Dr. Cordisco Tsai (PhD, MSSW, RYT-200) is a social work scholar and practitioner with over 20 years of experience in the anti-human trafficking sector. Her work centers on the development, implementation, and evaluation of trauma-informed, survivor-centered, community-based services for survivors of human trafficking and gender-based violence. Dr. Cordisco Tsai is a Visiting Professor of Human Trafficking and Gender-Based Violence at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab and the Executive Director of Eleison Foundation, a nonprofit providing trauma-informed direct services to survivors, research/evaluation, and capacity building for anti-trafficking service providers. 

Dr. Cordisco Tsai has led research globally pertaining to the cultural adaptation and implementation of mental health interventions and crisis intervention services for human trafficking survivors, evaluations of economic empowerment programming in the anti-trafficking sector, and survivors’ recommendations for strengthening post-trafficking assistance services, among others. She regularly co-leads community-based participatory research with survivors, partnering with survivors in data collection, analysis, and design. She holds a BA from Brown University, MSSW, and PhD from Columbia University, and received post-graduate training in trauma recovery and researching gender-based violence from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Harvard University.