Marcel van der Watt
Senior Vice President of Impact & Operations
Marcel van der Watt (Ph.D.) is the Senior Vice President of Impact & Operations at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in Washington, D.C. He is an internationally accoladed investigative and research professional with more than 20 years of experience in combating the interspersing criminal economies of organized crime, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation. His cumulative experience as a former police investigator, hostage and suicide negotiator, and human trafficking case consultant continues to inform his work. Marcel has consulted in and provided expert court testimony in several sex trafficking cases, briefed members of the US Congress on issues related to online criminality, and engaged with both the Presidency and the Multi-Party Women’s Caucus in South Africa’s Parliament on matters related to implicit harms-, myths-, and laws associated with the sex trade. His work has been published and presented on international platforms, and he has trained multidisciplinary professionals from more than 30 countries. Marcel is also a Research Fellow at the Free State Centre for Human Rights, University of the Free State (South Africa), and serves on the Executive Committee of the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars (GAHTS).
