Laila Mickelwait

Laila Mickelwait is an American anti-sex trafficking activist and CEO who founded the Justice Defense Fund. She has been combatting sex trafficking since 2006 and founded the global Traffickinghub movement to "shut down Pornhub" for the distribution and monetization of sexual crime in 2020. and has played an important role in her work. The Sunday Times reported that Mickelwait's campaign resulted in major credit-card and payment companies cutting off services to Pornhub, Pornhub subsequently removed over 80 percent of the site's content, totaling over 30 million images and 10 million videos in what Financial Times called "probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history."

On July 23, 2024, Penguin Random House published Mickelwait's true crime memoir On July 31, 2024,Takedown ranked No. 37 on USA Today's list of the 150 best-selling books across all genres.

Mickelwait has shared her advocacy work through media appearances and interviews on platforms and programs including CNBC's Squawk Box with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Theo Von's This Past Weekend, The Jordan Harbinger Podcast, and numerous others. Her work and writing has also been featured in outlets such as the New York Times, The Sunday Times, Washington Post, New York Post, among others.

Early life and education 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.