Cindy Hensley McCain has dedicated her life to improving the lives of those less fortunate both in the United States and around the world. McCain serves as co-chair of the Arizona Governor’s Council on human trafficking and on the McCain Institute’s Human Trafficking Advisory Council.
She recently chatted with Stephen L. Brown, Senior Advisor at KPMG Board Leadership Center about advancing human rights. Listen to the podcast here.
Stephen L. Brown: For our listeners who may not be familiar with the McCain Institute, can you give us a brief overview of the institute and your involvement?
The McCain Institute is an action-based organization. We’re based in Washington, D.C., but we are affiliated with Arizona State University. Primarily, what we work on is, of course, the issues that are very important to my husband, which is national security, form policy, our next-generation leaders from around the world, and my portion of the institute has to do with humanitarian issues, primarily that of human trafficking. We work in conjunction. We’re not an institute that produces flypapers. We are action-based, and we seek and get results from the work that we do.
Stephen L. Brown: Excellent, and indeed. My understanding is that the institute acts as a convener to various industries and to educate them in looking for action. One of those issues, extremely important issues is human trafficking, and to educate industries of how human trafficking touches their work.
Part of the convener aspect of the institute is to make sure that we include as many people from all walks of life, from all companies, from all organizations, et cetera, and we convene them in conversation series, and we focus primarily on educating the audience on how human trafficking can be intertwined to their work and also, how this cross-dress with foster care, public health, sports, and other aspects of daily community life around the world.
Stephen L. Brown: You’re affiliated with Arizona State University and you live in Arizona? Your husband is the senior senator from Arizona? Is there any particular aspect about the state of Arizona that makes this issue of human trafficking so dearly important to have a grasp and a great handle on?
When we began this area of the institute, which is the quest to stop human trafficking, we didn’t feel like we could do anything internationally, unless we had our own house in order. By that, I mean certainly the state of Arizona and the rest of the continent of United States as well as Hawaii and Alaska.
Human trafficking is not a foreign issue. It is a foreign issue, but it’s very much a domestic issue. We estimate the numbers being upwards of 350,000 kids, minors that are trafficked every year domestically within the borders of the United States of America. This is an epidemic, and it’s also something that we thought that we had to be a part of the policy making and how we can work on the statutes of the various laws within states and most importantly, in the state of Arizona.
Since we have begun this, Arizona has become a leader on this issue, I am very proud to say, and we continue to make changes and strides in controlling and stopping this terrible scourge of human trafficking. Most recently, and this happened literally yesterday, the governor signed into law a bill that the McCain Institute was part of drafting and helping out with, and that is to remove the word “prostitute” as it applies to a child.
The word “prostitute” in my opinion is a generic word, should never be applied to a child, and I’m grateful to say that the legislature of Arizona thought the same thing and passed it into law. There’s a lot of things that we’ve been working on in terms of domestically before we begin our interest and our movement offshore on this issue.
Stephen L. Brown: Understood, and we here at the KPMG Board Leadership Center are focused on helping boards be more effective, and one of the issues that we focus on are the role of business in human rights. There is a feeling in a lot of work that we’ve done, and last year, we did a report on addressing human rights where we went and interviewed our clients and other businesses about different issues with human rights.
One of the feelings is that human rights may be a big blind spot for businesses because they may be unaware how to stop it. A couple years ago at the Sedona Forum, which I believe you were preparing for the 2017 Sedona Forum right now.
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