Amy O’Neill Richard

Amy O’Neill Richard is an international human trafficking expert with more than three decades of State Department experience shaping foreign policy, advancing human rights, and countering transnational organized crime. Ms. Richard currently serves as the senior director for Human Rights & Freedom at the McCain Institute leading programs and partnerships centered on protecting and advancing individual human rights and freedom around the world.

From 2001-2025, she worked in the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. She helped establish the office and guide U.S. and global anti-trafficking policy, initiatives, and taskforces through engagement with governments, non-governmental organizations, survivor leaders, and the private sector in every global region and across the United States.  She led teams that produced the Trafficking in Persons Report and advanced public diplomacy. Richard has forged multi-stakeholder partnerships and fact-finding missions; co-chaired the U.S. Government Committee on Research and Data; organized action-oriented events at the White House, United Nations, World Bank, and OSCE; and developed and delivered anti-trafficking trainings for Ambassadors, foreign service officers, and acquisitions personnel.

From 1991-2000, Richard worked in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in the Office of African Affairs and Office of Terrorism, Narcotics and Crime. She established and managed the transnational organized crime portfolio and conducted research globally on human trafficking. Her own research findings were covered in major media outlets and informed landmark U.S. legislation as well as earned her many State Department awards. She received her Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Richmond.