Angella graduated from Saint Leo College in 1999 with a B.A. in Elementary Education with a minor in Computer Information Systems. After several years of teaching, she left the field of education and was hired by the Tampa Police Department. While employed with Tampa Police Department, she worked as a plain clothes officer investigating both narcotics and prostitution cases. Through those positions, she was able to develop first-hand experience within the world of human trafficking. Her family then began relocating due to her husband’s position.
She moved to Virginia and in 2015 she accepted a position as the Human Trafficking Specialist with Prince William County Public Schools (PWCS). During her tenure with PWCS, she successfully doubled the size of the program to serve all of the high schools in the county, strengthened the case management component of the program, and built strong relationships with community partners. Permanent sustainability for the program was also achieved when PWCS agreed to permanently fund this position through the school division budget. Under her guidance, numerous awards have also been presented to PWCS including the 2019 Outstanding Criminal Justice Program for the Southern Region from the National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA).
Through this position, she was able to learn about the beginning of the human trafficking cycle and work with juveniles who had been drawn into this world. By connecting her experiences working with these juveniles to her experiences with the adult clients that she worked with while at Tampa Police Department, she is able to understand the complete cycle of human trafficking. She graduated with her M.Ed. in Instructional Design & Technology with an additional Graduate Certificate in e-Learning from George Mason University in 2018. In 2019, Angella was hired as the State Response Trafficking Coordinator with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). This position was established through the Code of Virginia § 9.1-116.5. She is looking forward to working with stakeholders throughout Virginia to create a unified response system and increase collaboration between stakeholders.
