Institute Leadership

Bethany Hoang

Bethany Hoang serves as Director of the IJM Institute for International Justice Mission. IJM is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.

Ms. Hoang received a B.A. in Religion and History from Miami University of Ohio, and she received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary where she graduated with the honor of receiving the distinguished Fellowship in Theology.

Ms. Hoang joined IJM in 2004. She travels globally, speaking and teaching to thousands on behalf of IJM at churches, conferences and universities. As Director of the IJM Institute, she is responsible for equipping leaders of the global church and academic communities with tools and resources for bringing others into a deeper level of understanding, passion, and commitment to seeking justice on behalf of those who suffer abuse and oppression in our world.

Ms.Hoang was recently featured in The Relevant Nation: 50 Activist, Artists And Innovators Who Are Changing Their World Through Faith. She was also featured in the September/October edition of Relevant Magazine.

Larry Martin

Larry Martin serves International Justice Mission as the Senior Vice President of Education and Dean of the International Justice Mission Institute. IJM is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.

Rev. Martin received his B.S. from Fresno State University, an M.A. from Fuller Theological Seminary and a Masters of Divinity from American Baptist Seminary of the West. Reverend Martin is an ordained American Baptist minister.

Prior to working with IJM, Rev. Martin served 16 years on the staff of Young Life in Northern California and Colorado, eight years as a Baptist pastor and four years as a denominational executive with the American Baptist Churches of the West.

Rev. Martin joined IJM in October of 2001. As Senior Vice President of Education, he is responsible for developing relationships and tools for communication in order to further IJM’s goal to deepen the church’s level of understanding, passion and commitment to seeking justice for those who suffer abuse and oppression in our world. Rev. Martin travels throughout America and abroad as IJM’s chief speaker in churches, colleges and universities. He has also traveled to South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America to see firsthand the work of IJM.

He currently resides in Springfield, Virginia with his wife Nan. Their two grown children, Beth and Adam, reside in Atlanta and Denver respectively.

Gary Haugen

Gary Haugen serves as President and CEO of International Justice Mission. IJM is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.

Mr. Haugen received a B.A. in Social Studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard University, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, cum laude, where he was the Ford Foundation Scholar in International Law. He also served as the Visiting Scholar in Politics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Until April of 1997, Mr. Haugen was a Senior Trial Attorney with the Police Misconduct Task Force of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. When Congress granted the Attorney General new authority to pursue enforcement action against police departments with a "pattern or practice" of misconduct, Mr. Haugen was selected to serve on a small task force with national enforcement authority.

In 1994, Mr. Haugen was detailed from the U.S. Department of Justice to the United Nation's Center for Human Rights where he served as the Officer in Charge of the U.N.'s genocide investigation in Rwanda. During the fall of 1994, he directed an international team of lawyers, criminal prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and forensics experts in the gathering of evidence against the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide. Mr. Haugen developed the investigative strategy, protocols, and field methodology for developing eye-witness testimony and physical evidence from nearly a hundred mass grave and massacre sites across Rwanda. He also personally directed and conducted field investigations at various sites.

Before joining the U.S. Department of Justice, Mr. Haugen worked for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, based in New York. In the late 1980's, his work focused on a structural examination of the Philippine government's prosecution of human rights abuses committed by the police and military. In his work, Mr. Haugen investigated multiple murders and other violent abuses by the military and police, participated in the exhumations of victims, and in the provision of protection services for witnesses. Out of his analysis, Mr. Haugen authored a book published by the Lawyers Committee entitled “Impunity: Human Rights Prosecutions in the Philippines.”

In the mid-1980's, Mr. Haugen served on the executive committee of the National Initiative for Reconciliation in South Africa. The NIR, chaired by then-Bishop Desmond Tutu and Michael Cassidy of African Enterprise, was a movement of Christian leaders devoted to the cause of political reform and racial reconciliation.

Mr. Haugen currently serves on the Human Rights Leadership Coalition and on the Board of the Overseers of the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Mr. Haugen is the 2007 recipient of Prison Fellowship’s annual William Wilberforce Award, recognizing an individual who has made a difference in the face of formidable societal problems and injustices. At a 2005 event sponsored by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, he moderated a panel discussion on sex trafficking between Senators Hilary Clinton and Sam Brownback.

Mr. Haugen and the work of IJM have been featured by the “Today Show,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Dateline NBC,” FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, National Public Radio, Forbes Magazine and The New York Times. Mr. Haugen has authored numerous articles on foreign affairs, international law and human rights. His latest book “Terrify No More” (2005) highlights the rescue of elementary age girls from brothels. He is also the author of “Good News about Injustice.” Mr. Haugen currently resides in the Washington, DC, area with his family.

Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton (B.A., Whitman College, M. Div., Fuller Theological Seminary, Ph.D., University of Cambridge) began his association with First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in 1981, when he became the pastor to university students. Earlier he had been an assistant to Dr. John R. W. Stott in London, and he returned to England in 1987 for graduate work. Upon completion of doctoral studies at Cambridge, Mark came back to the states and pastored a church in Pennsylvania before moving again to Berkeley in 1991 as Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church. Mark and his wife, Janet, have two sons, Peter and Sam.

Andy Crouch

Andy’s mission is to help North American Christians discover the meaning of the gospel in our cultural and global context. He is editorial director for The Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today, a member of the editorial board of Books & Culture, and a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission’s IJM Institute. More important, he seeks to befriend, learn from, and connect followers of Christ who are forging innovative paths of discipleship and cultural influence. Most important, he is a son, brother, husband, and father of two children. He lives with his family in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

From 1998 to 2003, Andy was the editor-in-chief of regeneration quarterly, a magazine for an emerging generation of culturally creative Christians. For ten years he was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. He studied classics at Cornell University and received an M.Div. summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz, and gospel, he has led musical worship for congregations of 5 to 20,000.

Amy Sherman

Amy L. Sherman is a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research and Director of the Center on Faith in Communities at the Foundation for American Renewal. She also serves as the Editorial Director for FASTEN (the Faith and Service Technical Education Network). Dr. Sherman is the author of four books: Reinvigorating Faith in Communities (Hudson Institute, 2002); Restorers of Hope: Reaching the Poor in Your Community with Church-based Ministries That Work (Crossway Books, 1997); The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Guatemala (Oxford University Press, 1997); and Preferential Option: A Christian and Neoliberal Strategy for Latin America's Poor (Eerdmans, 1992). Her 70+ articles and essays have appeared in such diverse publications as The Public Interest, Policy Review, First Things, Christianity Today, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The American Enterprise, World, the Christian Century, The Washington Times, Philanthropy, Christian Scholar’s Review, Reason, and Books & Culture.

Dr. Sherman is a leading national expert on charitable choice, an advisor to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and the author of The Charitable Choice Handbook for Ministry Leaders. Dr. Sherman provides on-site consulting services to congregations starting or enhancing their community ministries and is a frequent speaker at training conferences for faith-based practitioners. She is the author of various resource guides for faith leaders, including Establishing a Church-based, Welfare-to-Work Ministry: A Practical How-To Manual and Sharing God’s Heart for the Poor: Meditations for Worship, Prayer, and Service. She has also published the first major study of faith-based intermediary organizations (2002) and the largest national survey of Hispanic church-based community ministries in the U.S. (2003). Currently, Sherman serves as the national coordinator for the ele:Vate (“Economic Literacy Education: Vital Assets for Transformation and Empowerment”) initiative, which serves Christian practitioners working with inner-city youth.

Dr. Sherman is the founder and former Executive Director of Charlottesville Abundant Life Ministries (CALM), a holistic, cross-cultural, whole-family, church-based outreach in an urban neighborhood of approximately 380 lower-income, single-parent families. From its Abundant Life Family Center in the heart of the neighborhood, CALM offers educational programs for children, mentoring for teens, and discipleship, education, IDA, and housing programs for adults. Sherman continues on today as an informal advisor to CALM and to Trinity Presbyterian Church, its anchor congregation. She also serves as a Senior Fellow for the International Justice Mission. IJM is a Christian human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression.

Sherman received her undergraduate degree from Messiah College in 1987 and her Ph.D. in foreign affairs/economic development from the University of Virginia in 1994. Her “life verse” is Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, O Man, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Steve Hayner

Dr. Stephen A. Hayner is the Chairman of the IJM Board of Directors and is the Peachtree Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He has also served at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta and High Point Church in Madison, WI. Before that he was President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and Vice President for Student Affairs at Seattle Pacific University. A prolific writer and advisor to many boards, networks and institutes, Steve holds a B.A. from Whitman College in Washington, a M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, a Th.M. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Steve has also been a Senior Fellow with International Justice Mission since the inception of the program.

Tim Dearborn

Tim Dearborn is the Associate Director for Faith and Development at World Vision International. Until July 2003, he was Dean of the Chapel and Associate Professor of Theology at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington. He holds a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, a Th.M. in missiology from Fuller Seminary, and an M.T.S. in History of Religions from Harvard University Divinity School.

Tim's books include: A Short Term Mission Preparation Workbook (InterVarsity Press), Worship at the Next Level (Baker), Local Church in a Global Future (Eerdmans), Beyond Duty: A Passion for Christ, a Heart for Mission (Monrovia) and Taste and See: Awakening Our Spiritual Senses (InterVarsity Press).

Tim previously served as Chief of Staff for World Vision (U.S.). He founded the Seattle Association for Theological Education; taught for seven years at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and the French Evangelical Seminary in Vaux-sur-Seine, France; served as pastor of mission for eight years at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, and was the Chaplain at Sheldon Jackson College.

Tim is married to Kerry Kappel Dearborn, who also serves as a professor of theology at Seattle Pacific University, as well as for Regent College and Fuller Theological Seminary. They have three daughters.