Julie Anderson

Julie Anderson was simultaneously in a multi-level marketing company and an MLM adjacent coaching cult for five years. Upon exiting both, she took to social media spreading awareness about the reality of MLMs and focuses on the creation of more safe public online spaces for victims/survivors to speak out. Find her YouTube channel here.

Roberta Blevins

Roberta Blevins, a former “Hun” and whistleblower from the LuLaRich Amazon docuseries, is the host and producer of Life After MLM, a podcast that dives into the many intersections of high demand coercive control by talking to the survivors and experts of these schemes. Her advocacy work has been featured on numerous news and entertainment outlets and podcasts, and referenced in literature about the victims of multilevel marketing. This is her 3rd appearance at the MLM Conference, this year working behind the scenes as the social media segment producer. For more info and links to Roberta’s ongoing work in Anti-MLM, check out her website.

John Breyault

John Breyault, a nationally-recognized public interest advocate and consumer fraud expert, leads the National Consumers League’s (NLC) public interest advocacy. He has testified before Congress and federal agencies dozens of times on a range of consumer issues. His work has been cited in a large number of national publications (e.g., Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The New York Times, POLITICO, NPR, etc.). Prior to joining NCL John served as director of research at Amplify Public Affairs, helping launch the Internet public affairs practice. John also worked as a financial analyst at Sprint and at the American Center for Polish Culture. A graduate of George Mason University, he currently lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife, two daughters and two mischievous cats.

Stacie Bosley

Stacie Bosley is an economist with a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. She is the Kahlert Professor of Economics at Hamline University, Minnesota. She has served as an expert witness for the FTC in pyramid scheme cases. Her work on MLMs has been published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, the Journal of Financial Crime, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics and Economic Inquiry.

Douglas M Brooks

Douglas M. Brooks is an attorney who has litigated class actions against MLM schemes, including Webster v. Omnitrition International, Inc., 779 F.3d 776 (9th Cir. 1996), cert. den., 519 U.S. 865 (1996), as well as cases against Herbalife, Nu Skin, Melaleuca and Consumers Buyline and others. He has also represented, pro bono, consumer advocates who have been sued by MLM companies and cults, including NXIVM v. Ross Institute, 364 F.3d 471 (2nd Cir. 2004), cert. den., 543 U.S. 1000 (2004). He was featured in the award winning documentary “Betting on Zero” in which he represented victims of the MLM Herbalife. He operates www.pyramidscheme.law as a resource for people studying the MLM industry.

Michelle Carpenter

Michelle Carpenter is a full time Technology Business Liaison for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, KS, and a small business owner (Spoon Stop, LLC) who uses social media, website administration, organic marketing, and a loud mouth to advocate for change on behalf of victims of multi-level marketing scams like herself. Michelle has run Spoon Stop as an Etsy shop for several years now, but about six months after leaving her last MLM, she volunteered to house, develop, and organize a general public hub for information, resources, and tools pertaining to the FTC's 2022 ANPR on Unfair and Deceptive Earnings Claims. With assistance and feedback and input from more than 20 contributors, this was hosted and made available by Michelle in multiple languages at www.MLMchange.org. She plans to continue to use her platforms for this advocacy work; for more information visit www.spoonstop.com

Alanda Carter

Alanda Carter is not just another voice in the anti-MLM community; she’s a trailblazer, who fearlessly exposes the truth behind multilevel marketing (MLM) schemes. In 2019, she initiated candid discussions and shed light on the deceptive practices within MLMs on her YouTube channel, The Recovering Hunbot. Armed with advanced degrees in anthropology and instructional design, she brings a unique perspective to her investigations. Her focus sharpened in 2021 as she turned her focus towards a specific company that now faces regulatory charges despite facing relentless attempts to silence her. Alanda’s site, https://www.hunbot.net provides tools and resources to calculate the real potential earnings and the viability and market size potential for a number of MLM companies. 

Kathleen ‘Kati’ Daffan

Kati Daffan is an Assistant Director in the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Marketing Practices.  Prior to stepping into this role, she litigated fraud cases in the division and advised former Chairwoman Edith Ramirez on consumer protection matters.  Kati has also worked at a civil rights law firm, at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, and as a law clerk to the Honorable Shira A. Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York. 

Lucas Dixon

Lucas Dixon is a researcher and teacher at the University of Queensland Business School, Australia. With a PhD in social, personality, and consumer psychology, he investigates the 'success industry' and how small business and solopreneur education affects consumers’ beliefs about success and how they can attain it. Since listening to ‘The Dream’ podcast and being an audience member at the inaugural MLM conference during his PhD studies, he went on to explore the psychological factors that contribute to being attracted to MLM and get-rich-quick schemes. He has also recently published research on how belief in manifestation is related to financial judgement; work that has received much media attention of late.

