Michelle C. DeLaune

Michelle Collins DeLaune is the Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Since 1984, NCMEC has operated under U.S. Congressional authority to serve as the national resource center and clearinghouse on missing and exploited children. As COO of NCMEC, Ms. DeLaune oversees the center's federal grant awards, including the primary grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. These grants help fund the organization's most critical work: its mission of bringing missing children home, stopping child sexual exploitation and assisting law enforcement. In addition, she is responsible for operational matters pertaining to NCMEC services provided to families, child-serving professionals and law enforcement.

During her 21-year career at NCMEC, she was responsible for establishing NCMEC's extensive program of work and policies responding to the explosion of online child sexual exploitation. Under her leadership, the CyberTipline has received more than 50 million reports regarding the sexual exploitation of children and currently makes critical information available to more than 120 countries around the globe. Ms. DeLaune was instrumental in the development of multiple voluntary industry initiatives aimed at reducing the amount of online child sexual abuse material.

To help ensure a victim-centric approach to digital crimes, Ms. DeLaune created the first-ever Child Victim Identification Program to assist with the identification and rescue of child victims depicted in sexually abusive images and videos. As the globally regarded premier victim identification program, NCMEC has dramatically increased the number of identified children victims to more than 18,000 children.

On multiple occasions, Ms. DeLaune has testified before the U.S. Congress about matters pertaining to the sexual exploitation of children. She has written several articles regarding the importance of identifying child victims depicted in sexually abusive material. She received a B.A. with a major in psychology from George Mason University and an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Maryland at College Park.