Christa Hayden Sharpe

Christa Hayden Sharpe serves as IJM’s Regional President of Asia Pacific. Christa and her regional team support six IJM Field Offices in the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia as they combat the online sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines and forced labor and cross-border trafficking in various industries in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Malaysia. Christa also leads our advancement growth and strategy across the region, with offices in Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Christa joined IJM in 2005 as IJM Cambodia’s Director of Aftercare where she led a team of social workers to provide crisis care, trial preparation and case management support for over 250 sex trafficking survivors. Christa then served as a Director of Church Mobilization in the U.S. where she engaged thousands in local and global efforts to seek justice. Christa returned to IJM Cambodia as Field Office Director where her team partnered with Cambodia's justice and social service systems to build a trauma-informed network of protection and care that decreased the prevalence of child sex trafficking and increased services to the public. Through police and social worker training and casework mentorship, municipal campaigns, monitoring and evaluation incentives, and collective action amongst civil society and government, IJM Cambodia saw the prevalence of child sex trafficking decrease an additional 73% in two years. Most recently, Christa served as Vice President of Global Aftercare, and then as the Vice President of Programs, Southeast Asia before taking on this expanded Regional leadership role.

Christa holds a Master’s in Social Science Administration from Case Western Reserve University and a B.A. in Political Science and African & African Diaspora Studies from Tulane University. Christa, her husband and son currently live in the Washington, D.C. area.