Mara Einstein

Mara Einstein has been working in or writing about the media industry for more than 30 years. She has enjoyed stints as a marketing executive at NBC, MTV Networks, and at major advertising agencies, working on accounts like Miller Beer and Dole Foods. Dr. Einstein is the author or co-editor of eight books, including Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell (O/R Books), which was positively reviewed by Tim Wu in the New York Times and Brands of Faith: Marketing religion in a commercial age (Routledge). Her latest book, Hoodwinked: How cult marketing tactics left us anxious, broke, and conned, is being published by Prometheus Books and will be out in 2025. Dr. Einstein is a professor at Queens College (CUNY). You can find her on TikTok (and other socials) as @drmaraeinstein and on her website: https://www.drmaraeinstein.com/

Kat Garcia-Benson

Kat is a registered dietitian nutritionist and board-certified sports dietitian with a unique background in MLM, now dedicated to helping individuals break free from nutrition MLMs and the constraints of diet culture and nutrition misinformation. Specializing in digestive health, she creates empowering content designed to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, guiding people towards nutritional independence and well-being.

Maddy Gitomer

Maddy Gitomer is a Senior Counsel at Democracy Forward, where her work includes challenges to efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act, fights against an unconstitutional takeover of state education policy, and defense of administrative and regulatory efforts related to consumer protection, worker rights, and access to health care. Before joining Democracy Forward, Maddy was a regulatory attorney focused on health privacy law. Maddy also has experience in work protecting reproductive rights, defending against LGBTQ+ discrimination, and expanding access to health care. Earlier in her career, Maddy served on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s Subcommittee on Children and Families.  Maddy holds a J.D. from The University of Pennsylvania Law School, a master’s degree in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. from American University. She lives in DC with her wife and daughter.

Gladys

Gladys, AKA MLM Exit, came from a background in tourism, sales, and customer service. In 2019, she discovered the Anti-MLM movement on YouTube. In 2021 she started creating educational Anti-MLM content in English and Spanish when she realized that the targets of the MLM companies are immigrants and the Latino community. She is currently working on her website which will be available soon and is intended to make the process of leaving an MLM easier. Until then, Gladys’s links can be found here.

Brandie Hadfield

Brandie Hadfield is a homeschooling mother, writer, speaker, and advocate speaking out about commercial cults. She believes everyone deserves freedom of mind, so she speaks out about abuses of power and coercion perpetrated by MLM scams. After waking up from nearly a decade of involvement in a wellness MLM, Brandie has gone back to school to pursue a career in Psychotherapy. Her memoir is forthcoming, but in the meantime, you can read her writing on Substack and find her profile on Instagram.

Melissa Henry

Melissa Henry is a former professional writer who has worked for ad agencies, social media, and print media. She is a longtime true crime fan, from murder to financial fraud–the latter of which piqued her interest so much that it led her to start an anti-MLM Instagram account called makeitmakenosense, where she posts educational content in the form of clever memes and videos exposing MLM scams and scammers.

Jason Jones

Jason Jones is an attorney and advocate for the victims of manipulation fraud. Jason wrote a popular website that exposed and discussed manipulative online scams, and was counsel on a multi year nationwide putative class action against Herbalife and forty of its top distributors for the deceptive manner in which they operated their live event system. Jason is currently an Assistant Attorney General at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia where he works on antifraud and workers’ rights cases.

Kalika Kanitkar

Kalika Kanitkar was an avid MLM rep for 5 years, and became a social media activist and advocate after exiting. She has a YouTube channel for consumer awareness about MLMs, business opportunity scams, commercial cults, problematic coaching and manipulative sales practices. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley and is applying for PsyD programs this fall.

William Keep

William W. Keep, PhD is a professor of marketing emeritus and former dean of business and interim provost at The College of New Jersey. He has assisted state and federal prosecutors in the prosecution of pyramid schemes and has been quoted in the press (The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg/ BusinessWeek, Financial Times, New York Times, Forbes, etc.) as an expert on multilevel marketing. With Dr. Peter Vander Nat (senior economist, FTC, retired), Dr. Keep published academic articles on multilevel marketing, pyramid schemes, and the evolution of direct selling in the United States.

Dariusz Łomowski

Director at the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) – Branch Bureau in Gdansk, Poland. More than twenty years ago Dariusz started at the Office’s media relations unit, later gained experience at product safety area and consumer law enforcement. For last five years he focuses on the market practices at consumer finances and alternative investments, including pyramid promotional schemes. He is attorney-at-law and a board member of the Legal Clinic Foundation – non-governmental organisation setting standards for 28 legal clinics in Poland.

Gina Marie Longo

Gina Marie Longo is an assistant professor in the sociology department at Virginia Commonwealth University and a co-founder of the Digital Sociology Lab. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also minored in religious and ethnic conflicts. Working alongside Dr. Frankie Mastrangelo, her most recent projects examine online gendered recruitment strategies into MLMs and Pastel QAnon and how gender shapes the content of trolling in discussions on male survivors of sexual assault. Her work has been featured in Social Media + Society, Gender & Society, the Journal of Family Relations, and Ms. Magazine. 

Jane Marie

Jane Marie is a Peabody and Emmy Award–winning journalist, a former producer of This American Life, the host of podcasts The Dream and DTR, and co-founder of Little Everywhere. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Cosmopolitan, The Toast, and more. Her recently published book Selling the Dream takes a hard look at the MLM industry. She lives in Los Angeles with her daughter.

