Name: Tomas Lares
Game Honored: Orlando Magic vs. Denver Nuggets (12/1/21)
Lares has over 31 years of human services experience at the local, state, and national level, managing and starting non-profit and public advocacy initiatives. He began his career in 1990 working with Big Brother Big Sisters where he worked with children that were being exploited by their parents for drugs. This was the beginning of his advocacy in child welfare and prevention of child abuse for 14 years. In 2004 Lares became aware of the crime of human trafficking by then U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, KS. In 2005, Lares was instrumental in facilitating one of the first human trafficking seminars in Central, FL. where over 100+ individuals and stakeholders attended.
In 2007 Lares cofounded the Orlando Rescue and Restore Coalition to network key stakeholders in the Greater Orlando region and began a partnership with the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation. In 2009 Lares initiated a newly formed non-profit called, Florida Abolitionist, Inc. an anti-human trafficking organization that networks, facilitates, and creates preventative and restorative solutions to end modern-day human slavery. Lares has been instrumental in creating a 24-hour Human Trafficking Hotline in Central FL and for advocating Orange County Government to fund a first of its kind adult female human trafficking crisis/short-term 24-hour faculty in the state of Florida.
On January 11, 2009, Lares led the first Human Trafficking Awareness march in downtown Orlando and is preparing to celebrate the 14th Annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day this January 2022. In 2013 Lares cofounded the Greater Orlando Human Trafficking Task Force, Inc. whose mission is to combat all aspects of human trafficking in the Greater Orlando area through collaboration and partnerships with key stakeholders. Lares has been instrumental in developing and bringing together various task forces, coalitions and working groups in Central FL to fight human trafficking through communication, collaboration, and care coordination.
Recently, Lares initiated a curriculum on human trafficking at the UCF Rosen College of Hospitality along with college faculty and has launched an education and training program at the college for the hospitality industry. Lares has an undergraduate degree in Psychology, a minor in World Missions and has worked on graduate studies in the MSW program at the University of Central Florida.
Lares is a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Citizen’s Academy, was nominated as a finalist for the Orlando Sentinel, ‘Central Floridian of the Year Award’, was chosen for the Orange County Bar Association 2015 ‘Liberty Bell’ award, shared a chapter with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the ‘Doing good GREAT ‘book, received a certification of appreciation in 2016 by former State Attorney Jeff Ashton State of Florida, Ninth Judicial Circuit for being an advocate for funding earmarked for human trafficking, In July of 2017 Lares was invited for a U.S. Senate Committee hearing on human trafficking in Washington D.C. and is the most referenced contributor in the Valencia College andUniversity of Central Florida published text book, ‘Human Trafficking A Systemwide Public Safety and Community Approach’.
Lares was named, ‘Advocate of the Year’ 2017 Change Everything Awards and appointed to the Advisory board to the University of Central Florida’s Center for the Study of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. In 2019, Lares cofounded the Task Force on Computational Law for Combating Modern Slavery an initiative of the MIT Computational Law Report. Recently, in 2020 Lares cofounded the Tri-County Alliance On Human Trafficking and was honored by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody as the ‘Community Advocate of the Year’ for the state of Florida.