Camelia Tepelus

Camelia Tepelus is the inaugural Executive Director of the Morris Park Business Improvement District (BID) which was founded in April 2019. An active participant in her community, she serves as a member of Community Board 8. Ms. Tepelus previously worked at the Department of Small Business Services and as a leader in the fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation with ECPAT-USA.

She is a senior non-profit manager and administrator, with 20 plus years of non-profit executive management. She is a leading global business and social responsibility expert on business sustainability and human trafficking and is the winner of five international awards on corporate social responsibility. She is an international child rights expert and has been an anti-trafficking advocate since 2001.

Ms. Tepelus is the Co-founder and global Secretariat Coordinator of TheCode.org (2001-2012) in Madrid since 2001 and in New York from 2004-12. She introduced the first ever business anti-human trafficking initiative in the U.S. in 2004, when Carlson Companies signed TheCode.org with HM the Queen Silvia of Sweden. She served as the State Policy Director at ECPAT USA in 2012, and has since been a Board Advisor. She is a member of the UN Expert Reference Group drafting the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (part of the Ruggies principles). She has worked in multiple countries and traveled globally on training and capacity building missions in South and Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ms. Tepelus was featured on CNN Project Freedom and CNN en Español for social responsibility expertise in hospitality, travel and tourism companies. She has an extensive record of academic, advocacy and research publications, both peer reviewed and for general audiences.

Ms. Tepelus has comprehensive sustainability and human rights expertise and multiple assignments as a consultant and grant writer (U.S. Dept of State, EU, OSCE, UNICEF, Swiss Govt/SECO, NYC HHS Accelerator, NYS Grants Gateway, NYCDSBS, private and public foundations). She is fluent in English, Spanish, and Romanian and has excellent comprehension of French and Italian. The Bronx is her home.