businesses and it's really the people that make the difference, the people in the organization that have to buy in to the culture, buy in to the mission. How difficult was that for you?

Brook: It was really difficult because at that time, I hadn't finished my education. I did graduate from high school, but I hadn't gone to university yet. Even though I knew I had the chutzpah and the smarts and I wanted to begin to apply for classes, I wanted to do something that I hadn't done before.

So, falling around and tripping over myself to figure out how do I now begin to incorporate the rescues that I was doing with a bunch of actors and Hollywood friends, just all over Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles, different parts of L.A.

I was being asked to speak different organizations on the issue. And it started to really, not take its toll, but all of my schedule was given to that. And so someone introduced me to Willie Jordan of one of the big missions in Downtown L.A. And they did a lot of work with women that were prostituted persons. They did a lot of work with women that were violated and LGBTQ individuals and homeless youth.

And so she took me under her wing and shared with me a lot about the nonprofit sort of sector and what it meant to build a business. And then Dr. Beverly "BAM" Crawford, who ran a huge ministry by the stadium and also did outreach and giving food to those that were homeless. And so these women really taught me what it meant to have a staff, what it meant to run a company, what it meant to sort of galvanize funds.

I had saved quite a bit of money as an actor and I put thousands upon thousands of my own money to start More Too Life.

Michael: It's amazing, because I think you've served over 750,000 people within your organizations. And you do go broader than just sexual trafficking. I want you to talk a little bit about that because you're dealing with the judicial systems, you're dealing with detectives, investigators, social workers. I mean, there's more to this than just sort of trying to help the individual. There's a whole process that you help them with. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Brook: Within the process and some of the sort of 12 systems that sort of run our country, the law enforcement system obviously is one. And the judicial system, criminal justice system is one, the health system, educational system. The law enforcement agencies, you mentioned Michael, as well as the CIA, the ATF, the FBI. And I've also been a key witness and consultant on behalf of very, I wanna say publicized and profound cases on trafficking, sex trafficking exploitation.

But a lot of the work we do is around labor trafficking and domestic servitude and the cross-pollination between those different types of trafficking, in addition to the pushing of legislative sort of bills and laws and wording and narrative.

Back in, I wanna say 2000, when my friend Laura Lederer did this huge study with Harvard. She serves on our advisory board at More Too Life. She did a two-year study with Harvard that really talked about the intersection of sexual violence, rape, human trafficking, et cetera. It's because of her study that the United States adopted in 2000 the Trafficking Victims' Re-Authorization Protection Act.

What that did is connect the federal government, eventually, to be able to understand trafficking and to connect that understanding with Health and Human Services so that grants and funds could be given to nonprofit companies and some for-profit companies, in some cases, around therapy and educational systems to combat human trafficking on a national level.

I actually did the first talk at the White House when President Obama was in office that would really begin to parse out a greater level of funds to anti-trafficking agencies so that I and others could actually apply for grants from the Office of Victims of Crime, from the U.S. Department of Justice and from Health and Human Services.

A lot of our work is around prevention, which we've been screaming about forever. Because within our society, part of our mission statement is to create a better world. The way you do that is for workplaces, whether they're for-profit or nonprofit, to have safe spaces, to have connection to mental health challenges, for employees to be able to understand themselves better by having support from employers in a way that employers can provide that, in addition to teachers and educational systems.

And so we're a part of doing a lot of that work in addition to working with traffickers and on legislation around that education, post-incarceration and buyers of what is called commercial sex. I don't call it sex when a child is raped, but human trafficking in and of itself. We provide that education which is court-appointed. And we have one of the first successful programs like that in the state of Florida. Now it's national, it's digital.

And so all of that work is intrinsic to us going into high schools, elementary schools and middle schools and colleges, doing prevention education and toolkits. One in five girls is raped, one in seven males. One in four is raped, one in five on a college campus. One in six boys, males is raped in the United States.

I'm not sure of the updated number on college campuses, but all of that required for kids and young people to have a safe place to share. That's happened to me. Where do I go and how do I get the help that I need? And how do parents help their children as well?

Michael: Well, clearly, I mean, you were in a field that a lot of people due to the celebrity status that's in society would say was awesome. "Oh, you're an actor, you're doing well. "This is something I aspire to." And you sort of gave that up. And you have this really fulfilling mission. Were there any regrets or you were like, "No, this is right for me. It was the right thing to do"? I mean, you're certainly impacting society in a really positive way. But any regrets?

Brook: No regrets at all, Michael. I think that anyone can always ask themselves throughout one's lifetime, am I fulfilled? Am I emotionally, mentally balanced? Am I emotionally impoverished in any way? Have I given back? But have I also achieved my dreams, or have I given my life over only for others without the connection to having time with my own family?

