Laila Mickelwait

Laila Mickelwait is an American anti-sex trafficking activist^[1][2] and CEO who founded the Justice Defense Fund.^[3][4] She founded the global Traffickinghub movement to "shut down Pornhub" for the distribution^[5][6][7] and monetization^[8] of sexual crime^{[9][10][11][12]} in 2020 and continues to lead the effort.^{[1][13][6][14][15][4]}

Mickelwait's Traffickinghub petition to "shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable for aiding trafficking" has garnered over 2 million signatures from 192 countries^[16] and has played an important role in her fight for accountability.^[17] Mickelwait's activism and leadership of the Traffickinghub movement played a pivotal role^[13][17] in Visa, Mastercard and Discover cutting all ties with Pornhub^[18][19][20] and Pornhub removing over 80 percent of the site's content, totaling over 30 million images and 10 million videos^{[21][22][23][24]} in what Financial Times called "probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history."^[25]

In July 2024, Penguin Random House published Mickelwait's true crime memoir^[17] about her fight to hold Pornhub accountable titled Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking^{[26][27][28][29][30][31]} and it quickly earned National Bestseller status by ranking in the top 50 books across all genres on the USA Today bestseller list.^[32][33]

Mickelwait has shared her advocacy work through media appearances and interviews on platforms and programs including CNBC's Squawk Box with Andrew Ross Sorkin,^[34] Theo Von's This Past Weekend,^[14] The Jordan Peterson Podcast,^[35] The Jordan Harbinger Podcast,^[36] and numerous others. Her work and writing has also been featured in outlets such as the New York Times,^{[4] [7]}The New Yorker,^[6] USA Today,^[15][37] The Sunday Times,^{[1] [13]} Newsweek,^[38][39] Washington Post,^[40] New York Post,^[41] among others.

Education and background

Mickelwait received her Master of Public Diplomacy degree from the Annenberg School for Communication and the Dornsife School of International Relations at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State.^[42][17] She then interned at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland^[17] before becoming the Director of Policy and Public Affairs and subsequently the Director of Abolition for the U.S. nonprofit organization Exodus Cry.^[17][6] In 2020, Mickelwait founded the Justice Defense Fund and has served as its CEO since its inception. The organization’s mission is to "empower survivors of tech-facilitated sex trafficking, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and image-based sexual abuse to pursue justice through strategic litigation and advocacy." It also works to advance support for "governmental and corporate policy reforms aimed at preventing online sexual crime."^[43]