bio

Amanda Fangman is a writer and educator who aims to inform others about undue influence and coercive control in the workplace – from labor trafficking and exploitation to cultic abuse at work.

By combining research on these subjects with what she’s learned from her own and other survivors’ experiences, Amanda takes what are often seen as complex and heavy topics and makes them digestible for anyone.

Much of Amanda’s knowledge comes from having been a victim of labor trafficking and cultic abuse as a young adult. Fresh out of high school and feeling utterly lost in life, Amanda let a complete stranger buy her a bus ticket to a town hundreds of miles from home, based solely on the exciting notion that she’d be making money and traveling the world. 

After nearly three years of being worked to the bone on a traveling sales crew, and two failed attempts to leave, Amanda finally escaped its grasp. Although three years was and felt like a very long time, it was short compared to the average five or ten-plus years endured by other victims and survivors.

While some of Amanda’s focus is on teaching people how to get out of and heal from high control workplaces, she believes the biggest impact can be made by concentrating her efforts on prevention: side-stepping these shady businesses and never accepting their misleading job “opportunities” in the first place. 

Through this work, Amanda seeks to arm parents and young adults with critical knowledge she wished she had before joining the workforce: general awareness of these issues, education on the warning signs and indicators of a high control workplace, and guidance on how to set and maintain healthy boundaries at work.

Amanda’s goal is to make this information free and accessible to anyone, because while many might assume they’re immune to becoming a victim, it’s possible for anyone to be hooked and reeled into a ruinous side hustle or business that appears to be, from the outside, an amazing opportunity. All it takes is one tiny moment of vulnerability at the very worst time.

Spreading awareness can help prevent small, ordinary moments from becoming entire livelihoods lost to years of abuse and exploitation.