Frankie Mastrangelo

Dr. Frankie Mastrangelo is associate chair of the Sociology Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-founder of the Billion Worlds Lab (https://billion-worlds.com/). She received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (Media, Art, and Text) from Virginia Commonwealth University and her Master’s Degree in Media, Cinema, and Digital Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Mastrangelo’s research and teaching examines the intersections of racial capitalism and digital cultures. Her work has been featured in publications such as Social Media + Society, Ephemera, Bitch Media, and Teaching Resistance. She has been interviewed by the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Today for sociological perspective on pop culture and media.

Marco Moukhaiber

Marco Moukhaiber (AlwaysMarco) is an activist for the Anti-MLM movement with over 100k followers across his various social media accounts. His first exposure to MLM was through his high school best friend who unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Marco to his downline, leading to the breakdown of their friendship. This led Marco down a rabbit hole to discover how Multi Level Marketing could have such a powerful effect. Marco routinely attends the virtual and in-person meetings of MLM companies anonymously, using hidden cameras to record the true nature of what happens on the inside. His flagship series “Infiltrating A Pyramid Scheme” examines MLM companies from every conceivable angle and presents the sobering reality of what Multi Level Marketing really is.

Máire O Sullivan

Lecturing at Munster Technological University in Ireland, Dr. Máire O Sullivan's research is focused on female consumer behaviour. She has written for The Conversation on the anti-MLM movement and researched MLM advertising targeting women in particular. Her PhD is from University College Cork. More information can be found at maireosullivan.com.

Bonnie Patten

Bonnie Patten is Executive Director of Truth in Advertising (TINA.org), a non-profit consumer advocacy organization focused on protecting consumers from false and deceptive marketing. Since its inception, TINA.org has filed more than 250 legal actions, and state and federal agencies have used its work in at least three pyramid scheme cases. Ms. Patten has testified before Congress on issues related to consumer protection, deceptive marketing and economic justice, and she is a regular commentator in the media including appearances on NBC, CBS, ABC, and BBC, in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Economist, and on podcasts such as The Dream. She is the 2019 recipient of the Florence Kelley Consumer Leadership Award by the National Consumers League. She earned her J.D. from Boston University and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jessica Pearce

Jessica Pearce is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research focuses on understanding how online communities create meaning. Most recently, she analyzed MLM success stories and the stigmatization of MLM participants on social media. Her work can be found in Feminist Media Studies and Deviant Behavior.

Chris Shelton

Chris Shelton is a writer, consultant and podcaster who escaped from the destructive cult he grew up in and has been advocating for cult awareness for ten years. As a cult expert, he has personally helped hundreds of people either recover from destructive cult influence or assisted their family and friends in how to best communicate and work with cult members to help get them out from under undue influence. Chris started a YouTube channel which has over 45,000 subscribers featuring over 1,400 videos laying out the anatomy of coercive control and how religious and non-religious cults operate. He produces the Speaking of Cults podcast, educating on critical thinking and interviewing former members of Scientology and other destructive cults, as well as a range of therapists, cult exit counselors, educators and media personalities. Chris has also given talks and presentations around the United States and has been featured on numerous podcasts and television shows including the Emmy-award winning Scientology and the Aftermath on A&E and served as a consultant to that show for its first two seasons. He has also written a critical analysis of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard called Scientology: A to Xenu – An Insider’s Guide to What Scientology is Really All About.

Peter Vander Nat

Peter J. Vander Nat, Ph.D. (University of Notre Dame) served for 15+ years as senior economic expert at the FTC regarding pyramid schemes and has submitted numerous declarations to federal courts. Along with co-author Dr. Bill Keep, he has published articles on pyramid schemes vs. legitimate multilevel marketing. Upon retiring from the FTC in 2014, he remains an active expert witness for government prosecution of pyramid schemes.

Jonathan Ware

Jonathan Ware is a trial attorney in the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Enforcement, investigating and litigating in federal courts a wide range of deceptive and unfair practices, including pyramid schemes.  Before the FTC, Jonathan worked at international law firms on global investigations and litigation; he served as receiver in a federal securities fraud action with $500 million in claims and had a lead role in a corporate monitorship that resulted in $115 million returned to consumers.

Megan Williams

Megan Williams is a licensed therapist specializing in trauma and complicated grief. She is the author of Cutting Ties: Healing After MLM, a workbook designed to help individuals with the transition out of the MLM industry. A former MLM rep, Megan uses her personal experience in tandem with her professional training to educate on the psychological tactics used by MLM companies.

Erin Witte

Erin Witte is the Director of Consumer Protection for the Consumer Federation of America. Erin leads CFA’s advocacy efforts in consumer protection, including advocating for consumer protections in Congress and at regulatory agencies, communicating policy positions to the press and the public, organizing meetings with stakeholders on consumer protection issues, and providing educational tools for consumers to help them navigate marketplace challenges. Prior to joining the CFA, Erin was an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she litigated consumer protection cases in Virginia state and federal courts. Erin also worked in private practice in Fairfax, VA, where she represented individual consumer clients. Erin also has a public service history of volunteer work with various legal aid organizations, public defenders, and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.