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Human First Summit: Turning Lived Experience into Meaningful Business Action

Unseen’s Human First Summit challenged businesses to rethink how they manage modern slavery risk. Centering survivor insight, expert discussion, and new Helpline data, the event highlighted why lived experience is essential to ethical, effective, and accountable business action.

“If you design systems without the input of those who have experienced harm, you are not managing risk, you are institutionalising guesswork.” These words from keynote speaker, survivor of modern slavery, and Unseen business consultant Brandon Thomas, truly encapsulate the power and premise of last week’s event, the Human First Summit.  

This event took place in central London at the Investec headquarters and brought together over 100 attendees including survivors of modern slavery, professionals from various businesses, members of Unseen’s business hub, and those working with Unseen from across diverse sectors.  

Bridging lived experience and business action

This was not just a briefing on the current state of modern slavery in the UK. It was a gathering of individuals with a shared dedication to embedding lived experience at the heart of modern slavery responses. Every professional, expert, consultant, and representative present was there to acknowledge and learn how to bridge lived experience and business action.  

Throughout the day, our speakers and panelists tackled some of the most important questions in pursuing a world free from slavery. Some key questions included:  

  • What does meaningful action truly look like for businesses?  
  • How can businesses ethically, safely, and efficiently incorporate lived experience into policy and practice? 
  • What are the risks that could be actualised without embedding survivors lived experience? 
  • How do businesses get shareholders meaningfully involved in a human first approach to tackling modern slavery?  
Meaningful insight from speakers

The Human First Summit saw powerful insights from speakers and panelists with varying expertise on modern slavery and lived experience.  

Deputy CEO of Unseen, Justine Carter, opened the summit leaning on her nearly 40 years in social policy to stress the reality that modern slavery is not an abstract risk for businesses. It is a real and growing harm driven by systemic failures. Exploitation thrives when warning signs are ignored, and a focus on compliance replaces accountability, but change is possible if organisations centre dignity, lived experience, and collaboration when taking action rather than simply box‑ticking. 

A panel comprising representatives in advocacy, education, management, policy, and law discussed that while organisations must be encouraged to embed lived experience in their processes, it is important to move beyond tokenistic involvement. Survivor insight must be valued, compensated where possible, and used to expose gaps in systems and improve decision making. Even though practice evolves, meaningful engagement should be the standard now, not a future goal. 

Nadia Youds, Senior Human Rights Manager at Unilever enlightened attendees on why it is crucial for data and lived experience to be used together to drive effective business action on modern slavery. While data helps identify and respond to risk, tangible difference happens when organisations engage meaningfully with survivor insight, understand the human impact of their processes, and work collaboratively with suppliers to build accountability beyond surface‑level compliance. 

Revealing modern slavery in 2025 from the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline

The Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline is a vital, independent lifeline that is seeing unprecedented demand. At the Human First Summit, Unseen launched the 2025 Annual Assessment which includes the latest 2025 data on modern slavery and labour abuse.    

Unseen’s, Head of Helpline Services Natasha Mitra, and Head of Policy and Research, Hilary Agg, shared that in 2025, there were a record numbers of cases, victims, and referrals to the Helpline. This highlights both the growing scale of exploitation and the Helpline’s critical role in enabling survivors to seek support safely, build trust, and trigger effective safeguarding and enforcement action at local and national levels. Learn more about Unseen’s 2025 Annual Assessment. 

Beyond the number

Beyond the practical takeaways and harrowing statistics, it is most important to remember that behind every number is a person, a real life, with not only a story, but a wealth of value to offer. Lived experience is insight we cannot afford to ignore.  

In addressing both survivors and business professionals, Brandon Thomas stressed that if you’ve experienced exploitation, your pain can drive purpose and turn graves into gardens. If you work in a space helping to eradicate modern slavery “don’t observe but act, challenge authority, be disruptive, let it cost you something”.  

If you’d like to learn more about the work Unseen does to eradicate modern slavery or understand how your organisation can prevent modern slavery from perpetuating by embedding lived experience, visit our website or contact a member of our team at [email protected]. 

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Justine Currell

As I came to understand more about the issue, including through a visit to an Unseen safehouse, I knew I needed to do more to stop this abuse and exploitation.

For the last five years of my Civil Service career, I was the Modern Slavery Senior Policy Advisor in the Home Office and led on development of the Modern Slavery Act, including the transparency in supply chains provision and business guidance.

I joined Unseen to lead the development of the Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline, and Unseen’s work with businesses. I am regularly called upon to present at national and international conferences and use my experience of working with Ministers to influence other governments internationally to take action to address modern slavery and, in particular, business supply chain issues.

In my spare time I enjoy keeping fit, music, reading and travelling.

Andrew Wallis

What ultimately compelled me to act was a report on how people from Eastern Europe were being trafficked through Bristol airport to the USA. Kate Garbers, who went on to be an Unseen Director, and I wrote to all the city councillors, MPs and the Police Chief Constable challenging them on the issue. The challenge came back to us: this city needs safe housing for trafficked women. And so Unseen began.

But we never wanted Unseen to be just about safe housing. We wanted to end slavery once and for all, and that remains our driving focus.

I chaired the working group for the Centre for Social Justice’s landmark report “It Happens Here: Equipping the United Kingdom to Fight Modern Slavery”. This is now acknowledged as the catalyst behind the UK’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015. It was a great honour to be awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours that year. On the other hand, I’ve also been described as “the loveliest disrupter you could ever hope to meet”.

This job has taken me from building flat-pack furniture for safehouses, to working with businesses to address slavery in supply chains, to delivering training, raising awareness and advising governments around the world.

When not at work, I enjoy travelling, spending time with my dog Harley, cooking, supporting Liverpool and Yorkshire CC, music (I’m a former DJ) and endurance events such as the Three Peaks Challenge and Tribe Freedom Runs – which I vow never to do again. Until the next time.