OUR Rescue, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit that combats sex trafficking and child exploitation, plans to move its headquarters to Minneapolis.

Tammy Lee, OUR Rescue’s CEO and a veteran Minnesota business executive, said in a Wednesday interview with Twin Cities Business that there are many reasons to center the nonprofit’s work in Minneapolis.

“There is such a strong foundation here, in the legal community as well as the philanthropic community and the survivor support community,” Lee said. “It was the perfect trifecta for choosing Minnesota for the headquarters.”

OUR Rescue supports the work of law enforcement in identifying sexual predators, partly by supplying them with digital forensics tools that they need to find perpetrators and make arrests. The nonprofit is also engaged in survivor programming as well as various education and prevention initiatives.

Lee hopes to secure a new global headquarters in Minneapolis by January.

Currently, there are 124 employees and contractors who work internationally for OUR Rescue, while 99 people work within the United States, according to Jessica Carlson, an OUR Rescue spokeswoman.

In 2023, the organization had $50 million in total revenue and $53 million in total expenses, according to OUR Rescue’s 2023 IRS Form 990.

CEO Lee joined the organization in late February. She was recruited for the position because she had worked on the sex trafficking issue when she was employed by Carlson — then a global hospitality and travel company — and Northwest and Delta airlines.

“I came into this role with the need to really turn this organization around,” Lee said. “It had a troubled past.” She added that her job focuses on doing “a turnaround, rebuild, and rebrand.”

The nonprofit was founded by Tim Ballard, a former Homeland Security agent, in 2013 as Operation Underground Railroad. In April, Lee and the board renamed the organization OUR Rescue, but they continue to deal with the legal and reputational fallout caused by Ballard.

“The mission is good,” Lee said. “There are a lot of amazing people that work in Salt Lake City and in our 27 countries around the world. But this one individual is accused of some actions against women that caused the board to separate from him. They needed a new leader to come in and really make sure that we could continue on this mission, which is to rid the world of sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation.”

Operating under a legal cloud

On Friday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on the latest litigation against Ballard. “New federal lawsuit accuses Tim Ballard of human trafficking, alleging he coerced and sexually abused multiple women,” was the story headline on the newspaper’s website.

Six women who sued Ballard in state court are plaintiffs in the new federal lawsuit, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. It also indicated that the plaintiffs’ attorneys “have filed a total of eight lawsuits against Ballard on their behalf and others” in the past year.

“The women in the other lawsuits, as well as the new federal lawsuit, allege that Ballard groomed them, manipulated them and sexually exploited them, with acts ranging from assault to rape,” the Salt Lake Tribune reported. In the article, an attorney for Ballard said that “plaintiffs are engaging in desperate forum shopping with the same tired allegations which one judge after another has called inconsistent and unsupported by facts.”

In a lengthy September article, the New York Times reported that women who worked for Ballard said they were sexually abused during undercover missions to rescue children in foreign countries.

“In lawsuits beginning last year, the women said that Mr. Ballard preyed on their desire to help trafficking victims, coercing or forcing them into sexual encounters as part of their undercover work in brothels, strip clubs and massage parlors,” the Times reported.

“Mr. Ballard won credibility across the varied worlds of religion, law enforcement, media, politics and entertainment. By 2020, Operation Underground Railroad was raising nearly $50 million a year in donations, with a roster of supporters that included the conservative media mogul Glenn Beck, the motivational speaker Tony Robbins and the Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin,” according to the Times article.

The Times interviewed 10 women who worked with Ballard in his capacity with Operation Underground Railroad. “[They] now describe their time there as a nightmare of sexual harassment, coerced sexual contact and sexual assault,” the Times said.

“Many had long ties to the Latter-day Saints and said in lawsuits and interviews that they initially trusted Mr. Ballard because of his broad acclaim and the support he had received from the church leadership, and they believed deeply in the cause of saving children,” the Times reported.

Moving beyond Ballard

“A significant milestone on our path of transformation” is the way OUR Rescue’s board chairman Sean Vassilaros described the CEO hiring of Lee. “Tammy’s passion for the mission and subject matter expertise, coupled with her impressive track record of experience as an organization builder, make her the ideal leader to steer [OUR Rescue) into the future and rebuild the trust of the anti-trafficking community,” Vassilaros said in a February news release.

“We now need to go where we can continue to grow and expand the mission,” Lee said in the Wednesday interview with TCB. “We really believe that Minnesota is the best place to do that.”

