Ioana Bauer has been active in the area of protecting human rights and dignity since 2005. Starting in 2010, she has dedicated her efforts to eradicating human trafficking by leading and shaping prevention activities, developing materials on the issue, designing capacity building activities, and creating new policy frameworks on the issue.

Ioana is an Ashoka Fellow, a 2020 Resilience Fellow with GITOC, and is recognized as one of the women leaders advancing the UN SDGs globally. She is currently serving as President Of The Board Of Directors at eLiberare, a leading Romanian anti-trafficking CSO, after finishing her term as policy adviser in the office of the Prime Minister in the Romanian Government, where she led the working group on child safety and has piloted policy initiatives in the area of combatting and preventing trafficking in human beings.

As part of the Ukrainian crisis response, Ioana has spearheaded a new protection model designed at preventing and identifying trafficking in human beings cases among refugees and has supported capacity building efforts among a multitude of first responders.

Ioana is passionate about fighting injustice, being a firm believer in the power of community and collective action. Other than her professional endeavors, Ioana spends her time intentionally loving on her family: she is a proud girl-mom & dog-mom and will rarely turn down a snowboarding adventure with her spouse.