Mark Wexler &
Dr. David Batstone
“You do not fight injustice by opposing it. You out-create it.”
Two co-founders. Twenty years of building companies in some of the world’s hardest places, where the frameworks were tested when being wrong carried a real cost.
Not a story with a takeaway. A system you can use Monday.
Most speakers who talk about purpose, innovation, or entrepreneurship are sharing ideas they researched, consulted on, or observed.
Mark Wexler and Dr. David Batstone have spent twenty years building real companies in some of the world’s hardest places, and they worked. Commercially and socially. Simultaneously. Their frameworks were tested where being wrong meant a child still in danger, a community still trapped, or a business model that created the harm it was supposed to prevent. Audiences feel the difference within the first three minutes.
These are not projects. They are evidence.
The third path
Where ethical innovation becomes the engine for social and environmental liberation. Four convictions hold it together.
Pragmatic Idealism
Believe big, but act with precision. Hold tight to bold visions like ending human trafficking, and realize them step by step through grounded, strategic action.
Systemic Solutions
Build ecosystems, not single interventions. From REBBL and Dignita to supply chains and survivor cooperatives, the work redesigns the conditions that produced the harm.
Dignity Through Opportunity
Survivors of trafficking are not victims to be rescued. They are leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs. The work equips people to rewrite their own stories.
Innovation as Resistance
Launching a beverage company to fund safe houses. Forming public-private alliances to rethink mining. Challenging broken systems by inventing better alternatives.
Who’s on the stage
Dr. David
Batstone
Dr. David Batstone co-founded Not For Sale in 2007 after discovering a human trafficking ring operating out of his favorite Bay Area restaurant, an experience that became the basis for his book Not For Sale: The…
Mark
Wexler
Mark Wexler co-founded Not For Sale in 2007 and has since built an ecosystem of enterprises designed to address the root causes of modern-day slavery and ecocide, including REBBL, Dignita, and Just Business. He serves on…
The frameworks they teach
Built on twenty years of building, not consulting. The named frameworks of The Art of Being a REBBL.
Pragmatic Idealism
Hold a bold moral vision and execute it with commercial discipline. Believe big, act with precision.
Ruthless Execution
Why execution beats inspiration, and why most organizations optimize the wrong things. The refusal to let today’s setback cancel tomorrow’s demand.
Aggressive Humility
The willingness to receive evidence that your model is wrong and act on it before sunk cost makes the truth impossible to face.
The Impact Stack
Three questions before every major decision: What is the actual problem? What do we have to work with? What does the problem demand?
The Montara Circle
A two-day design-to-action methodology that produced REBBL, Dignita, and the Entrepreneurship Challenge. Bring 15–20 of the smartest people into a room. Set a deadline. Build what they design.
Design for Intentional Information Flow
What your leadership team’s daily information diet says about the decisions you’re making, and the ones you’re avoiding.
The Freedom of Constraint
How limited resources force the most creative solutions, and why organizations waiting for perfect conditions never build anything worth building.
Ethical Supply Chains as Competitive Advantage
Why what’s in your supply chain is the defining reputational and regulatory issue of the decade, and how to turn transparency into a brand asset.
Problem-First Innovation
Understand a problem so deeply that the solution becomes obvious and the constraints become the tools. Durable solutions emerge from scarcity, not abundance.
Signature talks
The Most Expensive Thing You’re Not Paying Attention To
Why most organizational interventions treat the symptom and leave the condition untouched. How root-cause thinking saves more than any optimization program.
Built around Not For Sale’s pivot from building shelters to building REBBL.Practice Aggressive Humility
The single most undervalued leadership skill, and how to tell persistence apart from avoidance.
For executive retreats & leadership off-sites.The Door in the Dead End
How the people who change things consistently see possibility where others see walls.
Built around turning points in the REBBL, Dignita, and Baan Kru Nam stories.Why Your People Leave (And It’s Not About Pay)
The business case for building an organization where dignity is a design principle, not a benefit.
Draws on the Dignita model and the AllSaints 13-year partnership.Relentless Ideation
Creativity as a discipline, not a talent: the cycle of learning, applying, and iterating that produced REBBL, Dignita, and Baan Kru Nam.
