Kara Napolitano

Kara Napolitano is a human rights advocate and trainer. Kara holds an MA in International Development with concentration in International Human Rights Law from the University of Denver. Before completing her education, she spent eight years working and volunteering in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, working mostly with education-based NGOs in post-conflict areas. This is where she was introduced to the crime of human trafficking. She was appointed to Governor’s Colorado Human Trafficking Council Prevention Task Force in 2018 and the Equitable Access Task Force in 2022 and she is currently a commissioner on the Denver Crime Prevention and Control Commission. For the last few years, she has led training and education efforts as the Education and Partnership Director at the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking (LCHT) based in Denver, Colorado. She has trained more than 45,000 professionals across rural and urban Colorado on how to recognize and compassionately respond to labor and sex exploitation in their communities. Kara works alongside law enforcement, healthcare providers, those working with systems-involved youth and professionals in other intersecting sectors to build collaborations that prevent exploitation, support survivors, and hold perpetrators accountable in communities across the state. She joined the Board of Directors of TreeTop Child Advocacy Center in 2019.