Alumni Spotlight: Kristin L. Fortin ’06
Policy Counsel, Polaris Project
Each day Kristin Fortin goes to work, she’s joining a fight against a crime that many people don’t even know exists: human trafficking. Fortin is policy counsel for Polaris Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit committed to combating this growing, global criminal enterprise. In that role, Fortin helps defend people forced or coerced into slavery for the purposes of sex or labor. She also works to promote and develop federal and state laws, represent victims of human trafficking, and raise society’s awareness of the problem and develop solutions.
Service has always been important to Fortin, and advocating change through her work, writings, and publications has been a constant since law school. While at Notre Dame, Fortin served as managing editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy. She was also involved in building more comprehensive, restorative alternatives to resolving domestic criminal justice issues through her service as a juvenile public defender and her volunteer work for the Restorative Youth Justice Project.
Fortin says she was empowered by the type of legal education she gained at Notre Dame. “The professors at Notre Dame were interested in how we think about the law, not just that we know what the law says,” Fortin recalls. She was inspired by professors like Paolo Carozza, Richard Garnett, Jimmy Gurulé, and John Copeland Nagel, who helped her think about how the law can be used as a tool for enhancing human dignity.
Her consciousness already raised about crimes of coercion, deception, and assault that “get at the heart and the soul of a human being,” she found herself prompted to fight human trafficking when she became more aware of its toll—27 million people worldwide (including in the United States). “We have a long way to go to educate people about why laws are necessary, and how to address problems that aren’t always so tangible, like coercion,” she said.
Prior to joining Polaris Project earlier this year, Fortin worked as an associate at King & Spalding—where her pro bono efforts focused on domestic violence cases—and then as special assistant on law and policy for the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Fortin’s most recent outreach to professional audiences includes an article in the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics titled “Reviving the Lawyer’s Role as Servant Leader.”
Link to the paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1208642.
