Julie Cordua

The internet is being used to hurt kids.

She built the tech to find and stop their abusers.

In 2012, Julie Cordua left her cushy job at (RED) where she’d helped raise over $160 million to fight AIDS to join a cause no one wanted to talk about: online child sexual abuse.

At the time, tech platforms were booming.

But behind the scenes, predators were exploiting the same tools to groom, traffic, and harm children.

Most people turned away.

Julie couldn’t.

She joined forces with Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to launch Thorn, a nonprofit that doesn’t just raise awareness.

It builds technology to fight predators at scale.

AI, data forensics, image recognition.

Julie turned these tools into weapons of defense.

Her goal? Remove all child sexual abuse material from the internet.

All of it.

People thought it was impossible.

But she got to work.

In just over a decade, Thorn’s software has helped identify more than 16,000 child victims.

Their tools are deployed in 55 countries, used by law enforcement, tech platforms, and investigators racing against time to rescue children from unimaginable harm.

Julie didn’t stop there.

She built Spotlight.

A tool now used by law enforcement in the U.S. and Canada to find and recover victims of trafficking.

She launched Safer, a tool that lets digital platforms scan for illegal content before it’s posted.

And she created an Innovation Lab, where companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft come together to fight abuse online.

In 2019, Thorn was awarded $280 million through TED’s Audacious Project.

Julie was named a Skoll Social Entrepreneur and recognized by Forbes as a leader using tech for good.

But none of it came easy.

Today, as AI and deepfakes create terrifying new frontiers of digital exploitation, Julie and her team remain one step ahead.

Developing new tools to stop threats before they scale.