Better Dead Than a Slave: A $100 Billion Founder’s Field Report on Leadership

Everywhere I go, I tell the truth. I do not whisper it. I do not soften it. I state it plainly: I was a $100 billion tech founder. I was kidnapped. I was trafficked. I was tortured for two years. My life was dismantled, my assets were stolen, and for the seven years since my escape, law enforcement has done nothing.

When I tell this to women, the response is almost always the same: “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

I appreciate the empathy, but I am finished with pity. Pity is a buffer. It treats my life as a freak accident so that you don’t have to admit it is a systemic design. You think your suburban life, your middle-class job, or your gated community protects you. You think my story is "mine."

It isn't. This is every woman’s story in America.

The Illusion of the Gate

The distance between a mansion and a shelter cot is not a miles-long road; it is a single trapdoor.

In one of the shelters I cycled through, I sat next to a woman who was funny as hell and highly educated. At one point, she lived in Blackhawk—one of the wealthiest, most exclusive gated communities in the country. She was there because of domestic violence. She had done everything “right.” I had built a global empire. Neither of our “compliance” bought us an ounce of protection.

She told me, “Jodi, if you just stopped talking about the trafficking stuff, you could really be a leader of women.” It was the ultimate irony. I have been a leader my entire life—from coaching groups to running theater companies to founding organizations for women in tech. She wanted a "palatable" leader. She wanted the version of me that explains global strategy, not the version that exposes the scars of American slavery.

A leader who hides the reality of extreme violence to remain "marketable" isn't leading—she’s just participating in the cover-up.

Procedural Stillness: The Seven-Year Silence

I am documenting what I call Procedural Stillness. For seven years, I have disclosed my account to every level of authority. I have met with public defenders who nod and say, “That’s too bad,” before returning to a housing checklist. I have filled out intake forms for anti-trafficking nonprofits that refer me to hotlines that refer me back to the streets.

This isn't an accident. Impunity thrives through administrative stillness. It is a quiet consensus that some claims are simply too large to handle—and therefore must be neutralized through inaction.

If the FBI can ignore the $100 billion theft and two-year enslavement of a tech founder for seven years, they are signaling to every predator in America that women are fair game. They are upholding the Epstein Standard: Men can do whatever they want to women, and the system will watch, record, and do nothing.

Funded by the Victims

There is a particular, jagged kind of pain in realizing that the machinery of our subjugation is funded by our own labor. For decades, I built an empire. I contributed to the tax base. I funded the very government that is now choosing to ignore my erasure.

We are paying for our own cages. Our tax dollars fund the FBI agents who look at a seven-year record of trafficking and do nothing. Our taxes fund the public defenders who dismiss us and the agencies that keep the “trap” laws on the books. It is the ultimate insult: the system takes our money to build a world where we are treated as property, then uses that same money to hire the guards who make sure we stay that way. We aren't just being ignored; we are being forced to bankroll our own disappearance.

The Trap: Hotel Policy as a Weapon

This impunity is codified in the very rules you think are "standard procedure." In every state, hotels require a "second credit card" from a guest even if a third party has already paid for the room and incidentals.

To a compliant woman with a bank account, this is an inconvenience. To a woman whose assets have been stolen or who is being hunted, it is a cage door.

• The Tactic: Trafficking organizations use the "hotel list" to tag and track women; anyone can put their card down for anyone else to maintain control.
• The Reality: The moment a woman tries to access a safe room paid for by an ally, the "second card" requirement shuts the door.

It is a law that says: If you don’t have a bank, you don't have a right to sanctuary. We must abolish this practice immediately.

The Price of Truth

I hear the fear in women’s voices when they see the assassination attempts and the homelessness I’ve endured. They think survival is the goal. They think staying quiet and staying "compliant" is worth it just to stay alive.

There is a calculated rationality to that fear, but ultimately, it is a delusion. Compliance is an admission that we are property. When a hotel denies you a room for lack of a card, or the FBI ignores your kidnapping, they are treating you as an object to be managed, not a human being with rights.

I have survived multiple assassination attempts. I am homeless today specifically because I refuse to provide the silence that impunity requires. People ask why I keep speaking when the cost is so high.

The answer is simple: Better to be dead than a slave.

When you are a slave—when your mind, body, and labor are harvested while the law looks the other way—you aren't "alive." You are just a resource. I would rather be dead than spend one more second as a compliant object. I am a mother. I will fight to the death for better, safe, freer lives for my kids. I will not pretend that the curated lie we are living in is reality. I'm sane, I'm powerful, and will not be cowed or silenced.

The Call to Action

I am done being a leader who makes you feel comfortable. I am a leader who makes you face the reality that you are unprotected.

1. Litigation: We are suing the FBI and law enforcement for their seven-year refusal to act, proving that inaction is a deliberate policy.
2. Legislation: We are demanding every state abolish the "second card" hotel requirement to ensure that a paid room is a sanctuary, not a hurdle.

Stop telling me you're sorry. Stop pretending your silence is a strategy. If you aren't fighting to dismantle the machinery of impunity, you have already accepted your status as property. You will never be safe. Your daughters will never experience justice, liberty, or basic physical safety.

Without a fight, society will continue to see your baby girls as less than human—utilities and cogs in men's lives to keep men comfortable. They do what they want to your girls, and much of the time men enjoy hurting us. You know this. Don't pretend you don't.

I’m not asking for your pity. I’m asking if you have the courage to be free.

And the real question is: Are you sane?

Because there is only one sane choice.

That is what I am doing.