Christa Hayden Sharpe serves as IJM’s Regional President of Asia Pacific. Christa and her regional team support six IJM Program Offices in the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia as they support national governments to end the online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines and forced labour and cross-border trafficking in various industries in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Malaysia. Christa also leads our advancement growth and strategy across the region, with offices in Australia, South Korea, and Hong Kong.

Christa joined IJM in 2005 as IJM Cambodia’s Director of Aftercare where she led a team of social workers to provide crisis care, trial preparation and case management support for over 250 sex trafficking survivors. Christa then served as a Director of Church Mobilisation in the U.S. where she engaged thousands in local and global efforts to seek justice and end violence committed against the most vulnerable. Christa returned to IJM Cambodia as Program Office Director where her team partnered with Cambodia's justice and social service systems, as well as a network of civil society partners, to successfully decrease the prevalence of child sex trafficking and increase local rule of law protections and trauma-informed support to the most vulnerable communities. Through police and social worker training and casework mentorship, municipal campaigns, monitoring and evaluation incentives, and collective action amongst civil society and government, IJM’s model led to the prevalence of child sex trafficking decreasing an additional 73% in two years. Most recently, Christa served as Vice President of Global Aftercare, and then as the Vice President of Programs, Southeast Asia before taking on this expanded Regional leadership role.

Christa holds a Master’s in Social Science Administration from Case Western Reserve University and a B.A. in Political Science and African & African Diaspora Studies from Tulane University. Christa, her husband and son currently live in the Washington, D.C. area.