DONNA RICE HUGHES
CEO and President, Enough Is Enough®® (EIE), a national non-partisan, secular, non-profit organization whose mission is to make the Internet safer for children and families.
Founders Award (2015), National Center on Sexual Exploitation; The Professional Women in Advocacy 2014 Excellence In Advocacy Award for "Veteran Practitioner"; The Women in Technology (WIT) 2013 Leadership Award for "Social Impact"; National Law Center for Children and Families Annual Appreciation Award; the "Protector of Children Award"; and the "Media Impact Award from the National Abstinence Clearninghouse.
Since 1994, Donna has given thousands of media interviews on Internet harms to children promoted Internet safety regarding pornography, sexual predators, online gaming, cyberbulling, sexting, social media and other dangers. Major news outlets featuring Donna include The Today Show, Good Morning America, FOX News shows, CNN, Headline News, The O'Reilly Factor, Oprah, 20/20, Dateline, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, People Magazine, McCalls, Time, Newsweek, Today's Christian Woman, World Magazine, and Parenting Magazine. Author of numerous commentaries in major news publications including USA Today, LA Times, Washington Times, Foxnews.com and Miami Herald. Enough Is Enough® Board of Directors (2002-Present) (Board Chairman 2003- 2010), MySpace Advisory Board (2006-2009), Internet Safety Technical Task Force in cooperation with the U.S. Attorneys General (2008), Virginia Attorney General's Youth Internet Safety Task Force (2006); National House of Hope Board of Directors (1998-99); Child Online Protection Act Commissioner (1998), Testified numerous times before various committees of the United States House of Representatives and Senate. Professional speaker to family, education, industry, and faith based groups.
In 1994, she introduced the issue of Internet safety and emerged as the national voice for the prevention of Internet- initiated sexual exploitation of children. She led EIE's development of a three-pronged strategy of the public, the technology industry and legal community sharing the responsibility to protect children online from pornography, child pornography and sexual predators. This strategy was adopted by industry and governments worldwide. She led the proposal and advocacy of key bi-partisan legislation in the nineties to protect children from Internet pornography, sexual predators and other dangers (Communications Decency Act, Child Online Protection Act, Children's Internet Protection Act, Child Pornography Prevention Act); Donna served on the Executive Committee of the first Children's Internet Safety Summit in 1997 and led the adoption of the Internet industry's "ZERO Tolerance" policy against child pornography, endorsed by the White House and DOJ; Served as executive producer of the Emmy-award winning Internet Safety 101® PBS TV series (2013) and received an Emmy nomination as the program’s host. (3 Telly Awards), Creator/Author /Producer of EIE's Internet Safety 101® Multimedia Program (DVD series/Workbook & Resource Guide/ Rules 'N Tools® booklet) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice. The 101 Program was the first comprehensive Internet safety curriculum designed for parents and caregivers to educate, equip, and empower parents, educators and caregivers to protect youth from pornography, sexual predators and cyber bullies, and to keep them safe on social networking sites, gaming and mobile devices; Author, Kids Online, Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace (Baker Books,1998); Story co-writer, Touched By an Angel TV Series (2000 Season Finale) which brought the message of online sexual predators and Internet safety to primetime television and won Neilson ratings in its time slot during May sweeps; Author, The Internet Pornography Pandemic; "The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment In Human History" (2014). In the fall of 2014, she led her organization in implementing the "National Porn Free Wi-Fi" campaign" with nearly 50,000 petitions and 75 partner organizations encouraging McDonald's and Starbucks to lead Corporate America in filtering pornography and child pornography on public Wi-Fi. McDonald’s is now filtering WiFi in nearly 14,000 stores nationwide; Starbucks announced they will begin filtering their public WIFI nationally and are implementing a global safe WiFi policy. Since 1998, she has called Disney's attention to the problem of Disney-themed pornography which is a clear violation of Disney's copyrighted brand and its trademarked cartoon characters. Hughes also led her organization (Enough Is Enough®) in the development of The Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge (2016) which was signed by then Candidate Trump, and Hillary Clinton sent a letter of support. She had led the fight for years to get the existing federal laws enforces to protect children from online sexual exploitation and has sexually graphic content. Creator of www.enough.org, www.internetsafety101.org, www.friendlywifi.org. She has authored numerous commentaries that have been published in media outlets such as The Washington Examiner, CNN Opinion, thehill.com, among others.
B.S. Biology (Pre-med) with a minor focus in Business Administration. Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Mortar Board, Outstanding Senior Award, University of South Carolina (USC), 1980. USC Varsity cheerleader captain 1978-80.