For innovation summits & business schools.Just Businesses: A Path to End Modern-Day Slavery
The TEDx talk that introduced enterprise-driven anti-trafficking to a global audience.
Watch now →What people take away
People leave grounded in energy, not the post-keynote buzz that disappears in the parking lot, but the settled certainty that the goals in front of them are reachable, that they already have enough to begin, and that the gap is smaller than they thought when they walked in.
The Impact Stack
Three questions to ask before every major decision, eliminating the most common failure: solving the wrong problem very efficiently.
The Montara Circle
A convening model for organizations that are stuck. The key word is commit. The model produced REBBL.
The Information Flow Audit
Look at your last ten notifications. What information is shaping your decisions? What’s missing that would change how you lead?
Who Mark and Dave speak to
Past hosts include Stanford · University of Michigan · Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame · Oxford Consortium for Human Rights · King’s College London · Furman University · Handong University, South Korea.
Notable engagements
Passion 2013, Georgia Dome, Atlanta.
Keynote to ~60,000 attendees, one of the largest single audiences for an anti-trafficking address in U.S. history.
TEDxFurmanU, “Just Businesses: Modeling a Path to End Modern-Day Slavery.”
The signature TEDx talk introducing enterprise-driven anti-trafficking. Watch →
AllSaints brand events.
Multiple engagements over a thirteen-year partnership embedded in AllSaints’ Modern Slavery Act statement and employee culture.
BeBright, Mexico City.
Innovation and leadership keynote, September 2025.
The Not For Sale Global Forum.
Conversation with Jack Dorsey, Jason Russell, and Mark Wexler on putting a face on social media and modern slavery.
10th Founders World Summit (Stockholm) · Oxford Consortium for Human Rights · King’s College London · Stanford · University of Michigan · Kellogg Institute at Notre Dame · Handong University.
In the press
Awards & recognition
Anthem Awards
For Not For Sale’s work in the Peruvian Amazon.
Fast Company
Finalist and Honorable Mention.
Johns Hopkins SAIS
Free2Work named among global best practices.
Also in the works
Terra Mater Studios at Baan Kru Nam
Filmed in Northern Thailand by Emmy Award-winning Terra Mater Studios (500+ international awards), directed by Hardik Contractor. Twenty years of child rescue and the fight against trafficking and ecocide at the Golden Triangle. Anticipated international release.
The Art of Being a REBBL
Ten rules codifying twenty years of enterprise-led social impact, by Mark Wexler & Dr. David Batstone.
- The Definition of a REBBL
- Pragmatic Idealism
- Charity Isn’t the Only Way to Do Good
- Freedom Requires Eternal Vigilance
- Inoculate Communities with Upstream Solutions
- Build Communities of Dignity
- Win with Discipline (Ruthless Execution)
- Practice Aggressive Humility
- Design for Intentional Information Flow
- Embed Dignity in Your DNA
Your Questions, Answered.
Both founders speak, and their core argument is the same. Mark tends to lead the corporate, entrepreneurship, and supply-chain conversations; Dave brings deeper academic framing and the original abolitionist scholarship that gave the organization its name. We’ll recommend the right fit based on your audience and goals.
Speaking engagements help fund Not For Sale’s frontline programs across 33 countries. Mark and Dave speak because every booking extends the reach of an argument that has not changed in twenty years.
Yes. Every talk is built around the audience, the moment, and the specific tension the event is meant to address. The frameworks are durable; the framing is built for the room.
Yes, half-day and full-day Montara Circle sessions for companies, universities, and foundations. The same design-to-action methodology that produced REBBL, Dignita, and the Entrepreneurship Challenge.
Yes. Both speak in person and virtually, worldwide.
Yes. For press and media inquiries, please see the Press & Media page.
Yes, the TEDxFurmanU talk, “Just Businesses: Modeling a Path to End Modern-Day Slavery,” is the most comprehensive single-take overview of the framework. Watch now
You do not fight injustice by opposing it. You out-create it.
Monday morning is not too soon to start. Every booking funds the work that proves the argument.