Episode 38: Robin Hassler Thompson

In this episode, host Dave Fiore speaks with Robin Hassler Thompson, the executive director of the Survive and Thrive Advocacy Center. STAC provides direct support for victims of human trafficking and focuses on community education. Robin says she has always loved learning, but when she got bored with high school in 1976 she jumped into politics – not running for class president – but as a volunteer chair for Jimmy Carter’s successful presidential campaign.

She attended college in Washington, D.C., and went to summer school at Oxford before landing in Tallahassee for a program that combined a master’s in international studies and a law degree. Her love of politics led her to the Florida House, the Governor’s Office and eventually on a State Department trip to Bangladesh that would change her life.

Robin has spent much of her career focused on human rights, specifically violence against women and human trafficking. She says, “I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”