Career
Skinner began his career at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, where he focused on United States. foreign policy. While at the Council in August 2001, he met veteran diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke. Skinner soon became "one of Holbrooke’s youngest protégés," and his Special Assistant for the next three years.
Subsequently, he also worked for journalist David Halberstam and General
Stanley McChrystal (United States Army, Retired). In 2003, while on assignment in Sudan for Newsweek International, Skinner met his first survivor of slavery.
As a writer, Skinner has infiltrated trafficking networks and slave quarries, urban child markets and illegal brothels, going undercover when necessary. His work has appeared in Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, Travel + Leisure, the Los Angeles Times, TheMiami Herald, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, among others
He was also named one of National Geographic"s Adventurers of the Year 2008.The book was also published in multiple countries including the Czechoslovakian Republic (Nakladatelství XYZ), Germany (Lübbe), of Korea (NanJang), Italy (Einaudi), The Netherlands (Cossee), Poland (Znak), and the United Kingdom (Random House United Kingdom).
Starting in 2009, Skinner was a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, where he focused on tracing slavery in corporate supply chains from theaters like the New Zealand fishing industry and Indonesian palm oil plantations to United States. and Chinese consumer markets. Previously, he was the first fellow for human trafficking at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University"s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2011, the World Economic Forum named Skinner one of its Young Global Leaders, and he formerly served on the Forum"s Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade.
Skinner is a former Senior Vice President at Tau Investment Management.
Skinner was raised in Wisconsin and northern Nigeria where his father served as a British colonial administrator. Skinner comes from a long line of abolitionists.
His great-great-grandfather, Robert Pratt, served with the 1st Connecticut Artillery at the Siege of St. Petersburg, which led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Skinner received his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
He currently lives in Manhattan, New New York