Lee said that many key partners remain supportive of OUR Rescue’s work, and she’s excited that five well-regarded leaders recently accepted appointments to the nonprofit’s board.

Announced in September, the new board members are:

• Derek Benner, who has had a 30-year career in federal law enforcement and led the creation of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Countering Human Trafficking.
• Lindy Borchardt, assistant criminal district attorney for Tarrant County in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, who prosecutes human trafficking cases.
• Abigail Casas Munoz, a pediatrician, researcher, and professor who founded the Center for Advanced Studies on Violence and Prevention at the National Institute of Pediatrics in Mexico City.
• James M. Sweeney, a serial entrepreneur who started 14 health care companies and founded Kids Set Free, a foundation to support organizations combatting child sexual exploitation.
• John Trenary, the director of SEARCH Group’s digital forensic services. He’s a court-qualified subject matter expert with training in cybercrime investigations.

In its first decade, Operation Underground Railroad focused on international rescues. With a new board and leadership team, Lee said that the newly-named OUR Rescue is going to allocate more resources to domestic activities.

“We supported law enforcement in all 50 states, but really did not do direct survivor care services here in the U.S.,” Lee said.

“In this coming year, we’re going to be building out direct services for survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation,” she said. Those services are targeted to women and children.

“We’re also looking at supporting key populations that are really underserved, looking at the indigenous populations and partnerships with other non-governmental organizations to do that work,” Lee said.

“There are a lot of transgender youth who are victims of human trafficking that we want to support, as well as boys. There are almost no services, no shelter, no beds for young boys who are being trafficked or sexually exploited,” Lee said.

“As we talk with law enforcement partners here, they say their No. 1 need is services for the victims that they help rescue,” Lee said, adding that this type of service expansion will be a top priority for her.

Building a Minneapolis headquarters staff

Lee said that she didn’t want to disrupt the lives of OUR Rescue employees who are doing a good job in Salt Lake City. So employees who work in areas such as finance, accounting, legal, and human resources will continue to be based in Utah.

As attrition happens, new job roles will be filled in Minneapolis, she said.

“A lot of the marketing and communications team is already being built out here [in the Twin Cities],” she said. “We’ll be building out advancement.”

She anticipates starting 2025 with about 15 to 20 employees based in Minneapolis and will then expand staff beyond that core group.

She’s hired Minneapolis-based KNOCK Inc. to serve as OUR Rescue’s creative agency and selected True Media, with an office in Minneapolis, to be the nonprofit’s digital strategy agency.

Beyond leading employees in a Minneapolis office, Lee is focused on building relationships with nonprofits that serve survivors, law enforcement, prosecutors, law firms, and the philanthropic community.

In the short term, Lee will be creating a Minnesota advisory board for OUR Rescue, which she expects will include some business leaders.

OUR Rescue also plans to award $100,000 in grants to Minnesota nonprofits who provide services to address sex trafficking. The deadline for applications is Friday, Nov. 1.

Lee is involved in ongoing discussions with Twin Cities-based law enforcement. “We’re fortunate that we also have a really great and active U.S. attorney’s office led by Andy Luger,” Lee said.

She’s been contacted by attorneys from some of the largest law firms in the Twin Cities who want to be involved in pro bono work to combat sex trafficking.

While OUR Rescue has relied on many small donations to do the organization’s work, Lee said that the Twin Cities is a generous giving community, and she anticipates obtaining financial support from some Fortune 500 companies.

The average donation the nonprofit receives from individuals is about $27. Lee will be seeking support from private, corporate, and family foundations to fund the work of OUR Rescue.

Gaining inspiration from Marilyn Carlson Nelson

Lee learned about fighting sex trafficking from a company leader who did what she believed was right, instead of being afraid to take on a new challenge.

While other business leaders were unaware of the problem or simply sitting on the sidelines, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, former chair and CEO of Carlson, chose to educate her hotel and hospitality employees about how to spot and report potential traffickers.

“She was the first hotel leader to really take a stand in the space,” Lee said. “Marilyn said, ‘It’s happening in our hotels and we are going to do something about that,’ ” Lee recalled.

“She was the person who had the strong voice that convinced the other hotel chains, Marriott, Hilton, and others” to get involved in addressing the problem, Lee said.

The Obama administration gave the Carlson company a special recognition—the Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Lee was vice president of corporate affairs at Carlson from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2015. She was involved with corporate grantmaking, including efforts to fight human trafficking. Lee also served on the White House Interagency Task Force to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Those experiences led to the work that she is doing today.