John Walsh

Children’s advocate, author and host of the nation’s number-one crime fighting show, America’s Most Wanted (FOX), John Walsh has turned his personal grief into positive energy to help children and their families. Walsh’s son, Adam, was missing and then later found murdered in the summer of 1981. Since then, he and his wife Revé’s dedicated efforts have led to the passage of the Missing Children Act of 1982 and the Missing Children’s Assistance Act of 1984. The latter bill founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Walsh successfully shepherded the 2006 passage of the Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act, which created a National Sex Offender Registry.

Walsh’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. He was named Father of the Year in 1984 by the National Father’s Day Committee and is the only private citizen to receive a Special Recognition Award by a U.S. Attorney General. In addition, CBS recognized him as one of the 100 Americans Who Changed History. Walsh’s life has also been chronicled on A & E’s Biography program and MSNBC’s Headliners and Legends with Matt Lauer. In 1988 he was named the U.S. Marshals’ Man of the Year and two years later received the same honor from the FBI, the Bureau’s highest civilian award.

Walsh serves on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He recently teamed up with Cox Communications to launch Take Charge! Smart Choices for Your Cox Digital Home. Through this initiative, Walsh is helping families manage their mass media experience with an eye toward safe and appropriate content and usage guidelines for TV and the Internet.

Miss America 2007 Lauren Nelson

Lauren serves as the spokesperson for COX Communications and is using her voice to raise awareness about the dangers for children on the Internet. This year, Lauren will use the power of her crown with Cox Communications to educate parents and children about the importance of making smart decisions online.

“When I was 13, my friends and I made the bad decision to share personal information on the Internet with someone we later learned was a sexual predator. We told him our names, ages and where we lived. My friend later received inappropriate photographs from this person. We told our parents about what we had done, and the situation was defused without incident. Unfortunately, not all kids are as lucky as we were, and not all stories dealing with the potential dangers of the Internet end without serious incident.”

This experience was an important milestone in Lauren’s journey to champion this cause and to tour the country to educate children on the internet as a great tool for learning and communicating, but it also a haven for online predators. By teaching kids early and often what the dangers of the Internet are and how to avoid them, and working with government officials to pass legislation that is tough on online predators, Lauren is hoping to make the Internet a safe, kid-friendly place for our children.

As a spokesperson for Cox Communications, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Symantec, the leader in Internet security, she plans to challenge families to take charge of the Internet. She supports the NCMEC’s mission and has filmed Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that are targeted towards parents to safeguard their children. Lauren promotes this message by speaking at Cox-sponsored events throughout the country. She is also a part of the Cox’s Take Charge website and contributes to the Safety Center for America’s Most Wanted website where parents and kids alike can find resources to help them surf more safely.

Lauren also serves as the National Goodwill Ambassador for the Children’s Miracle Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving and improving the lives of children by raising funds for children's hospitals across North America. Each year the 170 Children's Miracle Network hospitals provide the finest medical care, life-saving research and preventative education to help millions of kids overcome diseases and injuries of every kind.