Steven
Galster
Galster is the Founder of the counter-trafficking NGO Freeland (www.freeland.org). He is an expert on transnational organized crime, trafficking, and illicit markets, having investigated arms, wildlife, and human trafficking across the world since 1985. Projects he designed disrupted illicit trades in people and wildlife, enabling the recovery of endangered species and vulnerable communities in Russia, Africa and Asia. He and his teams helped authorities bring down major criminals and corrupt officers in 4 different continents, together with freezing and seizing over $50 million in illegal assets. Galster and his reports have featured on CNN, BBC, TIME, National Geographic, Discovery, Al Jazeera, and in the New York Times. He is the co-creator of 5 organizations: WildAid, Wildlife Alliance, Phoenix, ASEAN-WEN, and Freeland. He is currently based in Bangkok where he heads a global campaign to end pandemics (http://endpandemics.earth). He and his team are building a data fusion center (ACET) that illuminates illicit trafficking supply chains, feeding insights to law enforcement, lawmakers and behavior change specialists to prevent trafficking. Galster graduated from George Washington University with an M.A. in Security Policy Studies and Grinnell College with a B.A. in Political Science.