About Us

About

Maria Sliwa is the president of M. Sliwa Public Relations and Freedom Now Communications, Inc. As a press agent for the Sudan Campaign, she played a major role in publicizing the genocide, slavery, and rape of civilians in Sudan and Darfur. In 1999, she launched and managed an Internet news service, Freedom Now News, focusing on international human rights. She continues to gain attention for a variety of clients.

 

Sliwa is known for her expertise in reportage. Her reporting and activism helped convince the states of New York and New Jersey to divest from Talisman Energy of Canada, an oil company that was complicit in the Government of Sudan’s genocidal war against its population.

In addition to her extensive work in Sudan and Uganda, she has covered the self-immolation of Tibetans and the plight of Richard Wurmbrand, an activist who spent fourteen years imprisoned and tortured in his homeland of Romania.

 

The New York Times,  DailyNews,   New York Post,  AP,  Reuters,  UPI,   La Stampa,   The Guardian, Al Jazeera,  Politico,  Cosmopolitan,  People Magazine, and Page Six are among the numerous media outlets that have reported on Sliwa’s work. Her work has also been aired on  BBC,  ABC (Good Morning America), NBC (Today Show), NBC (Dateline), FOXNews, CNN, CBS News, and   MSNBC. She has appeared on FOX 5, UPN 9, MSNBC, and numerous radio stations, including WABC, WOR, and 1010 WINS. Her articles have been published in a number of print outlets, including Contemporary Review,  Consortium of Gender, Security and Human Rights,  The Center for Advanced Studies of African Society,  Eurasia Review,  Pravda (Russia), Revue-Politique (France), The Nederlands Dagblad (Netherlands), Watani (Egypt), The Sudan Tribune, Daily Monitor  (Uganda), New Vision (Uganda), South Africa Daily, The Panama News, Bulgarian News Network, The National Interest,  The New York SunHuffington Post,   AlterNet, Global Tryst and ReliefWeb.

 

She served as moderator for Western Connecticut State University’s symposium, “Combating sex slavery here and now: The exploration of human trafficking.” She presented for “Beyond the Mollen Commission,” sponsored by the Pre Law Society, the Psychology Association, and PSI CHI of Fordham University. She chaired “The Economic Challenges of New York City’s Underclass Communities,” a symposium for the Fifth Greater New York Conference on Social Research. She has participated in aid, research, and journalism projects in Bosnia, Croatia, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, India, Russia, Sudan, and Uganda.

 

Sliwa is an adjunct professor of public relations, media, and journalism at New York University and a former adjunct assistant professor of media law at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Before launching Freedom Now Communications Inc., she worked as a New York City undercover police officer.