Deborah Sigmund and Nancy Rivard

On this second episode, we hear from Innocents at Risk Founder and Director Deborah Sigmund, and Nancy Rivard, president of Airline Ambassadors International (AAI). Nancy founded AAI to provide for orphans and vulnerable children in 1996 while working as a flight attendant for American Airlines. It is the only relief and development organization representing the airline industry. Airline Ambassadors International has hand-delivered over $60 million of aid to children in 62 countries in orphanages, clinics and remote communities, impacting over 500,000 children.

In 2009, Deborah Sigmund gave a presentation on human trafficking and Innocents at Risk's Flight Attendant Initiative at an Airline Ambassadors meeting in Miami. Deborah asked Nancy and her team to join the Innocents at Risk Flight Attendant Initiative, to which they agreed. Together, Airline Ambassadors and Innocents at Risk have trained thousands of flight attendants to identify and report suspected incidents of human trafficking. We hear about those trainings and much more in our conversation, which was recorded over Zoom on the last day of 2021.