2025 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Order of Ontario appointee, and WEF YGL; Cheryl is an internationall children’s rights advocate, social entrepreneur, acclaimed public speaker and the Founder and President of OneChild.

At age 16, Cheryl learned about SEC in high school and was filled with anger and passion to eradicate this crime. By age 17, she had completed a solo, 3.5 month-long, fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka where she visited the streets, slums, and brothels to meet with child victims, NGO and social workers, law enforcement and government officials to document their stories and learn how she—as a teenager-- could help. Wanting to obtain an insider’s look into the child sex trade--at great personal risk-- she partnered with the National Child Protection Authority and played the main role of the DECOY-- a 15 year-old sexually exploited child- -in an undercover STING operation which ended in the successful apprehension of a 40+ child sex perpetrator. Her courage and achievement were recognized by dignitaries and she was asked to serve as H.E. Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka’s Nominee on Child Protection and requested to assist the government in the building of a children’s Parliament.

Today, her 22 year-old career spans 23 countries, where she has joined law enforcement on surveillance missions to identify child sex perpetrators; pioneered the Canadian private sector’s engagement in ending the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism; launched the first prevention education program on child sex trafficking in Canadian schools, and provided shelter and long-term comprehensive care to hundreds of child victims in Asia.

Previously, she served as a Youth Advocate for the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative.

Cheryl is an Ashoka Fellow, and a recipient of over 35 prestigious national and international awards, including the World of Children Founder’s Award known as the “Nobel Prize for Child Advocates”, and honorary doctorates from Toronto Metropolitan University, Trent University, and the University of Windsor.

Cheryl is a Meta Youth Advisor, and serves on the Board of the Canadian Coalition on the Rights of the Child and the Intergenerational Advisory Council of the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership.

She holds a MAS in Children Rights, University of Geneva and a B.A. (Hons) in Ethics, Society, and Law, Political Science and Women’s Studies, University of Toronto.