From a Little Spark May Burst a Flame

Shannon Sedgwick Davis pushed an unruly lock of sandy hair behind her ear and glanced down at the emerald landscape rushing beneath her. She was more than 8,000 miles from home, flying over one of the most remote regions of Africa. As much as the young Texan may have looked out of place, she was deeply immersed in her element. Feeling the helicopter begin its earthward descent, her pulse quickened, as if to match the cadence of the thrumming rotor blades. 

She was looking for Joseph Kony, head of the murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and one of Africa’s most brutal warlords. To the casual observer, this was unthinkably dangerous and dirty work. For Shannon Sedgwick Davis, it was unthinkable that she would be doing anything else. 

Now in her 15th year as the CEO of Bridgeway Foundation, Sedgwick Davis, JD ’00, reflects on a career that has taken her to many dark corners of the world in pursuit of sex traffickers, terrorists, and other human rights violators. Bridgeway Foundation is the charitable arm of Bridgeway Capital Management, an investment firm that helps fund organizations whose goal is to end genocide and protect human rights.

Shortly after taking over as CEO, Sedgwick Davis realized that while Bridgeway played an essential role, it was falling short of its true mission. While it was providing funding on the front end of conflicts and financing rebuilding efforts in their aftermath, it wasn’t making headway in stopping atrocities and ending violence. Instead of changing the mission statement, Sedgwick Davis decided that Bridgeway would redouble its efforts to do what it initially set out to accomplish: stop genocide and end human rights violations. 

“The nature of philanthropy is to shrink,” Sedgwick Davis said. “You should do your job so well that there is no longer a need for it.” 

Sedgwick Davis’ journey as a philanthropist and activist can be traced back to a pivotal event during her time as a law student. Having come home from a spring break trip to an earthquake-devastated region of Turkey, she was faced with the choice of continuing her volunteer efforts at the expense of her schoolwork. She recalls Professor Brian Serr encouraging her to listen to that call, leading her to realize that she had an exceptional opportunity to help people in a significant way. 

“That trip was so formidable for me and steered me towards international human rights,” she said. “You have to zero in on those passions because you are able to have outsized effects in those areas.” 

After graduation, Sedgwick Davis accepted a position with a Dallas law firm. She knew that was not her real purpose and after only a year, she made the decision to leave. Fearing that she might never answer her true calling if she didn’t make the leap soon, she packed her car and headed for Washington D.C. There, she joined International Justice Mission, a global organization whose goal is to protect impoverished people from trafficking and slavery, police abuse of power, and violence.

Sedgwick Davis’ time with IJM was formative and she said she is grateful for the opportunity to be mentored there. As IJM’s director of public affairs, her eyes were opened to the scope of injustice in places like India, Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Latin America, and parts of Africa. 

“If you don’t address issues of impunity, the problems will never go away,” Sedgwick Davis said, explaining how one of their goals was to ensure that punishment for sex trafficking had a deterrent effect. “You can sell a bag of rice and not make much money, but you can sell a girl for a lot of money. If you go to prison for 20 years for selling that girl, you might decide to sell that bag of rice instead.” 

Working undercover in Cambodia, Davis and her team gathered evidence instrumental in prosecuting several sex traffickers, but the elation of that victory was also tempered by disappointment. Many “customers” of these traffickers were Westerners who were reported to the U.S. Department of Justice but never prosecuted. 

A Change of Direction

Having been approached by Bridgeway to join their foundation on two previous occasions, Sedgwick Davis relented when asked a third time, in 2007.  “They were … willing to take risks. I knew we would be allowed to pilot different solutions to bigger problems and fail, and then try again,” she said. 

It was here that Sedgwick Davis became involved in the hunt for Kony, a Ugandan militant who formed the LRA in 1987. In a reign of terror that spanned four decades and spilled across several countries, Kony abducted tens of thousands of people, mostly children, to staff an army that committed widespread human rights violations. The LRA was responsible for murders, abductions, mutilations, child-sex enslavement, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Wanting to help but not knowing where to begin, Sedgwick Davis realized that the answers could be found among the people who were most affected. 

“They have the better solutions … (because) they live with it every day,” she said. “These mothers were hiding their children in banana leaves at night so they wouldn’t be kidnapped.” 

Sedgwick Davis’ ability to connect with the locals afforded her team an extra measure of protection as they set out to take down Kony. Over a period of almost eleven years, she coordinated efforts between the Ugandan army and private military contractors against the LRA. In a culmination of all their hard work and intelligence gathering, they narrowly missed capturing Kony, who escaped after being tipped off. 

“There were lots of tears that day. I thought we had failed but I’m most proud of how we decided to pivot,” Sedgwick Davis said. “We were trying to cut the head off the snake but instead decided to cut the snake from the head.” 

Considering many of Kony’s soldiers had been kidnapped as children, Bridgeway sought to appeal to their “inner child”—the one that had been thrust into a nightmare and was trying only to survive. They began by looking for living relatives of the LRA’s leaders. Many of the soldiers did not know the fate of the families from which they were stolen. Offering them amnesty for their surrender and the return of those who had been kidnapped, they began playing recorded messages and songs from their mothers. Helicopters outfitted with loudspeakers hovered over regions where they thought they were hiding, their loved ones imploring them to give up. 

The tactic worked—780 soldiers walked out, effectively dismantling the group. Since then, abductions and killings for which the LRA is responsible have been reduced by more than 90 percent. Although Kony remains at large, the LRA has been neutralized, shrinking from an estimated 3,000 members at its peak to around 100 soldiers. 

Sedgwick Davis, who was recently named the World Affairs Council’s 2022 International Citizen of the Year, has never been one to rest on the laurels of a major success—nor deterred by the setbacks that are invariably part of her line of work. She is now planning her next mission, which involves confronting a breakoff of ISIS in the Northeastern Congo.

“You have to try and be willing to fail,” she said.