We believe our children are worth our Biggest Ideas.
Therefore, we bring you Big Ideas that restore hope in both our children and your team. We create hope through cutting-edge research, the latest brain science, and strategic foresight.
TAKE HEART
Our real-life case studies and scenarios, the insights we have gained from doing life with highly traumatized youth, and our innovative and engaging experiential learning activities turn vague concepts, buzzwords, and stats into passion that inspires action.
OUR PASSION
Passion that inspires action is where our story started. Dr. Deena Graves, M3’s founder, could not sit back and do nothing when she first learned of the atrocity of child sex trafficking in 2009. She left her corporate leadership job and founded a nonprofit, Traffick911, in Dallas to combat one of the world’s greatest atrocities and quickly found “M” tucked away inside a juvenile hall.
The tiny cell strained with the 16 years of relentless trauma crammed inside with “M.” Pieces of “M’s” story came tumbling out in relief – for the first time ever – when she heard the hope in Dr. Graves’ personally copyrighted Traps of a Trafficker child sex trafficking youth prevention-and-identification program. You can read the full story of our experience with M here.
M was the first child to live at the safehouse founded by Dr. Graves. The experience with “M” inspired the name M3 Transformations when Dr. Graves stepped down from her nonprofit and moved to California, where she carries on her work for the most vulnerable among us. Her work with many other children who have lived their own stories of torment at the hands of transnational crime syndicates, local gangs, street-level traffickers, and their own parents inspires and influences M3’s unique solutions.
OUR FOUNDER
Deena Graves, DSL
M3 President and Director
Trainer, Strategist
Dr. Graves is an international award-winning communicator, Dallas Communicator of the Year, and national speaker who quickly won accolades for Traffick911’s breakthrough solutions as the Outstanding Organization of the Year by the Fort Worth Commission for Women with commendations by the Fort Worth City Council, mayor and a state senator, as well as a federal law enforcement award and regional law enforcement recognition as a most-valued partner.
Her nationally recognized Traps of a Trafficker, experience opening a safe house, and other groundbreaking work, coupled with her doctorate in Strategic Foresight, uniquely equips M3 to create authentic and lasting transformation in teams, agencies, structures, policies and procedures, and strategies. Dr. Graves’ senior global corporate background, her role as an adjunct professor, and her extensive experience with victimized youth infuse wide-ranging leadership, business, academic, and child well-being expertise into unprecedented solutions.
Derek Williams
Trainer, Consultant
Former 32-year Trafficker
The streets became my father at 13 when I learned the abusive man I thought was my biological father wasn’t. My birth father lay a few miles away in a rehab facility, dashing any hopes I had of escaping my traumatic childhood. My identity shattered, I went in search of a new role model. The pimps, drug addicts, and other criminals who roamed the streets of my inner-city Boston neighborhood were more than happy to take me under their wing.
By 16, I had a three-bag-a-day heroin addiction I desperately searched for ways to feed. My friends and I often went to the prostitution track to rob sex buyers. It caught my attention that the only ones I saw get arrested were the girls, so I hatched a plan to take my 14-year-old girlfriend to the track, so I could avoid jail.
That was the beginning of a 32-year career as a trafficker that took me to all 50 states, Canada, and Europe.
I left the game more than 13 years ago after a life-changing experience. I take ownership of the predator I was without any excuses. I now dedicate my life to not only preventing victims of people like I was but to keeping our youth from becoming who I was. I don’t take that lightly. I went through two years of counseling and a lengthy grieving process to heal myself first.
I do trainings and consultations about the psychological warfare traffickers wage against our children, and I help youth understand the tricks, traps, and lures traffickers set for them. Dr. Graves and I also wrote a book that weaves my life story with evidence-based research, brain science, and her experience working with trafficked youth. Our goal is to give you a one-of-a-kind tool that takes the power from the streets and puts it in your hands.
Denise Williams
Trainer, Consultant
Survivor Advocate
Creator of the My Life My Choice program
I became a victim of child sex trafficking at 11. Early childhood trauma made me an easy target for the trucker willing to pay well for a quick thrill at a port-a-potty. I was too ashamed to tell anyone, so the memory freely stalked me.
I kept trying to outrun the images and thought I’d find relief in the pill a friend offered me at 13. Turned out to be acid. She then plied me with alcohol and weed before her 28-year-old brother-in-law drove me to the woods to rape me. My aunt, who was raising me, branded me “fast and nasty” when the excruciating pain from two sexually-transmitted diseases forced me to seek help. She put me on a train to the mother I’d never known.
I kept wondering if someone could make me feel a little better because I hurt so badly – physically and emotionally. Instead, more emotional and sexual abuse waited at the other end of that train ride. That’s when I hit the streets looking for someone who cared. Didn’t take long for a pimp to find me. Later, I became Derek’s longtime victim and bottom, recruiting and controlling other victims.
My heart’s desire is to help people understand the perfect storm early childhood trauma creates for a trafficker. I also unravel the path from victim to victimizer through trainings and consultations. Dr. Graves and I are writing a book weaving my story with tools to take the power from traffickers and put it back in the hands of our vulnerable children.
OUR UNIQUE VALUE
TAKE ACTION
The in-depth M3 experience with trafficked youth in a safe-house environment and work with other highly traumatized children provide hard-to-come-by insights into real-life solutions. We equip you with unique knowledge, strategies, tools, and skills to take our children back from predators and trauma. M3 is ready to design definitive hope for the specialized needs of your agency. We customize our personal solutions to the explicit high-risk factors in your region and the children and youth you serve. Ready to protect youth, take your team deeper, and create a fundamental shift in our children’s well-being?
READY TO GET STARTED?
Contact us below to learn what M3 Transformations can do for you.