Cindy Kovalak is the Human Trafficking Awareness Coordinator for the Northwest Region Immigration and Passport Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In 2005, while still working as a regular member of the RCMP, she transferred from Calgary, Alberta to Redcliff, where she became the community resource officer. When she retired from regular service in the RCMP, she took up the position of executive director of Cochrane and Area Victim Services (CVS) in Cochrane for four years. While volunteering with CVS, Kovalak was constantly on the lookout for volunteers. In 2009, Kovalak was named one of two Volunteers of the Year by the Town of Cochrane. Kovalak stated in 2010 that her experiences with CVS demonstrate to her that the organization is effective in helping victims. As executive director of CVS, she advertised a program in which thumb rings were distributed in the Cochrane area in the hopes that drivers would wear them and be reminded while driving to keep both hands on the steering wheel rather than using one hand to hold a mobile phone. By 2012, she was the Human Trafficking Awareness Coordinator for the RCMP Northwest Region Immigration and Passport Section and in September of that year, she delivered a presentation entitled "Human Trafficking 101" at a human trafficking conference in Edmonton organized by ACT Alberta. Later that month, she appeared on a human trafficking discussion panel in conjunction with a performance of Andrew Kooman's She Has a Name, also in Edmonton. Kovalak is scheduled to be the first plenary speaker at the Alberta Provincial Crime Watch Annual General Meeting and Symposium in 2013.
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