Fraidy Reiss

Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist: She turned her traumatic forced marriage experience into a force for good by founding Unchained At Last, a national nonprofit organization working to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change. Through Unchained, Fraidy started and now leads a national movement to ban child marriage in all 50 states. To date, she has helped achieve historic legislative victories in 10 U.S. states (only 40 to go). Also through Unchained, Fraidy has provided crucial, comprehensive services, always for free, to nearly 1,000 individuals to help them escape a forced marriage. Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively, making her one of the nation’s foremost experts on these abuses. She has been featured in books (including as one of the titular women in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women”), films and countless television, radio and print news stories.