Because I don't have children because what happened to me, I'm a mom to many, but I'm also a puppy mom. And I don't have a lot of time as well, even for my own husband because I've given of myself. And so there are no regrets. But at the same time, I wanna be certain that there's value left on the table and there's not just the cycle in building a business where you're always doing direct services.

But the heightened aspects of preventing it at a greater level and connecting the understanding of that for the assistance of the world to understand how to create a better world together is intrinsically important to me as I existentialize my life and my calling.

Don't get me wrong, I've taken every aspect of my seasoned acting career to have fun with survivors, to teach self-expression, to talk about how art heals. And so all of it has had an incredible play.

And it's also connected me on building out some technology and software, which I can talk about.

Michael: Well, that's what I wanted to go to next. I mean, you're very diversified in what you do and what you offer, but you're also a tech company. And that technology gave you scale. I wanna talk about what you developed and the scale now you have given to this mission.

Brook: Yeah, thank you, Michael, for wanting to know that. I love your questions and I love TriNet and I really have had a wonderful opportunity to meet you. I hope to see you again more than just digital. Plus, like I said in New York, I love your hair and your style. Typically, I'd be wearing jeans and like a tank top 'cause I'm just a beach woman at heart.

Michael: Well, you look great.

Brook: Thank you. I'm a Google fellow, a Google Next Gen fellow. In 2017 when Google reached out, I really have learned, and I'm still a Google fellow until 2024 and through 2024. It was a program started at Google by the prolific and powerful Chanelle Hardy, who is head of Human and Civil Rights for Google. But I think that, when they ask me, "How would you scale what you do and the passion for what you do using technology to solve some of the issues and scale that connectedness to those that you serve and others?"

And so, because I'm an avid gamer, because I love VR and XR, augmented reality and AI, I initially applied for a U.S. patent on a digital case management system and mobile app. And that's because in the non-profit sector, we're paying certain companies upwards of $750 to $2,500 a month for digital case management systems. And nonprofit budgets, as high as they may be, you want to save where you can. And so that went through, and that started to be pilot and beta-tested.

And then I had the opportunity to meet Chance Glasco, one of the co-creators and founders of "Call of Duty" to talk about Tech for Good. And so we're building out now an AI-enabled SaaS model and B2B model of something we call prescription gaming that we've trademarked, in addition to AI and XR experiences for anyone with a mental health crisis. That connection is to be able to assist not only victims of trafficking, but anyone in the world with a mental health issue while also pushing the envelope to give back to the anti-trafficking movement.

And so much of that's about scale because what you hear is people that are looking for help, it's very difficult. It's months and months to when you can see somebody, when you can talk to somebody. And we just really haven't addressed it as a nation the way we should.

Michael: And so much of that is about scale. And I'm gonna say the whole AI thing is probably a separate podcast with you when you think about the opportunities, but also some of the concerns around what could happen with AI and its influence on people, certainly with news and communication.

But I wanna go back to this because now you have this scale. You're much broader than just sexual trafficking and sexual violence as well and mental health around all of this. The numbers that you were giving relative to on-campus ages and how many people are being raped. Where are we as a nation if you think about addressing these issues? Are we in the infancy? Are we partway through addressing this? Like where are we in that spectrum of maturity around really tackling this issue?

Brook: Well, I'm actually headed to the Dominican Republic for the Global Summit on Human Trafficking, really sponsored by Free the Slaves. John Cotton Richmond, who's a former TIP Ambassador for the United States government. State Department will be there, U.S. Department of Justice, a bunch of NGOs from around the world. And one of the focuses of the summit is that people are still not aware about the issue on a national and a global level. I meet people every day in my circles that don't really understand.

And so I think we're at the intersection between partial understanding coming out of certain aspects of victim blaming, meaning there's never been a such thing as child prostitution. There's never been, typically, an overly sexualized young person who probably wasn't violated in a wrong way. And no one is ever born wanting to sell themselves as a way of life had they not been sort of manipulated into it. There might be a small percentage that do, and I understand that, but most don't.

And so I think we are at a place where some individuals are able to sort of grasp and understand at some level, but it's not as palatable to some individuals. It's very hard to swallow. And some people would rather say, "I don't want to think about that."

But the unfortunate truth, Michael, is that the ages of those that are violated are getting younger and younger and younger. Poverty sort of connects to destruction, disruption, in addition to emotional poverty that creates someone's ability to be more highly vulnerable. And so we're in that place where children are hurting, they are really vulnerable, and we need to do everything we can on a mass level to create prevention campaigns and safe spaces, especially as we do with technology.

Michael: Brook, what's the youngest person that you've helped?

Brook: Four.

Michael: Four years old, wow.

Brook: And the eldest was 70.

Michael: Wow. Well, that's way unexpected. But all of this is disturbing, and I think for sure, awareness and prevention are incredibly important. It was really interesting to see how the airlines are training their flight attendants to recognize it. Do you see more and more corporations that are in the service sector, whether it be like an Uber or some of these other organizations training their people?

