Telling the Difficult Stories with Allison Ausband and Evia Golde

On today’s episode, we’re speaking with Allison Ausband and Evia Golde about how Delta Airlines and United Way of Greater Atlanta are taking on one of Atlanta’s darkest topics, human trafficking, and brought it to life so the statistics became more than numbers. Allison and Evia also shared a few success stories that have come out of Delta’s #GetOnBoard training.

More About Allison Ausband

Allison Ausband is Senior Vice President–In-Flight Service for Delta Air Lines, leading a team of 24,000 flight attendants, supervisory and support personnel around the globe,as well as Delta's onboard global food and beverage operation and experience.

She previously served as Vice President–Reservation Sales and Customer Care, where she was responsible for 10 customer engagement centers in four countries, which handle over 37 million customer contacts each year and generate over $2 billion in annual revenue.

Under Allison’s leadership, Delta’s In-Flight Service team has achieved all time customer satisfaction scores. While in Reservation Sales, she developed and launched Delta’s social media customer service model as well as a home-based employment program, creating a new virtual workforce culture that yields more than $2 million in savings each year. She also led the corporation’s strategy to move from the bottom to the No. 2 position in DOT Consumer rankings, and under her leadership achieved JD Power certification for Delta's engagement centers--the first US airline to ever achieve.

Allison began her career at Delta in May 1985 as a flight attendant.

Currently, Allison is Delta’s executive sponsor for human trafficking and leads their annual Breast Cancer Research Foundation campaign. She is a member of Leadership Atlanta Class of 2014. She is a University of Georgia Board of Trustee and serves on the Board of Directors for Delta Community Credit Union and the Board of Trustees for the William R. and Sara Babb Smith Foundation. She is also an active member of her local church serving on the personnel committee.

More About Evia Golde

A retired attorney, Evia has served as the Human Trafficking Committee Chair for Women United Atlanta since 2014. Women United is a group of 100+ donors who support the work of the United Way of Greater Atlanta, and Women United’s signature issue is to eradicate child sex trafficking in Atlanta and Georgia. During her tenure with the UWGA Women United, she has held the role of Cabinet Chair and in 2016 was Co-Chair of the Safe Harbor Ballot Committee, a campaign that helped successfully pass the Safe Harbor Amendment to create a permanent Fund for victims of exploitation in Georgia. She is the recipient of the United Way of Greater Atlanta 2017 Leading a Life of Purpose Award.

In addition to her work at the United Way of Greater Atlanta, Evia has been a Community Advocate raising awareness to combat the sex trafficking of Georgia's children. She has been involved as a volunteer, advocate and fundraiser with multiple organizations fighting to end child sex trafficking, including Wellspring Living, youthSparke & Street Grace. She currently sits on the Board of Wellspring Living, a non profit that has been serving survivors of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation since 2001. 

 

Show Highlights

• There are 25 million victims of human trafficking - How do you take a tough topic and bring it to life so the statistics become more than numbers?
• Why did Delta take on this dark topic and how did it get involved in the prevention of it? 
• 2011 ECPAT Code of Conduct was created and Delta was the first airline to sign it and took a leadership role as a company to fight human trafficking
• What has been Deltas biggest success story? -Getting people on board to take the initiative to stop human trafficking. #getonboard
• What are the signs of human trafficking? Examples of human trafficking identifying training: employees were able to save two young girls because of what they learned in the training
• Why is the awareness piece so important? Why wasn’t it talked about before? 
• How and why did the United Way get involved? 
• Why does Atlanta have such a huge human trafficking problem?
• How has UPS been involved in combating human trafficking?
• How did the See Something Say Something campaign begin?
• During the Superbowl, there were169 arrests over 11 days.
• What is Georgia Pacific's role in the fight?
• What is the Safe Harbor Law and what does it do and how did it impact Georgia? 
• How do relatable stories change the way you look at the issue?
• Why are people willing to listen now as opposed to a few years ago?
• What are the things the victims are doing to help other victims?