Lina Nealon

Lina Nealon is committed to creating a society where every individual may thrive. As the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Vice President and Director of Corporate Advocacy, Lina holds mainstream companies accountable for facilitating sexual abuse and exploitation. Through public campaigns and direct advocacy with executives and policymakers, she presses on corporations to prioritize people over profit. Posing as a teen online across multiple platforms, she uses the evidence to elevate many harms young people face in the digital world.

As Founding Director of Demand Abolition, the first national program to confront sex buyer’s role in driving the global sex trade, she designed Cities Empowered Against Sexual Exploitation (CEASE): a network of twelve major US cities measurably disrupting commercial sex markets in their communities. Ms. Nealon was a founding member of World Without Exploitation and of Harvard University’s Working Group on Modern Slavery, and was appointed co-chair for the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Anti-Trafficking Taskforce Demand Committee. Lina has drafted federal and state policies and legislation, has advised governors, attorneys general, and White House policy councils, and consistently appears in top-tier media outlets.

A survivor of sexual assault herself, Ms. Nealon is driven to elevate survivor leadership and promote women’s and girls’ empowerment - and has done so throughout her career and varied volunteer commitments. She and her husband live in Durham, NC, with their four young social activists.