Nancy Hartwell grew up in Tampa and earned a degree in international relations from American University in Washington, D.C;, where she met and married a distinguished attorney from Cameroon who was working on his doctorate in law. She lived and worked in Cameroon for 14 years. Upon her return to the U.S., she wrote for The Washington Post on Capitol Hill for seven years and then became lead proposal writer for an international consulting company. She has traveled to 45 countries and speaks more than a dozen languages. She has become an internationally recognized authority on human trafficking and has done more than 700 radio interviews on the topic in 30 countries. The flagship book in her Human Trafficking Series, Harem Slave, won an award and reached number 7 in All Fiction on Amazon. It has been translated into Spanish, French, and German.

Henry and I turned out to be the first black-white couple to get married in Maryland (1967). We were so busy with final exams we had no idea until journalists started banging on our door.

I have raised eight kids: my daughter, four stepchildren, two nieces, and a nephew, and have fostered a half-dozen others. My brother teases, “You like wildlife – elephants, giraffes, and teenagers.”