Former FBI Agent Emily Vacher Is Helping Put an End to Child Abduction Using Facebook

And she was inspired by Silence of the Lambs to join the bureau.
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Photo: Courtesy Emily Vacher

The world of Facebook has grown to over 2.08 billion monthly active users to date, and believe it or not, it’s still growing. With that many people logged on liking, commenting, sharing, and interacting with content every second, it’s understandable why conversations constantly crop up regarding how responsible the tech giant should be regarding the safety of its users. Features allow you to mark yourself safe during an unfortunate circumstance, help raise funds for a cause, or reach out to victims of a natural disaster in your community — and the social media platform has been at the forefront of these initiatives for years now.

One of the most important capabilities in the space of Trust and Safety at Facebook is the Amber Alert Program, where users can activate the power of their local community to help find missing children. (AMBER Alert was started in 1996 and is operated by the U.S. Department of Justice.) People began using Facebook independently to find children who had been abducted from their loved ones; the company eventually took notice. These acts of outreach quickly inspired both the platform and its Director of Trust and Safety, Emily Vacher, to find a large-scale way to help reunite families.

Since the Facebook Amber Alert program began in 2015, Emily and her team have brought the feature to 14 countries (most recently launching in New Zealand) with current engagement and interest from even more places across the globe. There are times where the world can feel like a very unsafe place, and when social media finds itself at the center of that uncertainty; yet people like Emily continue to find ways to use technology to make things a little better. Teen Vogue sat down with Emily to learn more about the Facebook Amber Alert Program, how a former FBI agent found herself at one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and the growing importance of women in technology.

Teen Vogue: What do you do at Facebook? Can you tell us a little bit about the role?

Emily Vacher: I am a director of Trust and Safety at Facebook, which means I help keep people safe both online and in the real world. Before I came to Facebook, I was an FBI agent. I was on the Child Abduction team, so when I came to Facebook, I realized that this incredible platform could be used for such good. Coming from a place where I would look for missing kids, I knew that the best way to find these kids was to get the information out to the right people, and Facebook is the perfect platform for that. Part of my responsibility at Facebook is to run the Amber Alert Program, which was launched back in January of 2015. It's actually very simple: it's about getting the right information to the right people at the right time.

TV: How does the Amber Alert Program at Facebook work?

EV: If a child goes missing, we will be able to deliver the Amber Alert with a picture of the child, information about the case, and a link to the police who are investigating the case. We then can deliver that to your news feed if you're within the radius where the child went missing. This way, it gets the information only to people who may be in a position to help, which is so important about Amber Alerts. It's not about the quantity of alerts that go out, it's really about the quality, and quality means to the right people.

We [first] launched in the United States [in January 2015] and since then, I've been going country to country. I hope to one day be everywhere in the world. Before this program, when a kid went missing, [families] would take to Facebook and share the information. All we really did was help to organize that information to make sure the right people saw it.

TV: How can this be helpful to people who aren’t familiar with the program?

EV: If somebody in a community has a piece of information, they may not even know that they have it. For example, if there's a description of a car and a license tag, and you pulled into a grocery store and you saw that car, it might not mean anything to you at the time. Then you're standing in line at the grocery store, killing time, you pull out your Facebook, and you realize that's the car that may contain the missing child. Everybody has their device in their hand, and that's what's going to bring kids home.

TV: You mentioned that before Facebook, you worked at the FBI. What college major should someone have in order to work for the FBI?

EV: I changed majors like, 12 times. I think the important thing is that even if you have an idea in mind of what you want to be when you leave school, you should keep your mind open to all of the possibilities in the world.

For example, I knew that there were things that I was not awesome at. Math was not my thing. So I knew I wasn't going to be an engineer, but I had interest in so many different areas that I would major in something, love it, and then take a class in another area and be like, "Oh my God, I love that too." I essentially kept going to school for an extended period of time. I got my Bachelor's in Psychology and Sociology, and then I got two Master's degrees, and then I got a law degree. And I did that because I just loved school. I loved learning.

At the end of all that, I was going to get my PhD, but my mom said that I should get a job and put all these skills to use. So, I became a lawyer. But I didn't have the passion every day at work that I knew I wanted to feel. One day, my firm hired a retired FBI agent as an investigator — and I was completely fascinated.

TV: How did your transition into the FBI happen?

EV: When I was younger I saw a movie called The Silence of the Lambs, and I remember seeing the character played by Jodie Foster. I wanted to be her. She was the first woman that I saw on TV and film that I could relate to. She was small, she was blonde, she was smart, and I had only seen men in those roles, and I had never met a female FBI agent before in real life. I think that's so important in figuring out what you want to do.

I also think finding a mentor is a really important thing to do. It's not something you have to sign up for. It could be talking to somebody at an event, or meeting somebody in a line and just talking to them. When I met this agent [at my firm], I asked him to tell me what it was like [to work in the FBI]. I just remember the way that he lit up, and he told story upon story of all the cool things that he got to do. It was really at that moment, where I had the lightbulb. I said, "That's what I want to do," but I still didn't know if I could do it because I hadn't had any role models and I had never really talked to anybody about it. I had never touched a firearm in my entire life. I didn't know how to box. But he said: "Of course you can do it." I went over there that afternoon and I applied the next day.

TV: What was it like as a woman working in the FBI?

EV: I think that the FBI needs to represent our society, and half of our society is women. When I came into the Bureau, the agent population for women was only 16 percent, so I saw that as a fun challenge, not as something to be scared of. But I don't want it to be seen as special. Your gender shouldn't matter when working in the FBI. What you are is a special agent. We all bring diverse backgrounds, different strengths and weaknesses. I focused my career on crimes against children, so a lot of what I did was talking to children, and talking to victims of sexual abuse. I was good at making connections and having conversations and getting the evidence that I needed to make cases, and I think that was a strength that I brought.

TV: Why do you think it's important for women to work in tech today?

EV: Nobody wants the people who are sitting around a table making a decision to be the same. [Whether it's] different genders, ethnicities, sexual identities, and so on, we want society to be sitting around that table when we're making decisions and building products. Obviously, women are half of the workforce, we're half of society. Our contributions are critical to the successes of many of the products that you see every single day.

Girls should be sitting in the front row, and that's something that's really important: to see more girls involved in STEM and really diversifying the workforce. They are the future of Facebook and we want to see women in these roles.

TV: What is the best piece of advice that you think you have received in your life?

EV: You really have to follow your heart and your passion. You spend more time at work than you do in most of the other places in your life, so if work isn't fulfilling and satisfying, you need to find something else. I think that's a scary proposition for a lot of people. A lot of people are very focused from the beginning. I've met young girls who have said, "I'm going to be a lawyer. I'm going to be a partner in a law firm. I'm going to work in Manhattan," and have been so focused that they fail to stop and look around. It's scary, but you have to listen to yourself. At the end of the day, nothing else matters.

TV: What is something that you wish you did when you were younger?

EV: I wish that I had talked to more people about the world of work. You don't even know the realm of possibility that's out there. I never once met an FBI agent until I decided to become one. So, I wish that I had taken the opportunity to reach out to more people, to find mentors, to talk to people who were in different jobs, even outside of fields that I thought I was interested in, just to get a better perspective. When you're in college, take classes outside of your major. Do internships in places where you have an interest. It's really about exploring the world and not being so focused on one particular goal, because that might not be the place you end up. So, it's being open and it's listening to yourself.

Related: Why There Are Way Too Few Girls in Tech, and How Chelsea Clinton Wants to Change It

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