Julie Cordua

Cordua left her job at RED to join co-founders Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in launching Thorn, an anti-human trafficking organization whose mission is to create technology to defend children from abuse online and to remove all child sexual abuse material from the internet. As CEO of the organization, Cordua works with other NGO's, technology companies, government, and law enforcement to assist efforts to identify, protect and rescue victims, and to fight predatory online behavior. In 2017 Cordua noted in Recode that Thorn had an unusual business model, as a non-profit that was also driven by products and technology.[4] One product they have developed, Spotlight, helps law enforcement in the United States and Canada identify victims of child sexual abuse and traffickers, and as of 2018 had led to the identification of 5,894 child sex trafficking victims and the rescue of 103 children.[5] The Spotlight program uses pattern recognition technology from Amazon to identify text and images that might contain or relate to child sexual abuse online. The organization has faced some criticism around the program due to concerns about privacy and the company's stance towards adult sex workers.[6] Another product developed by Thorn is called Safer, and is a tool that allows websites that host user submitted images and videos to identify child sexual abuse material.[7] Thorn also started another program, their Innovation Lab, to collaborate with tech companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Expedia, IAC, Sabre, Twitter, Amazon Web Services and Pinterest to police child sexual abuse material on their sites.[8] In 2019, Thorn was one of eight organizations that were awarded a total of $280 million in funding by the TED launched Audacious Project.[9]