Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first stop when she flew into India in May was not to talk about defense or trade, but to meet with victims and survivors working to end sex trafficking in Kolkata.

She put on a wristband saying "Cool Men Don’t Buy Sex" gifted to her by 19-year-old Uma Das, from my NGO, Apne Aap Women Worldwide.

Das told her: “Only if the buyers are arrested will the brothels close down and will we be safe.”
Clinton also asked everyone in the room to wear the band.

Soon, the entire diplomatic corps, members of the Secret Service and even the traveling press corps were wearing a wristband.

As a result, most newspapers published photographs of all this and the campaign went global.

I have seen Clinton demonstrating the same commitment time and again in whatever office she has held – both through institutional support or personal encouragement to individual women.

It was 1997 when I first met Clinton. She was the first lady of the United States and I had made a documentary, "The Selling of Innocents," about sex trafficking from Nepal to Mumbai.

I had traveled to the White House at her invitation to serve on the first advisory board of Vital Voices, an organization she founded to empower women leaders throughout the world.

I remember telling her then that we needed more attention to the problem of sex trafficking – new policies, laws and global protocols to dismantle the system of prostitution that was preying upon an increasing number of girls in the U.S., India and the rest of the world.

Her aides introduced me to key senators with whom I worked for the passage of a U.S. anti-trafficking law.
I testified before the Senate as an expert witness and we managed to get the Traffic Victim Prevention Act passed in 2000.

A decade later, as I struggled to get the law changed in my own country – so that instead of blaming and imprisoning prostituted women and girls, the law would pursue the pimps and the johns who bought and sold them – I decided to reach out to her.

I wrote Clinton’s office asking her to visit with the women of Apne Aap and support our cause.

I knew somehow that she would find time in her busy schedule to stand by the most marginalized girls in the world.
And she did – in May in Kolkata.

“Since the first time I met you seventeen years ago," I admitted ruefully, "I am still struggling to make trafficking a mainstream issue."

She reminded me, “Remember, you were not doing this when we met."

Her reminder was encouraging. Since making the documentary, I had actually begun to play a more proactive role by organizing victims and survivors to resist traffickers.

The first way, women in power can help the rest of us, is just by paying attention and mentoring.

While walking into the conference room where other anti-trafficking activists were waiting, Clinton saw U.S. officials hustling out the press.

She immediately asked me if I wanted to call the press back.

“Don’t we need them here for the publicity? The press is important to make this mainstream.” Because of her, two journalists were allowed to stay.

Still, I must have sounded tired while talking about the immensity of the sex industry.

Again, she said encouragingly, “Don’t be weary, I’m your cheerleader from afar.”
Later, when she was back in New York, she continued to highlight the issue.

In a speech at the New York Women’s Foundation Breakfast, she spoke about Poonam, another 16-year-old from Apne Aap, who had demonstrated a karate move to her.

She compared Poonam’s sense of pride and accomplishment with that of the women activists on stage with her.
I began to realize that Clinton was not afraid to cross boundaries or support uncomfortable and too often invisible issues on behalf of women.

She helped me make visible an activist strand in my own life.

She was not afraid to seek my expertise from India to get a law passed in the U.S. or describe Poonam as having the same qualities as the women leaders in the air-conditioned ballrooms of New York.

She saw women's issues as universal and unbounded by nationalism.

Altogether, she taught me that a powerful woman can bring change not only for women in her own country but also those on the other side of the world.

Ruchira Gupta is founder president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots movement to end sex trafficking.