Martha Mendoza started at The Associated Press in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a seasoned staff of expert wire service journalists gave her a crash course in covering the news, from fast breaking stories to in depth investigative pieces. She's been a national and international writer in New York, Mexico City and the Silicon Valley and was part of a team that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the killings of civilians by U.S. troops at No Gun Ri. Mendoza is a dogged FOIA user who loves teaming up with colleagues the world over to uncover wrongdoing, expose corruption and give voice to the voiceless. She's won numerous journalism prizes and fellowships, as well as the blue ribbon for giant zucchini at the county fair. When she grows up she wants to be a kindergarten teacher.

The slave fishing project was especially personal for Robin McDowell because it tied together the very countries she covered during her two-decade career in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, where for many poor men the brutal human trafficking trade began, she helped launch The Associated Press' first regional editing desk. In Cambodia and Myanmar, home to most of the victims, she reported on the difficulties young democracies face after emerging from military rule, civil strife and horrific rights abuses. And in Indonesia, where men were trapped for years, sometimes decades, she oversaw a busy bureau as it responded to everything from earthquakes and tsunamis to terrorist attacks. McDowell went to Washington University in St. Louis and, after a few years in book publishing, to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

For more than a decade, Margie Mason has covered some of the biggest stories in the Asia-Pacific. Though she specializes in medical writing, including reporting from the front lines of SARS and bird flu, much of her enterprise work has focused on poverty and human rights abuses, often involving women and children in remote areas. Her interest in pursuing migrant fishermen forced to work on boats in Indonesia surfaced while reporting on the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Mason joined the AP in 1997 in Charleston, West Virginia and was later based in San Francisco and Vietnam before her current posting in Indonesia. She has reported from more than 20 countries on four continents and co-authored an award-winning series on global drug resistance. She was a Nieman Global Health fellow at Harvard University and an Asian studies fellow at the University of Hawaii. She has a journalism degree from West Virginia University. To date, the reporters featured in this book have earned the Goldsmith Prize, the Polk Award, a gold Bartlett & Steele Award, the Selden Ring Award and AP's 2015 Oliver S. Gramling Award.

Since joining The Associated Press two years ago, Esther Htusan has relentlessly pursued stories about human rights abuses in Myanmar following a half-century of dictatorship. Her interest in covering Rohingya Muslims was almost unheard of in a country where much of the population _ including local journalists _looked upon members of the long-persecuted minority with disdain. When Htusan joined the investigation into forced labor in Southeast Asia's fishing industry, her compassion and resourcefulness in reporting led to some of the most powerful images the world has seen about modern day slavery: Men in a cage on a remote Indonesian island and interviews with men calling out over the side of their trawler. Some spoke of abuses at the hands of their captains and others begged The AP to tell families back home they were still alive.