"It is not just that God has a heart for justice," says Sharon Cohn Wu (International Justice Mission), "it is that it is inextricably his character and cannot be otherwise, and that it is so perfectly married with mercy and grace that we somehow survive."

Sharon Cohn Wu has served for more than twenty years with IJM, where she is now regional president of North America. A lawyer (JD, Harvard Law), she has spent her career calling for "loud justice"—that is, visible, swift, community-wide accountability—using the criminal justice system and political will to help IJM achieve its mission to increase freedom and safety for the most vulnerable. She's a key voice in pursuing IJM's stated goal: protection for 300 million people across 46 jurisdictions by 2030, and freedom for more than a million.

With Mark Labberton, she reflects on her calling as a lawyer to stand between vulnerable people and those who would crush them; why we need systems to seek and secure justice for the most vulnerable to violence; the economics of vulnerability and the predators who exploit it; how public accountability changes expectations and what society will tolerate; and what decades of looking at the worst of human behavior have done to Cohn Wu's emotional, moral, and spiritual life.

Episode Highlights

  • "Hope is as contagious as despair."
  • "In the early days, let's say I might have accidentally over-indexed on rage from time to time."
  • "It is not just that God has a heart for justice, it is that it is inextricably his character and cannot be otherwise, and that it is so perfectly married with mercy and grace that we somehow survive."
  • "There's nothing inevitable about this type of violence."
  • "We need consistent and loud justice. 'Loud' meaning the whole community knows that someone was held accountable for this crime against this small child."

About Sharon Cohn Wu

Sharon Cohn Wu is regional president of North America for International Justice Mission, where she has served for over two decades. She began in casework, went on to lead all of IJM's field programs, and pioneered its Justice System Strengthening projects. She built anti-trafficking operations across South and Southeast Asia, including IJM's first USAID police training grant in Cambodia, and most recently advised the organization on violence against women and children. She studied at the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School and practiced at Arnold & Porter.

Helpful Links and Resources

Show Notes

  • Sharon Cohn Wu's vocational background: law as a family trade among lawyers, judges, rabbis, and teachers
  • Experience: DOJ Criminal Division; corporate law
  • Gary Haugen's Good News About Injustice
  • Early years at IJM: gratitude for every single person freed from slavery, prostitution, and dire circumstances
  • Shifting from case volume to public justice system performance: police, prosecutors, courts, social services
  • "Hope is as contagious as despair," sustained by survivors, staff, and externally audited reductions in violence
  • Violence against women and children as a distinct crime: economic exposure, family dissolution, and a justice system survivors avoid
  • Justice made loud and public, with visible, swift accountability as social and moral deterrent, leading to cultural change
  • IJM's 2030 goal of 300 million protected across 46 jurisdictions and over a million freed—with half a billion as the horizon
  • Reality over strategy: a night walk to a Guatemalan police station, Ghanaian survivors warning families about Lake Volta recruitment
  • Rage mitigated by conviction that God cares more, praying for the fear of the Lord, and Heschel's The Prophets on injustice as offense against God

#InternationalJusticeMission #IJM #HumanTrafficking #ModernSlavery #JusticeSystems #ViolenceAgainstWomen #FaithAndJustice #Conversing #CommentMagazine #FullerSeminary

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

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