Honouring her extraordinary contribution in tackling the menace of human trafficking in Houston, an Indian-American woman has been presented with a presidential award by US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
Minal Patel Davis, an Indian-American woman who is a special advisor on human trafficking to Sylvester Turner, the Houston mayor was honoured with the ‘Presidential Medal for Combating Human Trafficking’ last week in the White House. US President Donald Trump also attended the ceremony.
“It was unbelievable,” Davis said after she received the award.
“My parents came here from India. I was the first one in my family born in the United States, so to end up in the Mayor’s office a few years ago, and then to now end up in the White House, it was unbelievable,” she added, on receiving the country’s highest honour in this field.
Davis was appointed in the July of 2015 and she made an impact on human trafficking locally in Houston and also helped in advancing systems change.
Currently, Davis is working to implement Mayor Turner’s Anti-Human Trafficking Strategic Plan–which happens to be the first of a kind to human trafficking by a city in the United States.
She has presented this initiative by Houston at several local, national and international panels.
Davis was a speaker at the United Nations World Humanitarian Summit and on the request of the State Department, she has travelled to countries like India and China to talk about human trafficking and how municipal leadership can help solve the problem from the roots.
She is post-graduate in MBA from the University of Connecticut and completed her bachelors from New York University.