It was interesting, I was in an Uber this morning, and I was talking about coming to interview you, and he goes, "You know, get training on this, how to recognize human trafficking." Do you see more of that happening?

Brook: Absolutely. Hilton, Marriott, Delta Airlines, American Airlines have really strong, strong educational training for all of their staff. And so you're seeing a lot of points where a child has been actually rescued because of the “see something, say something” type of training that staff have been able to go through.

Still a lot more has to be done. When you think of that cross-pollination of global companies, companies that are here in other parts of the world where the issues are different, the cultures are different, there has to be different types of training. When you think of the understanding and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals, for different ethnic backgrounds and different gender-based biases in our country and around the world, there has to be more training on how to include everyone and have safe spaces to respect and honor everyone. And I think when that happens, we'll have a greater propensity to rescue and to prevent.

Michael: So, sort of wrapping this up, I want to ask you, what's your legacy? What would your legacy be relative to all of this or even with your life? Like what would you hope your legacy would be?

Brook: I'm gonna show you an image, if you don't mind, if that's okay.

Michael: Sure. And because we're also podcasts, so we're both video and audio, explain, then, what you'll show so the audio version of this understands what you're showing.

Brook: This image is of my book that comes out in October. And the portrait was done by Dan Spalding. I cried when he painted me. It was like 16-hour sitting. Actually, Annie Leibovitz took photos of this for me when I had the opportunity to shoot with TriNet. She's lovely, lovely, lovely.

But then the name of this book is called, "Shame Undone." And for many, many months, years, I had a lot of shame for what happened to me as a child. I thought, as many young people do and some older people that are still holding on to things that were never your fault.

I think my legacy is to inspire people to be unashamed and unabashed in being your authentic self. And to be unafraid to cry loud if something inappropriately has happened to you, even as a child. Don't hold it in. It's a part of your authentic self. And on the other side of adversity is an equal or greater reward, and we all have to get to the other side of pain.

And I think that is my greatest legacy is shame being undone, and hopefully giving space to individuals to live a life of purpose and promise, and them allowing they're shame to be undone as well.

I think it's my greatest legacy, at least I hope so.

Michael: Well that's absolutely beautiful, honestly, and I can't wait to read this book.But I wanna end, though, with you at least calling out how people can donate to your organization to help support what you're doing for these hundreds of thousands of people that you're helping every year.

Brook: For the mental health, for the independent living, for housing, for mentoring and court advocacy and transportation, for incredible staff, anyone can go to More Too Life. That's M-O-R-E-T-O-O-L-I-F-E.org, and donate.

And what I love about how we receive donations, you can donate money, you can donate time, you can also donate Bitcoin or any other cryptos, which is exciting. And our executive director, Dawn Sakes, is available, and our entire staff is incredible, our board of directors.

I wanna say we do a forensic audit every year. We've been around for 19 years, almost 20. Over 20 if you count, we started before we were incorporated, two years before. We are a trusted organization and we thank any type of support. Even retweeting our tweets and our Instagram posts and our Facebook posts is also an option.

Michael: You've gotta take this podcast and push it everywhere so that everyone can understand exactly what you're doing and the impact you are having in such a positive way. We see so much news and polarization and lack of diversity, and at times, you think, are we going backwards with society? And you see something like this, it's so positive, so inspiring, and feels so good. And you can participate with More Too Life in being a part of that positive movement that is making a difference in people's lives.

And Dr. Brook, I cannot tell you how I'm pleased to have you on this podcast. And you're inspiring, way inspiring, for many, many people, including myself. And keep doing what you're doing 'cause it's making a difference.

Brook: Thank you, Michael.

Michael: Thank you.

I want to remind everybody that our podcast, the PeopleForce Podcast by TriNet is committed to helping small, medium-size businesses and their leaders with timely and relevant business content. The PeopleForce Podcast drops new episodes every month, and we hope you continue catching our new episodes on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and Rise, R-I-S-E.TriNet, T-R-I-N-E-T.com. To get relevant SMB news and info, make sure you subscribe to our podcast, and to our newsletter at trinet.com/insights.

Quotes

“A lot of our work is around prevention, which we've been screaming about forever. Because within our society, part of our mission statement is to create a better world.”

“We're in that place where children are hurting, they are really vulnerable and we need to do everything we can on a mass level to create prevention campaigns and safe spaces.”

“There has to be more training on how to include everyone and have safe spaces to respect and honor everyone. And I think when that happens, we'll have a greater propensity to rescue and to prevent.”

“I think my legacy is to inspire people to be unashamed and unabashed in being your authentic self. And to be unafraid to cry loud if something inappropriately has happened to you, even as a child.”

“On the other side of adversity is an equal or greater reward and we all have to get to the other side of pain.”

“I think that is my greatest legacy is shame being undone and hopefully giving space to individuals to live a life of purpose and promise. And them allowing their shame to be undone as well.”