Yiota Souras is Senior Vice President, General Counsel for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). As General Counsel, Ms. Souras manages the legal operations of NCMEC and provides legal guidance on matters relating to NCMEC’s unique non-profit mission to help find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation, and prevent child victimization. In this role she broadly collaborates on criminal and civil legal issues relating to online child sexual exploitation with technology companies, Congressional staff, prosecutors and defense counsel, and private attorneys representing children who have been victimized. She also oversees federal and state legislative matters relating to NCMEC’s child-based mission and helps guide NCMEC’s international policy role in child protection. Ms. Souras has testified before Congress and is a frequent panel speaker on issues relating to online child sexual exploitation, child sex trafficking, online content moderation and encryption/data privacy issues. She led NCMEC’s efforts in supporting enactment of FOSTA/SESTA, the first substantive modification to the Communications Decency Act in over 20 years that served to limit immunity of interactive computer services in certain civil and criminal cases relating to sex trafficking. Her work to help combat child sex trafficking on Backpage.com has been featured in the documentary film I Am Jane Doe and in the book Taking Down Backpage.

Ms. Souras received a B.A. in History from The Johns Hopkins University and a J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law.