Steven Wagner, President

Mr. Wagner was the Director of the Human Trafficking Program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2003-2006. In this capacity, he started the “Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking” public awareness campaign, designed to increase victim identification and rescue, a campaign which was recognized for excellence with the prestigious Silver Anvil Award of the Public Relations Society of America. Mr. Wagner also initiated the Trafficking Information and Referral Hotline, and other programs to increase the rate of victim identification.

Mr. Wagner also served as the Director of Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he implemented President Bush’s “Faith Based Initiative” by reforming regulations so as to allow faith-based organizations to participate in HUD’s programs. He is the founder and President of QEV Analytics, a public opinion research firm now in its eleventh year of operation. At QEV, Mr. Wagner conducts the annual survey of teenagers on their attitudes toward illegal drugs for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), among numerous other public policy related projects. He has also conducted extensive commercial and international research.

Mr. Wagner has worked in Congress and in public policy research organizations. He is now or has been on the board of directors of a number of social service organizations, serving the homeless, victims of human trafficking, victims of sexual exploitation and victims of Sudanese genocide.

Margaret MacDonnell, Senior Fellow

Margaret MacDonnell has worked on trafficked and refugee children’s policy issues for the past five years. She has managed a national training and technical assistance program on child trafficking and has provided guidance on dozens of trafficked children’s cases to service providers, law enforcement, and victim advocates. In addition to placing trafficked children with specialized, long-term foster care programs, she has provided technical assistance to those programs and training on topics related to trafficked and refugee children. She has conducted research on human trafficking, planned service programs for trafficked children, and published articles on this topic. Ms. MacDonnell has a Master’s degree in social work (Catholic University) and has spoken on the provision of services to refugee and trafficked children at national and international conferences.

Rodger Hunter-Hall, Vice President and Senior Fellow

Mr. Hunter-Hall has a broad background in faith-based initiatives, academia and politics. Beginning his professional career as an aide and personal assistant to an accomplished member of the Diplomatic Corps of the Holy See, Mr. Hunter-Hall’s portfolio included issues in bioethics as well as marriage and family issues.

At the end of his term of service, Mr. Hunter-Hall came to Washington as an editor for CRISIS Magazine, a monthly periodical on politics, culture and the Church. With a degree and background in American Government, Mr. Hunter-Hall became actively involved at this time in the seminal work, The Catholic Voter Project. This led in turn to his involvement with the Catholic outreach conducted by the Bush Campaign in the 2000 election and the invitation to assist President Bush’s family and friends during the inaugural week as an aide to the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee in January 2005.

Following the 2000 election, Mr. Hunter-Hall was appointed as Assistant Professor in Theology at Christendom’s Notre Dame Graduate School where he lectures on philosophy, theology, ethics and morality, marriage, family, and the human person. Possessing several degrees from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas in Rome and trained as librarian, he was also selected as a librarian of the Library of Congress, first serving as a subject matter expert in his fields of Religion, Philosophy and Psychology and later using his language skills in French, Italian, and the other Romance Languages.

Having previously served as a Project Manager and an Assistant Director of Catholic Charities, Mr. Hunter-Hall left the Library of Congress in order to serve as a Senior Analyst in the Human Trafficking Office of the US Department of Health and Human Services. A consultant to the American Council on Education, Mr. Hunter-Hall remains active in the academic community through research and analysis, writing, as well as the classroom.

Ian Kitterman, Legal Policy Fellow

Mr. Kitterman specializes in statutory and legislative analysis and interpretation.  He comes to the Forum with knowledge of the phenomenon of human trafficking after completing an internship at the Protection Project at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he researched personal status law and child sex tourism in Brazil. He is also currently a Juris Doctor candidate at the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Kitterman is the principal author of the Renewal Forum’s analysis of state laws pertaining to human traffickinng.